Explain Diablo 1,2,3,4

PC General Discussion
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I constantly see people comparing Diablo games with previous Diablo games, but end of the day it feels like comparing what’s better colour, red vs blue vs green… can someone please explain the main difference each Diablo has to offer?

I played D3 and D4, I like the “grind” part after finishing campaign, I truly enjoyed going back to D3 to push keystones. Kinda brainless but still takes skill to pull off. When I heard D4 is coming out I was hoping it would be exact same as D3 but better graphics etc.

I never really invest time in Questing or Story, so that’s not my jam, I reiterate, I like end game / idea of pushing.

Now that I played D4, finished the campaign, currently enjoying pushing Nightmare Dungeons (currently doing Tier17+), I am curious, is it worth investing time / effort expanding back to D1 and D2?? What’s the main difference, is it story? game style?

Would love to hear some suggestions where to start and what to expect, or what people experienced in each Diablo game.

Diablo 1 - Unknown (story is good I assume?)

Diablo 2 - Unknown (Good story, better graphics I assume?)

Diablo 3 - Loved endgame, keystone pushing - never came across a player however

Diablo 4 - Loved the story, love the environment, currently loving the dungeon / world boss, and I really like seeing players

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I would say D1 and D2 had a superior atmosphere, although they’re a bit dated compared to titles we see these days.
Kinda felt like you were there.
I’m old though, so I like my lil time machine.
More like pieces of art for me now.

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Diablo 1 - The one that made ARPG become a thing, good narration, the further you went down in the labyrinth the tougher it got, i liked the story, it was pretty dark and the atmosphere is really what made me love it and i’d say Diablo 4 atmosphere is pretty good now compared to D3.

Diablo 2 - Itemization was a chief kiss unlike the over simplification of stats we now live with, the story was also good, the remastered cutscene are amazing, Tyrael actually looking badass unlike what he became in Diablo 3, some runewords are too OP but they also require pretty much a very long grind unless you get lucky. You were still able to trade just about anything you could wish for a price if you wanted and nobody cared about how trivial you made the game for yourself.

Maybe im sniffing too much nostalgia. But all of them have their nice part to me and also their own issues.

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I’m not much for words, but you carried them well.

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Not gonna lie I am a massive sucka for loots and “itemisation”. Sounds like the new Diablo 2 Remake worth it?

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diablo 2 had was a very cohesive game before it got ruined by patch 1.11 and brought back as d2r also with patch 1.11.

the game had a fun gameplay loop where you endlessly did the same 5 bosses or something, but the levels were randomly generated, so it didnt get super old.

you could trade pretty much everything, which made items exciting, it had no class based loot, making it so you had to find any items you could and trade them for stuff you wanted.

d2 had no respecs in the good days (patch 1.11 killed the game with introduction of respecs) but this wasnt a problem, it took like 5-7 hours max to reach endgame on any character, and no respecs made veterans and newbies mingle in the lower tiers a lot.

the game itself had a low level game and a high level game, and both parts of it were fun, but essentially identical, running random bosses to get exp or loot at high level.

no respecs means that everyone was ALWAYS leveling a new character, which gave the game a very vibrant and lively feel in low level areas. and leveling was a massive propeller of the economy as it introduced some currencies into the game constantly from a quest that had a very nice currency reward (hellforge)

overall the community in d2 is really what made the game, you were rewarded for group play and could organize a run pretty quickly, and meet people during the runs.

it was always fun to see the level 65 sorc do baal runs because she needs levels and have a few 98s by her side, die once during teleporting to the boss and when you died you llost some exp u could regain if you beat the monsters (without your gear since its on your body) and get your body back (you didnt lose gear if you died, if u log out you got it back, but not the exp) which caused the badass level 98 paladin and amazon to go annihilate everything.

its really a game made by its community, and the community made by 3 very important pillars of design.

if i had to break down d2 to 3 core concepts its this:

  1. no take backs. you choose your skills and you will keep them forever on that character.
  2. very easy to get to endgame, very hard to get to max level, 4-6 hours to level 70 but impossible to get to level 99
  3. TRADE TRADE TRADE. everything is tradeable.

poe feels a lot like d2. u can get the d2 feeling from poe if you really want to try.

