It’s strange, but when Diablo came out in 1996, despite being very successful, it didn’t generate any imitators. In fact, it wasn’t until right around the release of Diablo II in 2000 that similar titles like Darkstone, Nox, and Throne of Darkness arrived. That, I think, is a testament to Blizzard Entertainment and the fact that creating an action role-playing game isn’t as easy as it looks.

Or, let me rephrase. Perhaps creating the engine is time-consuming but straightforward enough (compared to other game engines), but doing something intriguing with the engine, and making sure the engine creates a fair and balanced world, is where problems arise. Consider a couple recent role-playing games in Temple of Elemental Evil and Divine Divinity. Both had excellent engines, but both suffered from other problems. Temple had the worst excuse for a campaign that I’ve ever played, while Divinity was one of the worst balanced games that I’ve ever played.​

Mostly, the single-player campaign sends you on a tour of the world. Walk here, and then walk there. And, hey, you missed that obscure corner over there! Walk there, too! And what you do on this trek is kill stuff over and over. The game keeps track of some statistics for you, and what I discovered after finishing the game as a gladiator is that I killed about 7000 creatures (including over 600 goblins) in about 30 hours. That works out to almost 4 kills per minute! Just how exciting can combat be if you’re mowing through enemies that quickly? Not very. Even the final boss was a joke, since he got into a pathfinding loop and never attacked me.​