Game Design Study - Diablo 1

Diablo: The Designer

[!WARNING] Skip this part if you just want the Diablo thoughts.

For the past few years, I’ve been developing games endlessly. That is not a boast. It would take just one look at the games that I have created to know that I’m not a “good” game developer by any means. And the reason, I believe, for not truly making good games is that I’ve been “developing” games. When I develop a game, I think about the technology, the art, the sound effects, and that’s it. But what about the design? The mechanics? The level structure? The genre? Yeah, I did not think about those for even a moment. Even though the technological aspect of games is still very important (it is how the game gets created in the first place, after all), I still believe that the game design element of my game development journey has been completely neglected. An element that is the driving factor of what definitely distinguishes a good game from a bad game. It’s very hard to create a game that sticks to its genre and knows it very well. A game that tries to combine all of the game mechanics it has been building in a finale that ends like a great symphony would. A level designed so well that you feel so entranced by it and want to play more of the level. That is not “developing” a game. That is “creating” a piece of art. 

Though it is difficult to create such a game because I don’t know what makes a “good” game. Besides, what is a “good” game anyway? What’s the definition of a “good” game? It is easier (for me at least) to create a beautiful renderer with all the modern graphics techniques. Why? Well, the formulas are already there. I just take the equation, understand it, and try to integrate it. Of course, that has its own set of difficult problems. Yet, the solution for that problem already exists. Actually, it’s laid out in front of you. You just have to understand the components. With game design, though? That’s not often the case. 

Sure, I have plenty of games to take from. I can look at Quake and try to replicate what it did. But just like you cannot take an equation that you absolutely do not understand, you also cannot just “copy” Quake without knowing what makes Quake good. And that 

That’s why I came up with the genius idea of studying a game while I’m playing. No one ever thought of that before. Clearly, I’m an amazing genius… well. Either way, I’ve been playing a lot of games lately with this “critical” lens I try to keep. I’m having fun playing the game, of course, but I also try to ask myself why I’m having fun. Why is this mechanic fun? Why is this section absolutely horrid and unplayable? Hey, how did they program that? Trying to realize why a game is fun, or even just noticing what is and is not a mechanic. That is a skill every game developer should learn and improve. It’s what makes us good. Our craft is to know what the hell is fun and what is not. Not every game is shaped the same, however. The reasons why Quake is amazing differ wildly from what makes Mount And Blade amazing. You also need to realize and learn what works in which genre and what doesn’t work.

Now, I’m not an expert game critic by any means. Actually, I’m not a game critic at all. I’m not trying to be either. The game I’m talking about here, Diablo, is going to be “studied” and not reviewed. Besides that, I’ll study it from my own point of view. I’m bound to forget something or misunderstand a whole mechanic. After all, I am trying to learn. I’ll try to talk about the game completely from memory. I don’t want to go look up weird trivia about the game or how it was developed (unless it’s essential to the design). I’m just trying to learn about game design from other games here, trying my hardest to learn a skill that I have woefully neglected. And so, if you notice anything that I’ve said that was just completely wrong or a terrible observation, feel free to tell me.

Besides that, it’s important to realize that this is, again, not a review. I’m not here to say whether Diablo is “good” or “bad”. I’m going to talk about what I liked and what I hated. What I thought should have been different. What I would have changed. I’ll fanboy over the game, and I’ll make fun of it. It’s to learn and understand the art of game design.

Okay, gamedev section over. Let’s get to Diablo…

Diablo: The Introduction

Diablo 1 was developed by Blizzard Entertainment in 1997. It’s a classic action RPG game disguised in a thinly veiled point-and-click adventure, which I’ll get into later. It was released for Windows and the very first PlayStation ever made. It is important to note, though, that I did not play the original version. Rather, I played the modern port DevilutionX. It adds a lot of fixes to the look, controls, and general quality of life changes to the game that are much needed. 

As for the story, the game is set in a fictional fantasy kingdom called Khanduras. I had to look it up because I genuinely did not remember. You are tasked to save King Leoric’s son, who was kidnapped into the deepest darkest hell hole by an evil demon lord named Diablo. There’s also a guy named Archbishop Lazarus who was the King’s right-hand man, but it turns out he betrayed him because he lusted for blood or something. The story is very “1997” here. It’s very straightforward. And this is my very first complaint with Diablo.

While I do love to loathe myself in the lore of a fantasy world and get immersed in every aspect of the characters, the settings, and the world, there’s not much to go around here. It is, after all, the first game in the series, and Blizzard was still just a baby at that point. Besides that, the story isn’t really the strongest element of Diablo. It’s there and it has some interesting beats, but it feels like a template DnD world rather than a fleshed-out story with deep lore. Again, it’s just the first game, and this is 1997, remember, so I’ll give it some slack. 

