Diablo 1

[Sykar]

The Tristram theme is one of the best pieces of music of any videogame.

Everyone keeps bringing that track up ad nauseam, as if it was the best the soundtrack had to offer.
Caves
Dungeon

Diablo was a relatively short, perfectly paced, coherent throughout (design plus art-wise) and "to the point" hack&slash which perfectly knew what it wanted to be and never overstayed its welcome. The fact it absolutely nailed the atmosphere and the feeling of a slow descent into the deepest recesses of a haunted, hell-infested place is but a cherry on top, elevating the core elements of the entire experience into a memorable whole.

In terms of atmosphere there is just no better Hack&Slash game out, nothing comes even close, not D3, not D2, not PoE, not Torchlight, TQ, GD, etc.

There is a reason why even after 20 years I still fire it up and give it another go until level 35, which I usually hit in a few days.

I usually consider "grinding" a term with a fairly broad meaning, so anything that requires re-doing the same thing (kill mob/clear floor/open chest/kill boss/whatever) over and over again counts as grinding. In fact, one could argue that the core gameplay of Diablo is the grind itself.

Well, yeah, except no.
You can't really repeat things in Diablo as monsters and loot don't respawn, so you are dealing with finite supply of XP and loot throughout the game.
And if you insist that exploration is grind, there will be facestabbings.

They're different games as far as I'm concerned. Diablo 1 is a tight, atmospheric, real time, semi-roguelike hack and slash while Diablo 2 is a treasure hunting sim for multiplayer addicts that replaced amazing gothic setting of the first game with desert catwomen and forest midgets, the only thing I enjoyed in Diablo 2 was Act 1 and cinematics.

Cinematics were grorious, butI didn't even like Act 1 because large part of it was running around giant, walled off lawn and ganking zombies for their lunch money.
The strongest act was probably Act 2, but then again it's where catgirls and a lot of similar retarded shit started.
It was the most consistent one with what could be expected based on D1 ending, though.

You can make a single player character in MP mode, that way I achieved level 45 on my sorcerer without Hellfire, or restart on normal mode, though cannot remember if that was possible in the original game.

 

[Ninjerk]

Surprised Lilura hasn't been here yet

 

[nomask7]

What kind of engine was used in Diablo 1 ?

Heartblood & Talent Engine(tm).

Also, try this if you want:
http://mod.diablo1.eu.org/

This changes desktop resolution when in full screen mode and messes up my desktop icons. I don't need a resolution higher than the original when the mod does nothing more graphics-wise than "zooms out" on higher resolutions. Is the rest of the mod worth the hassle (additional quests, etc)?

 

[octavius]

Damn, I feel a Diablo vs. Diablo 2 battle coming on.

I feel like I'm the only who liked both.

 

[Ninjerk]

Damn, I feel a Diablo vs. Diablo 2 battle coming on.

I feel like I'm the only who liked both.

I can appreciate why people liked it, but I don't think I ever played past the jungle (Act 3?).

 

[Jools]

I usually consider "grinding" a term with a fairly broad meaning, so anything that requires re-doing the same thing (kill mob/clear floor/open chest/kill boss/whatever) over and over again counts as grinding. In fact, one could argue that the core gameplay of Diablo is the grind itself.

Well, yeah, except no.
You can't really repeat things in Diablo as monsters and loot don't respawn, so you are dealing with finite supply of XP and loot throughout the game.
And if you insist that exploration is grind, there will be facestabbings.

Well yeah, but people used to restart the game after or before completion, replaying it a number of times, often rushing/skipping through levels/floors just to get to that mob type or boss they needed to "grind" for that one drop they craved: that is grinding in my books, and I wouldn't really call it "exploration" any more, after the first playthrough.

 

[Sceptic]

Well yeah, but people used to restart the game after or before completion, replaying it a number of times, often rushing/skipping through levels/floors just to get to that mob type or boss they needed to "grind" for that one drop they craved: that is grinding in my books, and I wouldn't really call it "exploration" any more, after the first playthrough.

In this case BG1-2, IWD1-2, NWN1-2 are all grindy games because you can reimport your character and start over. Just because the game lets you do it doesn't mind it's grindy. Only if it's a part of normal play. In D2, everything resets every time you save the game. In D1, you have to actively import your character into a new game over and over because you're feeling spergy and covet that one random drop. I think that's where I draw the line.

