this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2024

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Behold, Diablo is fully playable in your browser (arstechnica.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

I tried to read the linked Twitter thread from Ars and good god it’s terrible. Half of it is people complaining about the demo version without understanding that it’s the demo version. Even though people in the thread keep explaining it to them.

[+] [email protected] -18 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

It controls and looks great, though the game was outshined by its sequels.

Hahahahahahahahaha no.

None of its sequels beat Diablo II's greatness.

Oops, didn't realize it was D1 not D2 :(

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

None of its sequels beat Diablo II's greatness.

I dunno man. I think people have a lot of nostalgia for Diablo II. I didn’t play it that much when I was younger (parents wouldn’t let me buy it because satan or some shit), though I did manage to borrow a friend’s copy for a month or so. Absolutely loved it, but it was hard.

Recently got the Switch version and tried to play through. If you don’t have a plan for your build, and you don’t know where to get good items, it can be extremely frustrating trying to progress. And you have limited respecs. And every time you die you risk losing all of your stuff if you can’t get back to it.

Diablo II was amazing for its time, but it lacks a lot of the quality of life improvements that make Diablo III and Diablo IV (after updates) better to play, IMO.

(Don’t get me wrong, D3 and D4 needed serious help when they launched, but both have gotten pretty awesome updates since launch. D4 season 4 especially breathed wonderful life into that game.)

Edit: Also this article is talking about Diablo ONE, not Diablo II.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

(Don’t get me wrong, D3 and D4 needed serious help when they launched, but both have gotten pretty awesome updates since launch. D4 season 4 especially breathed wonderful life into that game.)

I'm going to be a stick in this mud. And I suspect I might get downvoted for my D3 opinions.... but hear me out.

D3 was BETTER at launch than it is now. Yes it needed work... but I think D3 was better in its original state than it is now (though both were "shit" comparatively to D2). They changed too much shit too quickly. The game became dumb after most of those changes.

D4 I played the beta, hoping that it would be a return to older blizzard mentalities... and it just wasn't it for me at all. My cousin wanted me to play again more recently... I played a few hours under his shit to check it out again (about 100 hours because I know that end game matters)... I still don't see any of that original captured lightning. It's still super uninspired and boring.

D1 was amazing... D2 literally captured magic. It's been downhill since from my point of view. Especially with Blizzard becoming actiblizzion and become complete and utter crap in of themselves.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

I won’t downvote you for having an opinion on a game that doesn’t align with mine. Diverse thought is what makes conversation interesting!

I suspect part of the issue is that what D3 and D4 are is significantly different from what D2 was. Story-wise I think they’re all about the same level of “good but not amazing,” but in terms of gameplay they differ a lot. Largely because D3 and D4 came so much later in the evolution of the ARPG genre.

D2 is much slower paced, more difficult, requires much more careful play. D3 and D4, in my experience, are mostly about moving fast and getting the most and biggest numbers on the screen. Not that there isn’t difficulty available in D3 and D4, but that difficulty is very different.

D3 and D4 almost feel like a different genre, so if you go into them expecting more of the same feel as D2, it can be disappointing.

Of course my position on this could be because I’ve had much more experience with 3 and 4 than I’ve had with 2.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Whole heartedly agree D4 last season was an absolute banger probably my favorite Diablo to date

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I’m enjoying season 5 quite a bit, too. The story is definitely leading into the expansion, and I really like the simplification of Varshan summons (although I don’t understand why they’re still having the parts we now turn into Malignant Hearts drop rather than just having Malignant Hearts).

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago

Well this is talking about Diablo ONE, so...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Until I can recreate my fireball warrior no Diablo will match D1

[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Direct URL: https://d07riv.github.io/diabloweb/

But you still need the DIABDAT.MPQ file from the original game.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

This will still get shut down

Remember REVC?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You don't "need" it defaults to the shareware version if you don't provide the MPQ. I will say though that the original Diablo discs are archived on archive.org...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

it defaults to the shareware version

but talking to Farnham is not available in the shareware version.
What if I want to talk to Farnham? Maybe I had a rough week and just need someone to talk to. Farnham seems pretty chill.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Download the archive... open the ISO... bam?

(Note: Don't torrent the archive... Apparently someone is dmca trolling that torrent. The fuck rights to a 30 year old game do they think they can enforce when you can't even fucking buy it.)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

With modernized UI? That would be really outdated otherwise.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Nope, been playing it for a couple days now. It's just the same as it ever was. The web port itself is seamless (been playing on Firefox with a 10-year-old Macbook), but the game has a clunky, PITA UI.

It's kinda maddening in that no matter how well you clear every level, your character is likely to stall at some point and you'll have to start over. For anybody who doesn't know, you can start the game over again using the same character and re-loot the same levels; they don't respawn once you clear them otherwise. In this way you can continually train up your character to make it further into the dungeon. At first it seems like this was a mistake, but then it seems that it actually was a design decision. It was the first of its kind, so it gets a pass I suppose.

The shopkeepers inventory also does not cycle until you buy something and then that slot refills. So whatever you've got is what you've got. Unlike most of the games that came after, you are actually somewhat dependent on the shopkeepers for decent gear.

That said, it's still fun. Really fun. It's not hard to see why it started something.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yah, been playing it on my steamdeck, I forgot how hard the first diablo was, haven't played it since in was a kid. I got a warrior all the way to diablo, but couldn't kill him, character wasn't powerful enough. So i started a new game with my character and thought I'd train in nightmare, and come back to kill diablo in normal later. But then I read the game ends in each difficulty when you kill diablo and what ever loot you get, you can't pick up before the ending dialogue screens, and diablo isn't treated as much of a special character in regards to loot so.. I never went back to kill diablo, because what's the point?

Now I got all the way to level 13 in nightmare and stalled again because my character can't survive the balrogs, and isn't powerful enough. Usually when you got stuck in the original game, you could dupe gold or stat increasing potions or something to get your character past their slump, but they fixed the dupe bug in the devilutionx code. Now there's nothing really to help you out when stuck. Crazy thing is sometimes you have to restart because you've run out of gold for healing potions after trying and failing to clear a level.

I might be putting the game down for a bit. It was incredibly fun while I played though.