Diablo 2: Resurrected remaster

[mediocrepoet]

Titan Quest I never played, but it always looked second rate to me.

It feels slugglish to play.

I played from the start to the end of Act 2 over the weekend. I was having a lot of fun.

I always run out of steam after killing Polyphemus and getting faced with endless beaches full of seagulls. (That's my recollection anyway, it's been like 10 years since the last time I played other than messing around a bit yesterday.)

 

[agris]

It's a sad state of affairs when 'Diablo-like' systematically means 'Diablo 2-like'. No one seems to be interested in making a Diablo 1-like these days.

Harbinger is an old Diablo 1-like but its SF

I played it a bit, it definitely didn't have the aesthetic cohesion of D1 but I expect it was a much cheaper production so no surprise. A better sci-fi Diablo 1 like is 1998's Cybermercs. I've played that one extensively, it's a bit like Diablo and Crusader had a baby.

 

[somerandomdude]

Titan Quest I never played, but it always looked second rate to me.

It feels slugglish to play.

I was actually messing around with TQ Anniversary yesterday even though I always found the original dull. It's still about the same, but was about perfectly paced to tool around with while watching a slow paced movie on the second monitor. So it probably still sucks to play on its own, but it's not bad if you're looking for a clicker to occupy a small part of your brain while you're doing something else.

The problem I had with TQ was there was too much open space between packs of mobs to eliminate, way too few stuff to kill on the screen. There's mods that increase the pack sizes, even dramatically, like 10x mob density so the risk/reward increases. Not just mob pack sizes, but you can also turn the boss quantity up, like fight 3-5 Hades, etc.

 

[Gregz]

Care to name some details what made the versions before 1.F9 so good?

off the top of my head

- Diversified vanilla enemies with added new special abilities (e.g. Quill Rats releasing quill spray on death, etc).
- The game is harder now from the start, more challenging and enjoyable.
- Mainly vanilla models were used for summons and new enemies, maintaining the coherence in art direction.
- runewords are not the most powerful, now you can nurture an item from normal to hell and customize every aspect of it
- Barbarian stances are cool
- Dont have to TP to town every 5 mins to sell items to get rich, you get plenty of gold directly from creeps (qol feature)

Gregz can probably remember more

Just remember 1.99-1.F9 was the golden era of the mod

Brilliant mod by a brilliant modder. He's currently working on a D2R mod called "Brotherhood" which is in testing now.

 

[Drop Duck]

Diablo 1 and 2's sound design, music, combat, atmosphere, and visuals are timeless.

I suppose I got spoiled by many features of nowadays diablo-likes. Coming back to Diablo 2 Ressurection felt like coming back to a barren land with an occasional tree that used to feel like a forest. It's not for me anymore
That being said, I must also agree with you. If only for the fact we used to play the original for hundreds of hours and had lots of fun.

So which Diablo-like is actually good?

Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition, Nox, Revenant, Sacred and Throne of Darkness.

 

[EruDaan]

Sacred?! Please alaborate.

 

[Cerulean]

Not that anybody cares, but my level-89 Fishymancer died due to "connection interrupted". I walked just outside of Harrogath to start harvesting my skeletons, and it must have disconnected right when I was standing in a poison cloud or something. Anyway with that, after twenty odd years, I'm done with the game, I just needed to vent somewhere. Also to remind myself to never get attached to a hardcore character, in any game, no matter how "safe" things look. Murphy never sleeps.

 

[Advent]

Titan Quest I never played, but it always looked second rate to me.

It feels slugglish to play.

I played from the start to the end of Act 2 over the weekend. I was having a lot of fun.

After act 3 I was ready for it to end. It felt a lot less balanced for awhile.

 

[damager]

agris Those are some good points, and I can't wholly disagree with them. D1 is definitely more focused and pure, but that doesn't mean D2 is just a slot-machine variant of it. While I prefer the D1 sorcerer to any of the classes in D2, the class and skill diversity of D2 adds a great deal to the table. Their efforts to improve the story bear fruit, and the plot and wonderful cinematics are engaging. The different acts bring new biomes, themes, and monster variety than have more breadth than the D1 descent. While D1 monsters were good, D2 has significant improvements. Even just adding the shaman to fallen hordes really mixes things up. The quest structures, while minimal, still add to the equation and at a minimum give pretext for good mini-boss fights. The QoL improvements, like RUNNING, are also great. D1 does have higher quality in terms of art, atmosphere, and cohesion--it's not leagues beyond D2 in those categories. D2 is a proper sequel in that it's the Original+, which all that anyone ever wants.

We can agree to disagree on the fundamentals, I don't think D2 is truly "original+", rather it took the Fallout 2 route and significantly deviated from the source material in the vain hope that MOAR = BETTER.