Just like any other RPG, the game gives you a few options to determine your playstyle throughout the game. There are only 3 character classes you can choose from. The Warrior, the Rogue, and the Sorcerer. The warrior is strong but heavy, the rogue is very agile and flexible but weak, and the sorcerer can, well, shoot fireballs out of his hands or staff. This is as simple as you can get with character selection, but it works for me. RPG games did exist at the time that had a lot of in-depth character development, but Diablo did not. This is another gripe with Diablo that will come back again and again. It tries to be an RPG game so badly, but it’s not designed with that in mind. The story is set in a fantasy world with Kings and Queens, but it’s not really fleshed out. You can level up your character like a regular RPG game, except it’s very barren. The combat is trying to be real-time, but it seems like it’s stuck in a turn-based combat system. And this makes sense because initially, Diablo was supposed to be a turn-based RPG game more akin to Baldur’s Gate or Fallout 1, but Blizzard wanted David Brevik, the original creator of Diablo, to make it real-time and add multiplayer just because. And, frankly, it shows. But I’ll talk more about this in the combat section. 

Given how I play the same character in every RPG I’ve ever played, I choose the warrior for this run, with no plans to invest any points in magic or agility, which will come back to bite me in the buttocks later on. However, this is one aspect that I love about Diablo. It’s so simple. I know I said that the character leveling system is barren. But, man, do I love the simplicity. Diablo shines through when it makes things simple and small. It’s truly a game that has a really perfect core and then some other mechanics that just complement that core very well. Sometimes, the mechanics around the core are very simple, which just adds to the game. Other times, however, Diablo tries to be something it’s not, and it falls flat. 

Either way, when you first start the game, you’re dropped in a town by the name of Tristram. You are told that the Archbishop Lazarus took a few men and went underground to “save” the King’s son. Your first task as this unnamed hero is to start traversing the cathedral and find out what happened to the Prince. At first glance of the town, I knew immediately that this was a safe haven. The music that plays when you enter the town is so calming and soothing. It will be a great break from the horrendous stuff you’ll see once you start entering the dungeons. I still remember playing The Evil Within for the first time and coming across that mirror that played Claire De Lune, indicating that you can take a little bit of a break. Or the soothing soundtrack of Firelink Shrine in Dark Souls, which was a much-needed break from the awful demons you encounter in that game. The town of Tristram gave me that exact same feeling. A safe hub that exists so that you can calm down, repair your equipment, and buy a shit ton of healing potions because you’re a pussy like me. I was just surprised to see a game in 1997 doing this extremely well. And doing it so simply as well.

I thought Dark Souls was the only game that did that. I thought that Dark Souls was the only game that existed. Turns out, shockingly, there are other games out there besides Dark Souls. Who would’ve known?

The town has some locals, of course. Throughout my gameplay, I encountered 7 NPCs. Every NPC has some useful trait you can exploit for your own good. You can also talk to them about some filthy gossip or about any currently active quests. Talking with NPCs is not really that impactful, though. It just gives you more lore about the world and certain characters in the story or in the town. Mechanically, however, it’s somewhat useless. I thought that, perhaps, they could give me some tips about the quest or a secret passage I could go through to skip a very hard area. At least, the tips that they gave weren’t really tips as much as “fight well, warrior”, and “oh man, watch out for that Butcher, he is mean”. Alas, turns out that gossiping in Diablo is just like gossiping in the real world; it’s completely useless, but still a lot of fun. I will get into this later, but there are no “strategies” that you can employ. So it’s not really the townsfolk’s fault they don’t give you any “tips”. Perhaps they can tell you of a few immunities a certain boss will have, but, again, it’s not really useful to me since I am a warrior. That knowledge will not be beneficial to me at all. 

As an example of a game that uses NPC dialogues as a mechanic, let’s talk about my favorite game of all time, Deus Ex. In Deus Ex, the more people you talk to, the more strategies you can collect about the area’s surroundings, the enemies, or even the boss. In that game, you can actually skip whole sections because you did a mini-quest for some NPC who gave you a key to the main gate or told you of a very nice secret door at the back of a building (or the back of a vending machine). Talking to NPCs in Deus Ex actually had some merit. A useful action you’ll take to further “enhance” your gameplay. You learn very quickly to listen to NPCs very attentively because they may have some important piece of knowledge you can use later on. Of course, you can skip all NPCs and not talk to a single one, but that will actively hurt your ability to progress through the level, since you will essentially go in blind. However, in Diablo, talking to NPCs is nothing more than lore sugar. Someone will tell you a certain thing about the town or about a certain dude who lives in a tavern, but that’s it. Again, they can give you “tips,” but they were fairly useless to me. Even the “gossiping” that they do is kind of useless. Like one NPC will tell you that this blacksmith is “the greatest blacksmith the town has ever seen”. Again, cool lore sugar, but it doesn’t really benefit me. It’s not even good lore. It’s just… well, nothing. Can you tell me about other blacksmiths who lived in this town? In this world? Why is he particularly the best? He’s just is, man. Move along.

Having said that, though, the townsfolk can give you quests. You don’t have to go through a special option, however. As soon as they talk to you, they will inform you of a special spicy quest for you. You cannot reject or accept the quest. The quest just automatically gets added to your quest list, which makes sense because there aren’t a lot of quests anyway. We’ll talk more in-depth about quests later, though. 

