Summary
...A veritable Clickfest
The Good
The combination of a gritty, dark visual presentation along with a terrific understated soundtrack and immense re playability makes for an addictive hack and slash.
The gory backgrounds (downright nasty sometimes: check out the impaled guys in the later stages!) and dark ambiance (almost too dark: you'll need to crank the gamma a bit here) really suck you in, the simple but engaging game play does the rest as the hours will literally fly as you go deeper underground and butcher tons of baddies in order to kick Diablo's ass.
The Bad
The game play is really repetitive: Kill, Kill, Kill, down some potions, grab some loot, Kill some more, go back to Tristram and sell the stuff you've looted, buy some new gear, go back to the dungeon(s) to kick some more baddies in the ass, rinse and repeat dozens of times until you get to Diablo and kick his ass too!
How's that for repetitive?
The palette is a little bit on the garish side (think Quake I: lots of browns and blues, here it's gray/red/blue and the other colors are used sparingly).
The NPCs are really only source of quests and stuff to buy so the whole RPG thing is nonexistent and some of these placeholders will piss you off more times than not with weird dialogue and endless requests for items.
Some of the enemies are really annoying especially if you're a warrior and can't deal ranged damage as your character can't run so in the later stages you'll chase them through corridors trying to kill them, attracting even more baddies and getting kicked in the butt.
The Bottom Line
Addictive Hack and slash that has aged surprisingly well, more than 10 years old but still fun and with lots of gore, plenty of stuff to kill here and it gives you a tangible feeling of becoming more badass as you progress in the game.