I'll give you one thing, the monster variety in D2 is appreciated. But running? Yes D2 added it, but functionally it's a bandaid for massively increased map sizes compared to D1. Maps which, by the way, are filled to the brim with hordes and hordes of nameless enemies that act as rote filler between miniboses. The biomes are analogous to the different dlvl sets in Diablo 1, except due to the size of D2's maps they wear out their welcome way faster. The first biome in D2 is plains! Literally flat grassland. It's no wonder they added running, with the map sizes being what they are, players would have revolted if they had to plod around those huge boring maps.

The inclusion of running also indicates that Brevik and his team didn't quite grasp what made D1 so good in the first place. The slow, plodding, relentlessly gothic pace and aesthetic of D1 built tension. In D2 you go zoom-zooming through themeparks (biomes) which is the antithesis of the D1 experience. This is one of the things I was referring to with my vague and impossible-to-prove comment that "D1 has better moment to moment experiences".

Yeah, I have to agree with you greatly. In my opinion they should have made running and action that is only available for seconds. Together with the big open maps, it destroys part of the tactical positioning that was present in Diablo 1.

Diablo 2 is still a great game in his own rights though. D2r is great, too. Besides the Amazon and Assassin faces and outfits. Fuck that.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Decided over the last couple weeks to dust off the ol MF Berserk Barbarian and go try this "holy grail" challenge the zoomers are talking about.

6 IST'd Phase Blade x3, Grief for main kill weapon/1 IST PB in offhand, switch off to dual PB when shouting at dead bodies to give me their shit. Without sacrificing kill power I got nearly 500% MF, nearing 600% on switch.

187/379 Uniques

93/127 Set items

Running mostly Pit, Ancient Tunnels, Worldstone, Meph, Chaos, Pindle, Eldritch, Shenk, Travincal

I don't know if you count gambling for items as part of the checklist, if not I may go crazy for diadem drops. I'm not including HRs or ethereal variants because I want to get this done before the year ends.

Within a day found Stormshield, Azurewrath and Doombringer. Spent two evenings of my fucking life killing Coldcrow over and over in Norm difficulty just to try and force a Gull drop. Not successful.

I regret this.

 

[Lacrymas]

The fastest holy grail challenge was done in 439 hours, so I don't know why you'd do this to yourself.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

It's one of those things you go, "yeah I can do this" while sucking on a fudgesicle.

 

[Daedalos]

Grinding pixels over and over in 2022.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I played a lot of Diablo 2 back in the day. What's amazing to me is that I have no idea wtf half these people are talking about. So I can only dream of how much Diablo 2 they've played.

 

[Average Manatee]

It's one of those things you go, "yeah I can do this" while sucking on a fudgesicle.

I hope fudgesicle is a euphemism for dick, because actually sucking that many fudgesicles for this challenge would be awful for your health and probably lead to diabetes 1/10th of the way in.

 

[mediocrepoet]

It's one of those things you go, "yeah I can do this" while sucking on a fudgesicle.

I hope fudgesicle is a euphemism for dick, because actually sucking that many fudgesicles for this challenge would be awful for your health and probably lead to diabetes 1/10th of the way in.

I think diabetes is a requirement for US citizenship.

 

[PlanHex]

What sites do you guys use to check item stats, runewords etc?
I'm still using the arreat summit, but that hasn't been updated for d2r and the new runewords etc.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

What sites do you guys use to check item stats, runewords etc?
I'm still using the arreat summit, but that hasn't been updated for d2r and the new runewords etc.

I just use those wiki sites like Diablo Fandom since they're the first that come up when I google stuff.

Would be better if instead of adding more runewords they do a unique item pass and buff those instead. At least some of the uniques that should be powerful to justify their rarity. Tyrael's, Grandfather, Arkaine's Valor, Azurewrath for some immediate examples.

 

[luj1]

Would be better if instead of adding more runewords they do a unique item pass and buff those instead.

id prefer them to nerf RWs rather than buff uniques/sets

 

[Perkel]

They should completely remove runewords altogether. OR just leave runes but remove runewords.

 

[Lacrymas]

The game needs a complete overhaul, not only runeword removal, but that's a start.

 

[Lim-Dûl]

Remove runewords, runes and synergies
Make corpse explosion scale to players count

 

[Gregz]

What sites do you guys use to check item stats, runewords etc?
I'm still using the arreat summit, but that hasn't been updated for d2r and the new runewords etc.

Not a direct answer to your question, but this mod has an integrated runeword library:

 

[ArchAngel]

I don't want to give 40 euro for this game so I installed Path of Diablo again and all the UI improvements there are super nice, I don't think I would want to play with vanilla D2 UI, even if it is better resolution like D2R

 

[Gregz]

I don't want to give 40 euro for this game so I installed Path of Diablo again and all the UI improvements there are super nice, I don't think I would want to play with vanilla D2 UI, even if it is better resolution like D2R

Believe it or not, there are still a few employees at Blizzervision who know what they are doing. It feels like a kind of civil war is happening inside of the studio. There are some loving touches and salutations toward what makes the game great, and there are pozzed soldiers in lockstep with jewry trying to memoryhole D2 so the zombies will eat up D4. There are also talented modders making headway, despite the effort to stop them.