Besides that, the townsfolk can also offer you some useful goodies for your perilous journey into the dungeons. You can buy these items with gold, of course, what else? You can find gold in the dungeons in random chests or as a random drop from some enemies. Alternatively, you can also sell some of your gear. Out of the 7 NPCs, though, only 5 will be useful. Griswald is the town’s blacksmith. He can repair your gear, buy the shitty short swords you found at some random cave, and sell you either a regular item or a premium item. Since I was playing as a warrior, Griswald was my favorite bald Irish (or Scottish?) son of a sword in the whole game. Besides that, he will lend me a sword named Griswald’s Edge that I will use throughout the endgame pretty much exclusively. 

Besides Griswald, there’s also Cain The Elder. He is kind of the “ruler” of the town. You’ll get most of the main quest from him, and most of the world’s lore lies with him as well. Like Griswald, he can also lend you his service. He can “identify” an item. Identifying an item essentially “unlocks” its secret ability. Some items give you extra dexterity or do extra damage beyond their base damage. Identifying an item helps you know what this item is truly capable of. You can actually use a spell to identify an item instead of talking to Cain. But I’m a filthy and uneducated warrior. I know nothing about this magic bullcrap.

Pepin is the town’s healer. As soon as you talk to him, he will heal you to full health. You can also buy some healing potions from him, as well as some useful potions such as potions for strength, dexterity, and so on. Pepin is usually the first NPC I rush to whenever I exit the filthy dungeons. He will be especially useful in the late game when I’m losing health faster than you can say Metal Gear Solid: Revengeance.  

There’s also innocent Gillian, who will basically be your own useful human chest. You can stuff various items within her… inventory and even keep your money with her. There are a lot of inclinations I can make here, but I won’t. It’s an old game, so let’s just leave it at that. With that being said, though, she is a very useful NPC, especially for horders like myself. I had a few magical staffs saved with her, even though I do not plan to become a sorcerer, but who knows? Maybe I’ll change my mind at some point. And since money takes up space in your inventory, I usually just drop all the money I have after exiting the dungeons with her. When you buy anything from the town’s NPCs, the money that Gillian has will be taken into account, which is extremely useful. I don’t have to go back to Gillian, get just enough money to repair my items, and then go back to Griswald. It just works. Again, something so useful yet so effective. 

And then there’s Adria, the sexy (I think?) witch who lives far away from everyone in the town because she’s a badass lady. As the name implies, Adria will buy and sell scrolls as well as magical stuff in general. I barely went to Adria throughout my gameplay. Again, I was playing as a warrior, and I had no time for that magical nonsense. I would only go there to sell any scrolls that I had or buy the “Portal To Town” spell, which I will talk about. Besides that, she was so far away from the town’s center that I didn’t feel like going all the way to her. The movement in the game is extremely slow, and traveling all that way was just not worth it. 

Either way, besides these useful townsfolk, two other NPCs aren’t really all that useful. There’s Ogden, the owner of the tavern so valiantly named The Rising Sun. Very cool, Ogden. He doesn’t sell anything or give you any useful abilities. He will initiate a quest for you, though, and will reward you if you manage to complete it. And then there’s also Farnham The Drunk. Just a good ol’ drunkard maniac who has clearly seen some crazy ass shit. 

Apparently, he was one of the folks who ventured deep within the dungeons with the Archbishop Lazarus. He was kidnapped by some filthy demons and subjected to horrific torture. Again, there’s a very interesting story here, but it’s not explored beyond gossiping with the townsfolk. Talking with Farnham is useless as well. He will just sleep when you ask about certain quests, which is extremely hilarious. He will mumble some nonsense as well, which doesn’t go very far. However, there are very few times when Farnham does seem to be very engaged in certain topics. He likes to talk about Griswald, for example, since they both ventured into the dungeons together initially. And, at the very end of the game, Farnham will go into a frenzy when you mention Diablo to him. Ogden even tells you to refrain from speaking about Diablo with Farnham. And, honestly, I loved that so much. Not that he cried. That was sad, obviously. Rather, I loved the fact that there was some depth to Farnham’s character. He’s seen as the drunkard whom everybody feels sad for. And when you try to talk to him throughout the game, he just seems out of it. But then, there are a few moments when he seems emotional and caring about his fellow townsfolk. Sometimes he mumbles some truth about the town, showing that deep inside Farnham, the drunkard there’s a Farnham who cares. Perhaps Farnham the True died when he was tortured. There’s only a little piece left of him inside this wretched and drunk old man. A piece of him that eventually shows itself, before jumping back inside, afraid to be hurt again. 

Honestly, even though he doesn’t do much, Farnham is my favorite character in the whole game. He’s given depth beyond just “He’s an evil blood licker”. There’s an actual deep story to tell there, but, like any other interesting story beat in Diablo, it’s not explored further.

Apparently, there are also other NPCs in the game, but those are the only ones I came across while playing the game. Perhaps I did not explore the town enough? I’m not sure. Sorry about that. I truly believe that they added too many characters to the town. Like, for example, Ogden could have totally been replaced with Gillian. A barmaid who lost her husband (the previous owner of the tavern) when he was killed by the wretched demons, and now she’s forced to keep the tavern afloat to feed her family. And now, keeping my shit with Gillian makes sense since she’s the tavern maid. Any quests that are given by Ogden could have been given by Gillian. Either way, I’ll steal my own idea and not do it at all because I’m lazy. 

