Is Diablo 2 worth playing?

[KeighnMcDeath]

No Andariel ass to spank? She wearing a a breach cloth? I was wondering if her ass looked better than her face.

 

[ind33d]

I played a stupid amount of Diablo 2 back in the day and even on LAN but I don't think ARPG as a genre has aged well. You would be better off playing DOTA, except Blizzard nuked Warcraft III and DOTA 2's matchmaking is rigged for whales, so good luck with that

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Well, Bliz fucked themselves a long time ago. Stupid China inclusive shit ain't helping. ALL THEIR GAMES NOW ARE JUST FUCKING GACHA BULLSHIT!

Whales love it. Where tge fuck is Captain Ahab the fucking whale destroyer?

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

D2 was worth it when it came out, and even then mostly in multiplayer

now? i doubt it

 

[ghostlife]

I played a stupid amount of Diablo 2 back in the day and even on LAN but I don't think ARPG as a genre has aged well. You would be better off playing DOTA, except Blizzard nuked Warcraft III and DOTA 2's matchmaking is rigged for whales, so good luck with that

I still play WC3 at lan parties with friends. You just need to all install the same pre-reforged patch

 

[Spike]

D2 was worth it when it came out, and even then mostly in multiplayer

now? i doubt it

This is preposterous. Of course D2 is worth it now. The endgame "secret" uber content is fun. Also, after that, you can play Median XL which will take several times over as long to get through all of that content.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

It's a good hack n' slash that can be finished in a week. A person has no reason not to play it.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I recently went through D2R after buying it on sale. It was fun to go through the game again after 20+ years, as I had forgotten most of it (was never the poopsocking type, at least not for D2), but it wasn't spectacular. I played all 5 acts co-op with a RL buddy of mine who I beat the original D2 with more than two decades ago. Low point was, of course, Act 3, and my favourite part of the game is probably Act 2. Runewords make 99% of the loot you find completely trivial. You can always opt not to use them, of course, but that's silly. It's also not really a good MP game at all.

I will always maintain that these sorts of games declined spectacularly when they were turned into loot mills. Another point is that especially for a very old game like this, where builds for all classes have been solved for ages, there is very little incentive to play. The areas and dungeons aren't very engaging, and the atmosphere is vastly inferior compared to the first game.

The only way to play to get any real sense of tension and/or enjoyment is playing a hardcore character. But that requires more patience than I've got, and/or copying some established build, which is boring and takes some of the fun out of it.

I liked D2R well enough, in an age of terrible remakes, it's a worthy try and respectful of the original game in most respects (uglifying some character models notwithstanding). Worth a buy when on deep discount, but otherwise I couldn't recommend it.

 

[Arbiter]

After playing through Diablo to the end of Lord of Destruction I'd say it isn't worth bothering with anything after the first game ...

Role playing as a (thread) Necromancer?

 

[octavius]

Runewords make 99% of the loot you find completely trivial.

The one thing I dislike most about D2 is how Runewords are implemented. There's no in-game way of knowing the combinations, and some of the drops are about as rare as Proton Decay, so you can't experiment with the rare Runes either, but are more or less forced to "cheat" and looks up the recipes on-line.
And it also tends to make player characters all use the same equipment.

 

[typical user]

Runewords and loot in general were implemented with multiplayer in mind. Blizz wanted people to play together and trade. The drops were so insane a whole black market and scamming people came around and became the norm.

Seriously tho, you want good gear, you better start farming and selling stuff on d2jsp for forum gold. Cause no shit you won't see Ber rune unless you abuse treasure chests in Lower Kurast in single-player for 2 weeks full-time.

Still pretty fun game, better than D3: My little Pony edition or D: Immortal (also known as Diablo: You guys don't have phones?)

 

[Artyoan]

My only complaints are that runewords are too strong, the skill trees are boring, and it lost some of the D1 tone/atmosphere. But its a great game and the QoL improvements in Resurrected make it worth revisiting. I've been playing it for a few weeks now, and since I already know the whole plot from long ago, I'm listening to podcasts in the background. Maximum comfy with a controller.