On that topic, BT1-3 allowed you to reimport high level characters and start over. That's not what made the games grindy, it's the fact that random encounters are in an unlimited supply, and that even the fixed encounters reset whenever you go to a different level. Since some dungeons are 3D mazes that REQUIRE you to constantly switch from one level to the other, the grind is an intrinsic part of the mechanics.

 

[Luka-boy]

I wish I still had my copy of the Diablo 1 manual

It was a great read explaining some of the lore, especially the bits about the Sin War and what happened under Tristram, and its visual style and artwork fit the mood really well.

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

What kind of engine was used in Diablo 1 ?

Heartblood & Talent Engine(tm).

Also, try this if you want:
http://mod.diablo1.eu.org/

Impressive mod. So far I beat it two times with the mage and once with roguey. Barbarian is leveled slowly for his first Diablo encounter. Graphical upscale to new resolutions with 60 fps makes it a very fluid experience. A little bit of "new" monsters, although they could use more from Hellfire (and I'm not talking about exploding tomatoes). Armory is bigger, we have now everything from the sequel - sets of items, golden, light brown and of course new unique ones. The skill system is rebuilt and now it's actually useful, there are no stats constraints so you can put more than 250 points in strenght/magic/dexterity/etc. Plus we have more quests to do now, with some nice items for doing them. Later on I discovered that giving Anvil of Fury to Griswold we can make new items from recipes found in the game. Although you will need to sacrifice some gear to have parts to do it correctly. Overall, it's like Diablo+ , if you like the vanilla one you have to try HD version.

Character guides
Quests

Spoiler

 

[Jaesun]

and once with roguey

 

[octavius]

I completed the game several times as fighter, once as roguey, but never as a mage. Reading this thread makes me wanna fire it up again...

 

[Sykar]

Damn, I feel a Diablo vs. Diablo 2 battle coming on.

I feel like I'm the only who liked both.

Me too but for different reasons.

D1 has the better atmosphere and is the original.
D2 has the better gameplay and offers a lot more custimization.

Both were great games.

Unlike D3, which wasted so much potential that it is unbelievable that that team hasn't been booted by now.

I wish I still had my copy of the Diablo 1 manual

It was a great read explaining some of the lore, especially the bits about the Sin War and what happened under Tristram, and its visual style and artwork fit the mood really well.

The narrator's voice for those story books was amazing.

 

[General Maxson]

What kind of engine was used in Diablo 1 ?

Heartblood & Talent Engine(tm).

Also, try this if you want:
http://mod.diablo1.eu.org/

Does this require both Diablo and Hellfire, or only Diablo?

Also for any guys that played both, how about this vs. The Hell mod?

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

What kind of engine was used in Diablo 1 ?

Heartblood & Talent Engine(tm).

Also, try this if you want:
http://mod.diablo1.eu.org/

Does this require both Diablo and Hellfire, or only Diablo?

Also for any guys that played both, how about this vs. The Hell mod?

You only need DIABDAT.mpq file from original Diablo. No need for Hellfire files. I deleted The Hell after a couple of hours of playing and didn't tried it afterwards. All I remember is HP bloat of every enemies.

 

[Taluntain]

Loved 1, hated 2, never touched 3. Replayed 1 quite a few times with all of the classes. As for the soundtrack, the most amazing thing about it is that the entirety of D1's consists of 5 in-game tracks, sans the menu... all of it merely about 25 minutes, but it's the kind of fitting music that you never forget and never get tired of hearing.

 

[Inquisition]

I wish I still had my copy of the Diablo 1 manual

It was a great read explaining some of the lore, especially the bits about the Sin War and what happened under Tristram, and its visual style and artwork fit the mood really well.

Metzen's art was so badass. From time to time I like to reread my Warcraft II manual, those pictures look so good.

 

[Daemongar]

Civ 2 is one of the very, very, very few games where the soundtrack annoys me. I have played an obscene amount of Civ 2 and eventually I just turned off the music. I usually never do that.

That said, the Wonder music was typically existing music. Isaac Newton's college has a piece by Vivaldi which is one of my favourite pieces of classical music from that period.

Well, you could be on to something. At first the CIV 2 music annoyed me, but believe me, soooo many 4 AM's on work-nights hearing that music over and over does something to your brain. Its very hard for me to hear that music without launching that game and jumping into it, even though there couldn't possibly be anything new for me to see...