Nonetheless, once you’ve gathered yourself up, you are tasked to start descending the cathedral, which is where the Archbishop Lazarus started his journey. And that, my friends, starts the actual game. I suppose this is the best place to talk about the core gameplay loop.

Diablo: The Dungeon Crawler

At its core, Diablo is such a simple game concept. Go into some procedurally generated dungeons, kill some baddies, get some items, complete some quests, go back to the town, and repeat. It’s a super simple concept that you can actually find in many games today. Dark Souls is the biggest offender of this. It essentially “copies” a lot of elements from Diablo’s core gameplay loop. Go into some weird castles or kill a sexy spider lady, and then go back to Firelink Shrine to level up and rest for a bit. Even most RPG games nowadays have this element. Go into the town, stock up on items, activate some quests, go into the dangerous world, and then come back to the town. Of course, with these games, this fairly simple gameplay loop is buried under a lot of shiny graphics and extremely complex game mechanics. It’s still there, but it’s fairly hidden or buried. With Diablo, though, this simple dungeon crawler gameplay is at its purest form. And by the gods am I obsessed.   

Throughout my gameplay, I was going down the dungeons, killing all the demons and monsters that I could, before using a scroll named “Portal To Town” to, well, to go back to the town, what did you think it did?? All of my gameplay was like that. And, for some reason, it felt amazing. I felt like a miner spending days in some shaft, trying my best to extract coal, before finally going back to the surface to refurbish my soul. Besides that, it was a satisfying feeling to see myself clearly getting better and stronger, leveling up my stats to the max. Stronger gear, better swords, and a bigger health pool. The curve of leveling in Diablo made sense. The deeper you go into the dungeons, the stronger the enemies become. Yet, the deeper into the dungeons, the more quests and enemies you complete, which will grant you more gold and experience points. Hence, you are also becoming stronger with each level you descend. The curve is linear enough to make it fair, but it also doesn’t hold back when it comes to the difficulty. And don’t worry, I’ll talk about the difficulty spike that Diablo suddenly gets at the very end of the game. 

Diablo’s core gameplay loop is so perfect and so well defined that every other “con” that it has dwarves this amazing loop. Diablo has a very crude leveling system, yes, but it is massively supported by the tight and engaging gameplay loop. The leveling system does not need to be complex. The quests, too, do not need to be complex. The economy does not need to be perfect. In fact, I would argue that when these side mechanics are too complex, they break the flow of the game and, therefore, break the core gameplay loop. Everything needs to support the core gameplay loop. It’s the main river that flows through the game. Any other mechanic needs only to break away from this river to form its own smaller river. 

Beyond that, the visual elements of Diablo are outstanding. Even though it’s a game made in 1997, the dungeon layouts stand out as very distinct from one layer to another. The feel of descending into hell is very obvious. You truly feel like a hero trying to descend to hell to kill a demon lord. Even the enemy selection makes sense. The earlier levels have you fight skeletons and bats, while the later levels make you fight witches from hell and knights clad in thick black armor. The earlier dungeons are made of stone with a few coffins here and there, which usually include some skeletons, while, again, the later dungeons have you fight in pits of lava with devilish diagrams drawn all across the room. The contrast is very obvious here. Even the soundtrack is dark and twisted while you’re in the dungeons, but calm and relaxing while you’re in Tristram. Diablo really knows how to make you feel like a hero descending into hell, I’ll give them that. Seriously, though, listen to the Tristram theme, it is gorgeous.

I think this is what drew me to Diablo in the first place and made me keep playing. The story was intriguing at first, but I lost interest halfway through. The combat was, well, we’ll talk about that later. Despite that, the sense of progression was so strong that I had to just keep playing. I felt so powerful as I descended deeper into the depths of hell. The armor and swords I have found throughout my traversal through these filthy dungeons only made me stronger. Every level tick made me feel like a hero, slowly turning into a god. The power fantasy that so many RPG games try to enable is so strong in Diablo that it dwarves everything else bad about this game. This is one aspect of more “modern” RPG games that fail to achieve. Bethesda, especially, is the worst at this. Obvilivion’s difficulty curve was almost one-to-one with the player, which did not feel satisfying at all. Every level up felt useless because you knew the enemies would also get stronger. Skyrim, on the other hand, was way too simple. It almost took the difficulty curve and threw it away. I don’t ever remember escaping by the skin of my teeth in Skyrim. While in Diablo, it made me really try. Honestly, Dark Souls (yes, I’m going to talk about Dark Souls a lot) is the only other game that made me feel this way. With Dark Souls, however, it wasn’t only the equipment and the leveling that made me feel strong, it was the skill I would develop at mastering the movement and the combat system. But even with a crude combat system, Diablo made progression feel worthwhile. Every level gained means that you will be more of a badass than you already are, and I felt it.

Well, let’s now talk about the automap, oh my, the automap. How can an innovation be so… innovative?? In most RPG games, the mini-map is usually just a small box in the bottom left of the screen. It’s usually just a 2D map with a few legends, and that’s it. In Diablo, though? No, let’s make the mini-map a whole overlay on top of the screen, showing where you are and the surrounding area. It was kind of awkward at first since I wasn’t used to it. But later on, I could not live without it. Most of the time, I was playing the game with the automap on at all times. I would press the TAB key every millisecond. The overlay is just a bunch of lines as well, so it doesn’t obstruct your view in any major way. It’s so simple yet so effective. 