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U def need to play it, so much fun. Phat loots. And if you get a good piece of gear you don’t want or need you can trade it for something useful. Always something to do in the downtime, from farming, to helping noobs through content and more. An absolute gem of a game

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well I certainly am a noob in Diablo so maybe someone can power level me

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Honestly since im sniffing a lot of nostalgia, reliving Diablo 2 with modern graphic, cutscene and ect was amazing.

Obviously i cannot say it’ll do the same to you, i was a kid when i played the game and loved every second of it… The same 5 bosses farming someone mentioned is indeed a thing, but it’s not really any different than farming Nightmares dungeon to me. At least, the objective is the same, slaughtering demons which i love to do lol.

To be truthful also, i’d wish you’d play them all in order and get a feel for them yourself. To see how the franchise evolved(ORR devolved if you feel like it did). I do understand that for some younger players it’s hard to going back to game like Diablo 1 since it hasn’t really aged well in the graphics department. But while it wouldn’t be an authentic experience, maybe the Belzebub mod for Diablo 1 would help you get a better feeling of the game, but it also make it much harder than the original one lol.

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I’d be down it’s one of the most fun things to do in the game is helping people out

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D2 trading community literally developing their own markets and currency was one of the greatest game achievements.

Gold was worthless. The market was equiment and runes. Absolutely amazing.

Removing the ability to trade ripped the fun out for a lot of people d3 and d4.

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Rushing is quite fun.

Walking isn’t a chore either.

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Diablo 1 had quite a few things that were very interesting:

As you killed more monsters, you would unlock more information about them, strengths and weaknesses and such. You could tie this into current Diablos by giving characters permanent buffs for doing the same thing, and/or unlocking art/biography/info about monsters.

Getting hit by certain monsters or touching certain shrines would permanently affect your character stats. This made for a far harder game. I don’t know if this is something I would explore for the regular game, but it would add some danger to Hardcore…

The fame was slower and more methodical. You could turn a corner and all of a sudden be stun-locked by a pack of acid-spitting dogs, or quickly surrounded by a mob of enemies that you can’t outrun and beat to death. This made for a far more careful run of the game, and less speed-farming.

As you progressed further in the game (ie. deeper in the dungeon, monsters felt more dangerous, not just in attacks, but in overall design and feel. It made the game feel like you were getting closer to Diablo.

There weren’t many, but some quests wouldn’t popup on a single playthrough, leading to more reason to run through a new playthrough to see more quests.

Iding items felt better, as you had to carey scrolls of identify to figure out what items were, and as you were delving deeper, this felt better as that next magic item you found could be a King’s Sword of Haste…or it could be a cursed item. You just never knew. Since a playthrough was static (you generated a new dungeon on a new fame only, but a current playthrough meant all the enemies you gave killed/treasure you found remained finished, it meant gold was a resource during the game that could run out. And having to split that amongst potions/scrolls and repairs was important.

Overall, D1 was just a more dangerous and darker feeling game.

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Anybody who has not played D2 will have a LOT to gain by playing D2R for the very first time.
It is undoubtedly better than D4 by miles.

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AHHH YESSS MY MAN! You didn’t forget the god damn DOG! I should have mentioned that haha.

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Once you do, it makes some of the critique of D4 more credible.
The itemization was wonderful.

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This is a positive thread.
Props my fren.

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I’m almost tempted to post a screenshot of all my characters.
The itemization is so good, just getting a fun unique drop is enough for you to want to create an entire new character around it.

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im going to throw this out right here, because its a matter of seconds before someone says how great respeccing in 1.11 is because you dont have to relevel every week.

respecs in d2 did 2 things, it was a coordinated 2 prong attack on the game.

first thing it did was invalidate the low level game. no one is leveling a character anymore because now they can just respec the character, completely killing off the low level game, now after respecs d2 felt empty, completely abandoned and unappealing to new players until they hit hell, which took hours longer without experienced people rushing through the game with noobs alongside them. but also took away a good chunk of the economy that was propelled by the constant leveling and runes gotten from leveling the characters.

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True.
Unless you did low lvl duels.
Casual DFC Paladin on occasion.