 

[Arbiter]

In his GDC post mortem presentation David Brevik said that one of the things he adored about the roguelike experience is when you are almost out of health and have to consider your options, maybe risk a gamble by drinking a potion you don't know what it does, or reading a scroll that could do anything. In contrast Diablo is mindless clicking on monsters until they die and a safe chugging of potions

D1 does have shrines with random, sometimes negative effects, and cursed items (unlike D2).

Edit: and zombies that could permanently lower your health. Unheard of in contemporary games.

 

[Lagi]

In his GDC post mortem presentation David Brevik said that one of the things he adored about the roguelike experience is when you are almost out of health and have to consider your options, maybe risk a gamble by drinking a potion you don't know what it does, or reading a scroll that could do anything. In contrast Diablo is mindless clicking on monsters until they die and a safe chugging of potions

D1 does have shrines with random, sometimes negative effects, and cursed items (unlike D2).

Edit: and zombies that could permanently lower your health. Unheard of in contemporary games.

you had to write that? I paid for d2r damned. Let me at least complete 2nd Act.
At least D1T potion game is worse than in D2, I like this cooldown.

 

[spectre]

It's an interesting question to ask in 2023, should one play Diablo 2. I'd say the answer is an easy yes. It's one of Blizzard's game that can still be pirated with little fuss.
More seriously, though, I decided to pay nostalgia tax to Bobby Kotick and get me Diablo Resurrected so I can talk about this one.

One thing straight off the bat, Blizzard tried but could never really replicate the oppressive atmosphere they managed to get down in Diablo 1.
Then again, very few things compete, not even the Diablo 1 expansion. With that out of the way, why I decided to give DR a go, once more against my better judgment?

Generally speaking, if you're there for the gameplay, you're much better served by picking up a roguelike for emergent gameplay, making do with what you can,
adapting to circumstances and re-trying until things go your way. This, I am finding, just doesn't happen in modern hack and slashes. And I played pretty much all there is to play.
But when we're talking about the Diablo experience, it's not all gameplay.

So what does DR (and D2) have to offer over Path of Exile which remains free and available? For starters, there is still that cristian gothic aesthetics. It's a bit diluted by stuff like Act 3,
but I'd still prefer that over the meanders of kiwi-inspired mythologies of PoE. Another very subtle difference is that DR is a product of simpler times which did not ask the player
to albo become an aspiring pianist. The basic controls are envisioned as LMB for one skill, RMB for the second skill. And the whole thing is balanced around just that.
Sure, you sometimes switch skills with hotkeys and there are also the potions, but on a very basic level the mouse buttons are what you need.
It's a nice change of pace and I am rather appreciating this.

The whole game is just paced differently. Sure, there are zoomer strategies, zipping around with wands of teleport, farming guides, optimized leveling spreadsheets,
but while for modern H&S like Path of Exile these things (in the mind of the designers) sadly become the baseline of how people should and will play their game
and it is how further gameplay and progression gets designed, again D2 remains a product of a different time, where the game did not begin at endgame.
The cancer already begins to show, but the game can still be enjoyed at a more leisurely pace.

And I think it shows. Compared to the overgrown maps of Path of Exile, Diablo 2 is a rather cozy experience, with waypoints
spread rather conveniently. You don't need absurd walk speed modifiers to take the game in at a comfortable pace.
The scale of each act feels just right (at times I was even surprised that I'm at the boss fight already).
Makes you want to easily do the whole thing again.
Now, compare that to doing one more Trial of Ascendancy.

So yeah, there is plenty of bad shit to say about DR. All of it deserved. Like the fact that the game still lags and rubberbands in fucking single player
(just like D2 used to, they obviously didn't patch it for nostalgia reasons), like the fact that runewords royally fucked up itemization (eeeey, let's slap a bunch of +1 to all skills on everything,
pretty sure it won't fuck up the overall balance), or some new assets looking pretty fucking embarassing (why does every character look like a slightly constipated transvestite? sign of times).

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Shit, how many times have the rune words been changed per patch? I never looked to see if they were consistent. I'd hope they didn't change them. Did I ever really use these bitches? No. I just put 3 of the same into the cube to change it like a mobile game. Ooh gems! Time to make bigger gem. I hardly fucked around with socketing except jewels at times. I don't recall if there was a DE-socket device but that could have been helpful.

Who the fuck discovered all the rune words? Just trial/error? Again, a mini-game.

Shit, I guess they're still making rune words:
NEW RUNE WORDS
RUNES