I have not played Diablo 2 yet, but I can see that they changed the automap to be more “stylistic”. It seems like it would be blocking your view, which would feel pretty annoying, I would imagine. The reason the automap in Diablo 1 worked for me was that it was so lightweight. Just a bunch of crude lines outlining the level. No visual flair there. You were just a little arrow in the automap. That’s it. No other legends. But I haven’t played Diablo 2 yet, so I’ll refrain from talking about it.

As for the levels, they are another stable of simple yet effective. 

The levels in Diablo are procedurally generated, and it shows. But procedural generation doesn’t just stop at the dungeons. The items you find in chests are randomly generated as well. Some items have a higher likelihood of dropping at certain dungeons, but there are no guarantees. I did come across a lot of chests that just simply had nothing, while others had a few handfuls of gold or some useful gear I could sell to Griswald. Besides that, some sections in the dungeons just were… there? A door that would open to a dead end, or a path that leads to nowhere. They weren’t frequent enough that they broke the immersion of the game, but they did come often enough for me to notice them.

In total, there are 16 dungeons in Diablo. Those 16 dungeons are broken up into levels, with each level having a certain theme. Starting from level 1 is the cathedral, followed by the catacombs, then the caves, and then finally hell. With each level, the difficulty increases, and you get introduced to new enemies, of course. Again, you can feel the transition between every level. The descending makes sense. It’s not sudden or jarring. The Cathedral leads into the catacombs, which lead into the caves, which lead into hell. Everyone knows that there is a pit of hell under every cathedral. It’s public knowledge. The enemies, too, make sense to the specific part of the level. Skeletons and bats in the cathedral level, but ogres and imps in the caves. Again, not jarring. 

The layout of the dungeons also makes a lot of sense. You start at the entrance, traversing your way through the dungeon until you find the next entry point deeper into hell. The entry point is not always at the very end of the dungeon. Sometimes it’s actually a few paces away from the entrance of the current dungeon. You can, theoretically, finish a dungeon in a few minutes. But that would mean you won’t be prepared for whatever is waiting for you in the deeper levels. My advice is to kill every enemy you can find in the current dungeon and explore as much as you can. The shit that you will find and the gold you will collect will be extremely beneficial once you return to Tristram.

Speaking of Tristram, remember that “Portal To Town” scroll I was talking about? Yeah, you’ll be using that a lot. Even though there are some very helpful items down in the bottomless pit of hell, you usually won’t have enough supplies to continue trudging your way through Diablo’s hot hole. You’ll have to go back to Tristram to stock up on potions, freeing up your inventory, repairing your equipment, and perhaps completing some quests. I can honestly spend hours talking about how good it feels to leave the dungeons and hear that soothing Tristram soundtrack as I run to Pipin the healer to buy a load of potions from him. In the dungeons, you are focused and determined. You don’t want to die and lose all your shit (unless you save-scummed your way through the game like me), so you’re at the edge of your seat 100% of the time. In Tristram, though, you’re calm and relaxed. There’s nothing here but the nice people of Tristram and a whole lot of gold you can spend. A safe haven. Usually, when you’re low on potions, health, or you know a tough boss is coming up, you cast the spell to bring you back to Tristram. When you’re done and all freshened up, you can go back into the very depths of hell. The breakup between stress and relaxation here is astounding. Those damn Diablo designers truly knew how to make a nice hub town that you can relax in. 

And I know I might be repeating myself here, but this gameplay loop is astoundingly beautiful. So simple yet so effective. The art is crude, the combat is not the best, and the story is meh. But, man, that tight loop is truly a work of art. They managed to perfect that feeling of a miner going deeper into the mining shaft. That fresh feeling you get when you stock up on potions and repair your items. And that relaxation and complete calmness you feel when you hear the very first note of the Tristram theme. It is a stark contrast that is very appreciated. 

Now, every few dungeons or so, you’ll encounter a “boss fight”. The bosses in this game are not “bosses” as much as glorified, bigger enemies with more health. That’s it, really. The very first boss you’ll encounter is the Butcher. As the name implies, the dude likes to cut things. And by “things” I mean humans. Very normal behavior, obviously. Either way, you cannot beat him in any way when you first encounter him. He’s just way too strong for you. You can, of course, cheese the fella. But I’m a warrior with pride, and I’m not planning to sully that pride with some useless cheese. And so, I went down a few dungeons, leveled up, and then easily cut him up. It wasn’t even a challenge. But that’s not a problem with just the Butcher. That’s with every boss fight. You’ll just sit there slashing at them until they die. And to make things more interesting, the devs just add more minions to fight while you’re fighting the boss. Cool. Even Diablo, the final boss, the great finale, felt underwhelming. He did not even hit me at all. The fight was only hard because he had, like, two million minions with him. Obviously, not two million. I just like to inflate numbers to support my completely baseless claim. Either way, you can easily lure Diablo further away from his puppets and have a one-on-one fight with him. And I did. It was fairly mediocre. I did not even try to lure him away. I just did.