 

[DraQ]

What I'd really love is D2 mod restoring the good parts of D1: persistence, no grind, more symmetrical combat (no lulzily slicing through massive mobs) and lack of shitting all over the setting's atmosphere.
Oh, and sprinting not being a free ride out of almost every gangbang - zombies and the like should have inability to deal with sprinting as their unique feature, everything else should have some counter.

Edit:
Additionally, increased sense of randomness - not just from lack of grindan, but also some sort of tome based solution for skills instead of free distribution of points at level up. Would fix the synergy problem too.

Well yeah, but people used to restart the game after or before completion, replaying it a number of times, often rushing/skipping through levels/floors just to get to that mob type or boss they needed to "grind" for that one drop they craved: that is grinding in my books

I only went normal->nightmare->hell in Hellfire, but that was essentially a game+ mode.
Restarting mid-playthrough was essentially admitting failure to me.

and I wouldn't really call it "exploration" any more, after the first playthrough.

Well, layouts changed, monster composition changed and loot changed between playthroughs - how was it any less of exploration* after the first playthrough?

*) Calling it exploration may be a bit of an overstatement (at least according to the definition I use), but it's rather clearly not a repetitive, grind-like activity either.

 

[octavius]

So I installed Diablo 1 on my Win 7 64 bit machine and it works flawlessly, but when I installed Hellfire this was the result:

Is there a way to fix this or should I just install the HD mod?
How much does the HD mod change the gameplay? After trying the Hell Mod with that ultra tedious 10,000 HP Butcher I'm a bit wary of Diablo mods.

 

[Grimlorn]

So I installed Diablo 1 on my Win 7 64 bit machine and it works flawlessly, but when I installed Hellfire this was the result:

Is there a way to fix this or should I just install the HD mod?
How much does the HD mod change the gameplay? After trying the Hell Mod with that ultra tedious 10,000 HP Butcher I'm a bit wary of Diablo mods.

Try going to properties and running it in compatibility mode with different versions of Windows. Run as administrator. Try changing the resolution to 800x600 1024x768 etc before opening the game. Try the 640x480 setting in compatibility. The 256 colors setting. Just try playing with those settings and see if it works.

 

[octavius]

It worksn't. In Win 95 or Win 98 mode the program does not even recognize the CD.
Even the Unoffical Patch does not work; I guess it's old.
It will most probably work if I run Win XP with Virtual Box, but I think I'll try the HD mod instead.

EDIT: so the HD mod does not affect Hellfire?

 

[Jools]

and I wouldn't really call it "exploration" any more, after the first playthrough.

Well, layouts changed, monster composition changed and loot changed between playthroughs - how was it any less of exploration* after the first playthrough?

*) Calling it exploration may be a bit of an overstatement (at least according to the definition I use), but it's rather clearly not a repetitive, grind-like activity either.

Agreed, but it still didn't quite feel like "exploration". I admit I probably have a distorted idea of what "exploration" is, but I don't see how Diablo's "exploration" is not "repetitive"... Mind you, not saying it's "bad" repetitive, quite the contrary. I always thought that Diablo managed to turn something really simple and kinda dull (click mouse, kill stuff) into one of the most fun things ever. And yet I wouldn't say the changed layouts and monster composition make it really any less "repetitive". Dunno, I really have a hard time thinking of it as exploration: when I think about exploration in RPGs, I think Gothic, FNV, Morrowind, some of the IE games. The core of Diablo (and this applies to Diablo 1 much more so than to Diablo 2) is killing stuff over and over, and clearing floor after floor.

It doesn't really matter though, we're just talking definitions/linguistics here. Maybe I'm too anal about defining exploration (and/or I have a distorted idea of it), or too loose with my definition of "grinding".

 

[Sykar]

Weird, my D1 ran fine last time I played it on Win 8,unless I try to alt+tab out of it.

 

[octavius]

Weird, my D1 ran fine last time I played it on Win 8,unless I try to alt+tab out of it.

D1 works fine for me too; it's Hellfire that for some reason is causing problems with garbled graphics.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

Weird, my D1 ran fine last time I played it on Win 8,unless I try to alt+tab out of it.

D1 works fine for me too; it's Hellfire that for some reason is causing problems with garbled graphics.

This might sound stupid, but try opening screen resolution settings and then running the game. Don't change anything, just leave it open, try with/without advanced settings window opened too. Works for some old games.

As for D1 mods, I've never played one that I liked. They all insist on turning it into D2 (complete with D2 art assets, which often looks jarring). Haven't tried the HD mod yet.