But again, that’s not really Diablo’s fault (the dude, not the game). The gameplay does not lend itself to a “fair” fight. Unless you have some kind of gimmick fight or with a bunch of minions running around, the boss will not feel challenging or fun to fight. It’s only memorable because it’s a “boss fight”, but the fight itself is forgettable. I wish they had at least one gimmick fight where you had to destroy the boss’s four O2 oxygen tanks laid around the room to kill him. And the lore there could be that Diablo had a cardiovascular condition from inhaling all the smoke in hell… or something I don’t know. I just don’t think a game like Diablo 1 will have any “fun” bosses, because the gameplay itself is kind of one-note. It’s just point at the enemy and click until you kill them. That’s it. 

There are 4 bosses in total in Diablo 1, with a few mini-bosses mixed in here and there. I actually preferred the mini-bosses more than the major bosses because they made sense. Small to medium-sized enemies with a bunch of friends trying to attack you as well. Usually, the mini-bosses are reskins of enemies you already killed, but they glow red sometimes. But, as for the big bosses, there’s the Butcher, the Skeleton King, Archbishop Lazarus, and, finally, Mr. Hell himself, Diablo. I don’t even think Archbishop Lazarus is counted as a boss fight, as he is just a reskin of an enemy you already fought before. He’s more of a mini-boss. I’m keeping him here, though, because he’s crucial to the story.

Again, I think this is one more area where Diablo tried to do something more complex. The bosses should directly support and complement the core gameplay loop. In here, they just felt out of place. It did not make sense that this was a boss fight. It always felt bland and mediocre. 

Okay, hang on, I’ve dogpiled on Diablo a lot. Let’s go back to a little bit of praise before dogpiling on it again (sounds familiar, Warrior?).

Well, the level structure is so simple yet so effective. The progression felt meaningful, and it truly respected the amount of time you poured into it. Couple that with such a simple gameplay loop, and you get such a lovely adventure that is sure to grip you. As someone who tries their hardest to make a game fun, it fills me with glee to see such a simple loop dissected and perfected so nicely. Even though Diablo tries to be an action RPG game, it is, in my opinion, a way better dungeon crawler than it is an RPG game. In fact, it is one of the best dungeon crawlers I’ve ever played. I just finished the game a few days ago, but I really want to play it again just for that sense of progression. Do you know what other game made me want to replay it immediately after finishing it? That’s right. Motherfucking Dark Souls.

But, with that being said, that’s where the majority of my praise will end for Diablo. There’s one thing in Diablo that should have been more mature. Something that you do over and over in the game. It is not really a core game mechanic, but it is core to the gameplay loop. So, let’s talk about the mechanic I hate the most in Diablo: Swords and stuff.

Diablo: The Sword Fighter

While Diablo is technically an action RPG game, the main gameplay action you’ll be taking as a player is clicking. A lot of clicking. In essence, Diablo is really a point-and-click dungeon crawler. The movement and the combat are exclusively handled through clicking. You want to walk to a tile? Click there to walk there. You want to kill an enemy? Highlight him (or her?) with your mouse pointer and keep clicking. Now, in a game like the original Fallout, clicking to go to a location and to shoot your enemies actually made sense because that was a turn-based game. When you’re in combat, everything is handled through action points. Every move and every shot matters. In Diablo, though? Not so much. The game is in real-time. Every action does not “diminish” any in-game thing. Except, perhaps, it edges you closer towards carpal tunnel syndrome. This is perhaps a leftover element for when David Brevik wanted to make Diablo a turn-based game. And if it is, it really does show. Diablo is supposed to be fast-paced. Always on the edge of your seat, trying to kill the next enemy, equip a potion, or run to a safe place. Instead, you get elements from slow-paced, turn-based, tabletop RPG games. It simply does not fit.

Here’s the thing, though, the clicking wasn’t as annoying in combat as it was moving through the dungeons and/or the town. There are many times when I would completely clean out a dungeon, and I try to explore the areas I’ve missed or perhaps go pick up something that I forgot about. But it would take so long, and it was so annoying having to click all over the place that I would just give up. Remember that witch in Tristram Adria that was way too far from the town’s center? The reason I didn’t go there a lot is that it took a while to reach her. It was better to just drop whatever scroll I found or just leave it with good ol’ Gillian. The dungeons, too, have this annoying travelling time waste, although less so. As I said before, I like to clear out the dungeons of every enemy because I like killing… and it would level me up, of course. At the later stages of the game, though, I just gave up and accepted the fact that there might be a few enemies who have still not met the end of my sword. The DevilutionX port does add controller support, thankfully. It was much needed. Still, though, I found it much better not to use a controller because there were a lot of useful hotkeys that I will talk about later.

The less annoying element of the clicking is the combat. Understand, I’m not saying I like clicking to kill a demon dude. I’m saying that it’s less painful. Not completely painless. Unfortunately, with combat, there’s not much to talk about here. You just click to kill the enemy. The act of killing the enemy is not the interesting part, though. It’s everything around it. But first, let’s talk about the inventory.

I know that the age of hotkeys is basically over because there isn’t any game that is really exclusive to PCs anymore. But, I gotta tell ya, I miss them. Going from the inventory to the character leveling screen to the automap and back to the inventory is so seamless that it’s almost unbelievable. In modern RPG games, the game stutters so much when I open the inventory that I forget what I wanted to do in the first place. And I forget things in a millisecond. You have to keep my attention. Beyond that, the hotkeys themselves just make sense. Want to open the inventory? Press ‘I’. Want to open the character leveling screen? Easy. Just press ‘C’. Spells? Can you guess? That’s right. It’s just ‘S’. As an exercise, try to guess what the hotkey for quests is. The automap is the only outlier. It’s ‘TAB’, but it’s still so easy to reach as you’re playing that it just instantly becomes muscle memory. I got used to the hotkeys right away as soon as I knew them. The inventory screen itself is very simple as well. 

You have about 40 slots available to you. Every equipment takes a different number of slots depending on its size. You also have a slot for your sword, shield, a ring, an amulet, and then another ring just because (you have two hands, right?). Nothing too complex here. You’ll instantly know what you’re doing when you look at it. No scroll wheels. Not categories. Just good ol’ inventory. There’s also the spells screen. I would tell you about it, but I’ve never used spells beyond the health scroll and the “Portal To Town” scroll. With scrolls, you can just right-click them on your inventory screen and then left-click to use them somewhere in the world. But, besides the inventory, there’s also the… uh… hotbar? There are basically 8 extra slots where you can easily use them on the spot. This is usually used for things like potions and scrolls. I usually just fill them with health potions. You can use each slot by using the keys from 1 to 8. Again, very simple. I love it. 

Now, let’s talk about combat. 

So, in order to kill an enemy in Diablo, you have to click the fella to swing your sword until you kill them. I think we established that, right? However, there’s one missing factor. Like, turn-based games, you can actually miss your hit completely if you swing at them. But here’s the thing, this should be a turn-based mechanic. It’s so annoying when literally near a guy’s nose, barely able to breathe from the awful stench demons have (did you know about this? Have you heard about this?). And yet, I miss. Again, with turn-based games, it’s fine because it’s just another element to the gameplay. This comes back to DnD (I think?), where hitting an enemy depended on the dice that you’d roll. The lower your roll, the less damage you do to the enemy. If your roll was really shit (poor guy), you’d miss the guy completely. But, again, Diablo is not a turn-based game. It does not work here at all. There is a way to increase your chance of hitting a guy, of course. You just need to improve your dexterity skill to increase the “To Hit” modifier, which starts at 81%. 

However, I had a warrior that reached dexterity 60, which is the maximum you can go. You can, of course, add buffs using armor, rings, and what have you to go beyond that cap, making me go to 79. The “To Hit” modifier was 140%! And yet? I still miss! Now I don’t know if this is true or not, but I seem to miss with certain enemies more than others. I suppose enemies themselves have a modifier that is taken into account when you hit them. 

And this is why I’m saying you can’t have much of a “strategy” in Diablo. You just have to increase your dexterity and hope to the gods you hit. The only “strategy” I found was to not rush into rooms like a dumb dumb. Certain rooms in Diablo have, like, two hundred enemies in them. Again, inflated numbers. In any case, rushing into a room full of enemies will surely kill you. Enemies can stun you as a whole. I got easily swarmed by a hundred tall black knights with big and thick armor in the late game. I got staggered and essentially manhandled very quickly. My “strategy” was just to slightly poke my head into the room, bringing some enemies to rush me, while keeping others oblivious to what was happening. Rense and repeat until I kill them all. Was it fun? Well, no. But it wasn’t boring either. It was just engaging. I just wish there were more of a way to employ a strategy or some kind of hidden lever that burns all the enemies in the room, or something like that. Perhaps Cain the Elder is the only one who knows about that lever, but you have to be attentive and listen carefully to him. It would have been more engaging. But, again, 1997. So we’ll let it slide. 

Either way, let’s talk about the warrior. 

As I said before, in any RPG, I pretty much exclusively play as the warrior. I like swords and stuff. I don’t waste my time with that magic stuff. I’m way too cool and dumb for that. However, I truly believe that David Brevik hated warriors with all his heart. At the beginning of the game, everything was fine, and I was clearing out a room with ease. In the late game, though, there were enemies that shot fireballs at you (or some weak-boy magic stuff. I don’t know), and when you got closer to them, they would either teleport or just run away! Sometimes they would put thousands of these A-holes in a room with black knights. Now, listen, I’m more than fine to fight more than one enemy type at the same time. It feels like a puzzle that you have to solve, delicately trying to weigh your playstyle to accommodate the weaknesses and the strengths of each enemy. That’s especially super fun in games like Devil May Cry or God Of War, where you have to find the perfect button-mashing combo to apply to your situation, constantly dodging and weaving your way through enemies like a hot knife cutting butter. In those games, though, there’s movement, there’s strategy, there are different weapons you can switch to easily, and there are various ways to attack an enemy. But the only ability you have in Diablo, as far as the combat goes, is to just click and hope for the best. 

And since Diablo lacked the depth in the combat system to achieve such a feeling, it felt very unfair to put piles and piles of enemies in a room and just let the player have at it. Diablo is not a difficult game by any means. At the very last few dungeons, though, Diablo becomes frustrating. Annoying, even. And there’s a stark difference between frustrating and difficult. You can master the difficulty of a game by learning the mechanics and perfecting the combat. Wait, what’s the game I’m thinking of? Dark something? I can’t remember. Nonetheless, there’s nothing to master in Diablo, besides perhaps knowing the range at which certain enemies spot you. 

I’m convinced that the later dungeons in Diablo are purely for sorcerers and not warriors. The number of enemies that shoot weird glowy balls at you is immense. I had so many of them throwing magical 8-balls at me, while being attacked by hundreds of cool golden vipers. It felt unfair. Perhaps I should have been a sorcerer… or perhaps I should have had friends?

Diablo: The Friendless Quest Maker

I’m going to talk about two final mechanics/features that have no relation with each other, but I’m going to lump them here together just because. First, let’s talk about the multiplayer, because I have the least to say about it. 

As I said before, David Brevik had widely different ideas for the initial Diablo game. Turn-based RPG game with perma-death. However, Blizzard does not like people with innovations. And so, they told him to make it real-time and put multiplayer in there to use their new and cool Battle.net. So, we have multiplayer, I guess. I can see how having a few friends playing with me in the final levels could have helped. Perhaps if I had one friend who was a sorcerer and another who was a rogue or something. Sadly, though, I don’t have friends who play a game from 1997 just because. So that’s that. I’m not a multiplayer guy either. I hate the idea of having a friend complete a dungeon without seeing it first. But that’s all I have to say about multiplayer.

Now, let’s talk about quests. 

Even though the quests in Diablo are very simple in essence, they are one of my favorite elements of Diablo. You see, in Diablo, quests are divided into 6 groups. Within each group, there are either 2 or 3 quests. Within a playthrough, there are only 1 or 2 quests that will appear in a group. For example, in the first quest group, which will appear early in the game, there are 2 quests. The game will pick randomly between them and give only one to you. In quest group 3, there are 3 quests. The game will randomly pick only 2 of them. The reason I love this so much is that it’s such a simple way of adding replayability. On one playthrough, you can be completing a quest that you never did in the last playthrough. Quests themselves are so neat, and they add a very fun reason to go through a set of dungeons. There isn’t a “main” quest, really. At least it’s not marked on your quest list. It’s just obvious that you have to traverse the dungeons and find the Prince. The side quests, though, are very memorable since there aren’t a lot of them. To complete a quest, you usually have to either kill a boss/mini-boss or go to a certain dungeon and retrieve a mugffin. 100% of the time, completing a quest will give a cool equipment that will absolutely benefit you in your perilous journey. For example, in one quest, you are tasked with killing The Skeleton King who is actually King Leoric, the dude who got his son kidnapped and got backstabbed by his right-hand man, Archbishop Lazarus. Not only is it a very cool and very tragic story, but upon killing old King Leoric, you get The Undead Crown, which will suck a certain value from an enemy that you are attacking and grant you health. It’s so powerful that I never used any other helmet in the game. It’s amazing!

Again, I feel like when Diablo tries too hard, it falls face-first into the demon-shaped stone. But when it makes things simple, it knocks it out of the park. I always got overwhelmed by the thousands of quests RPG games had. And I absolutely hated leaving them unfinished. With Diablo, though, everything is so simple and small. The stories of the quests themselves are way more interesting than the actual main story. Dividing the quests into groups also makes sure that the player doesn’t get a quest that is way too hard for them at the moment. I always hated games like Skyrim and Fallout where they give you a side quest that is supposed to be completed much later because it’s in a town you can’t get to right now. Beyond that, you don’t get more than two new quests at a time. Unless, of course, you don’t complete the quests at all, your quest list won’t be filled with random quests you don’t remember getting. Quests are memorable, simple, and kept to a handful, and they even have a cool narrative to drive them. Oh, I love them.

Again, the quests are so simple that they don’t obstruct the core gameplay loop. They just support it neatly while trying not to break the flow. It is a perfect and sensible addition to Diablo’s gameplay. 

Diablo: The Concluder

I love Diablo 1. Even immediately after finishing it, I got the urge to replay it again. Dark Souls was truly the only game that made me feel that way. And for a game made in 1997 with outdated technology and mechanics to elicit that same feeling in me, says a lot about… stuff. I don’t know. I never said I was a master of words. 

It is outdated. It is annoying in a lot of places. I do wish the combat were more mature and the story were more fleshed out. Despite that, though, Diablo has quickly become one of my top 10 favorite games of all time. Objectively, Diablo 1 is not a “good” game. But, to me, it’s one the best games. Just because it really tried hard to make the gameplay loop fun and tight. The feeling of progression in Diablo 1 is unlike any other game that I’ve played. The feeling of glee you get when you finally reach the town after a frivolous few nights in the dungeons. The amazing and simple yet effective quests. The perfectly toned contrast between the levels of the dungeons. Diablo, you have managed to win my heart very quickly… and I was actually talking about the hot demon, not the game. 

Thanks for reading, and have a good day/night.