Diablo

aka: Diablo (Game of the Year)
Moby ID: 339
Windows Specs
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Long ago a secret war raged between Heaven and Hell, each using humanity as its pawns. While the Prime Evils of Hell were engaged in war their lesser lieutenants conspired to overthrow them. They mutinied suddenly with the combined forces of Hell, overwhelming the three Primes. Stripped of their power, they were banished to the mortal realm. Human agents of Heaven, upon discovering this, found the three Primes and sealed them within gemstone prisons, each of them sent to a different corner of the earth and kept under guard to prevent them from escaping.

As years turns to centuries, however, the power of Heaven's agents waned, until eventually not even the people of the town of Tristram knew that buried deep under their chapel was the soul of the Lord of Terror, Diablo. As the strength of his prison waned Diablo reached out into the world, corrupting the dreams of the land's good king, driving him to attack his neighbors. The nation of Khanduras fought wars with no intention of winning, desiring only slaughter and suffering. Now the lands lay scorched, home only to monsters and the dead. Rumors spread of a way to stop the demons, as well as rumors of great wealth, and both draw adventurers from far to the small town of Tristram.

Players start by choosing their avatar's class: either Warrior, Rogue, or Sorcerer. Warriors have the highest maximum strength and can repair weapons and armor inside the dungeon, but this will lower the item's maximum durability. The Rogue has the highest maximum dexterity and can both see and disarm traps on treasure chests. The Sorcerer has the highest maximum magic attribute and can recharge the charges on a spellcasting staff at the cost of his own mana.

Characters can equip armor, weapons, and accessories found in the chapel's shifting dungeons, but strong equipment will have minimum attribute requirements to be worn. Most equipment will have randomized stats, but some strong monsters will drop Unique weapons with set stats. Magic can be learned by finding magic tomes, and leveled up by finding multiples of the same spell tome, but advanced spell levels can not be learned if the character's magic stat is too low. Upon destroying enough monsters to level up the player is rewarded with additional attribute points to distribute to whichever attributes they wish. Occasionally the few people left in town will inform the player of a job they would like done, either an exceptionally strong monster that must be slain or a unique item found deep in the dungeon, and will reward the player in kind upon completion of the quest.

Diablo can be played cooperatively with 1 to 3 other players over LAN or BattleNet with the PC versions, or with 1 player locally on the PlayStation. Players can team up to survive the depths of the dungeons, or turn on each other to steal one another's items from their corpse. The quest unique zones are removed from the online version of a dungeon, and instead quest monsters will be found wandering the level that would normally lead to their unique area.

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Credits (Windows version)

243 People (117 developers, 126 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 88% (based on 67 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 381 ratings with 21 reviews)

Simple, repetitive, yet addictive

The Good
Simple to learn (click to walk, click to attack), wide variety of artifacts and weapons and such, extremely simple internet connectivity through battle.net

The Bad
Rampant cheating online, bit too repetitive as the monsters are just slightly different, level advance too slow (making repetitiveness even worse)

The Bottom Line
Diablo can be best described as a real-time version of Rogue/Telegard/DnD derivatives with isometric viewpoint and updated graphics, with a system of unique weapons and artifacts. You are the lone hero (though in multiplayer you can have up to three fellow adventurers) prowling the dungeon of the town of Tristam, hoping the slay the evil that is Diablo... Start with simple weapons and light armor, you can find gold and such in the dungeon. Defeated monsters will drop weapons and gold. Gather them to further outfit your hero. Learn spells to augment your power. Play as Rogue, Fighter, or Sorcerer (each with very different styles of play).

While the premise is simple enough, the dungeon is randomly generated and is different each and every time you play. The monsters have several different types, each with different attack styles and different immunities. You can collect various types of armor that can enhance your protection and resistance, as well as enhance your attributes. There are unique items you may be able to find that have special powers and thus be very valuable. You can wield a wide variety of weapons, from two-handed swords to one-hand sword to axe to shields to even bows and staffs. As you gain levels by winning experience points, you can allocate points gained into your attributes.

Online play couldn't be simpler. Just connect to battle.net (built-in chat and lobby) and you can join games easy enough. Unfortunately, being client-based, Diablo is soon plagued with cheaters, who yields impossible weapons and utterly unrealistic exp. levels. For a while you can even buy Diablo cheat programs in game stores!

All in all, Diablo is a re-invention of a genre. By combining the action elements with the traditional computer RPG's attribute system and simply online game, Diablo was able to pave the path of online multiplayer gaming. It's recommended, even if just for nostalgia's sake.

Windows · by Kasey Chang (4598) · 2001

A decent hack'n'slash that stole every bit of gameplay idea from roguelikes.

The Good
Diablo is, in and of itself, an okay game.

The graphics are pretty nice. The town feels morbid and hopeless, which annoys me, but then again, so does the rest of the game; still, the town graphics work well, for what they are. The dungeon graphics are very nice and the random dungeons fit together well.

Enemies come in many different varieties, but you really won't notice until half way through; until then, the whole game is a cakewalk. Go down to a level, smash monsters to bits, sell loot. Perhaps it's just because I've played games like this for a long time, but I didn't even drink a health potion until halfway through. As I was saying, enemies, once you need to notice, have different resistances as you get lower. Fire for cold bad guys, cold for burning bad guys.

Items have very nice graphics and the inventory system is excellent. I think the whole item system is just about the highest point in the game. There are item 'prefixes' and 'suffixes'; imagine getting a "Burning Plate Mail of Fire Resistance." The possibilities are many. This might not seem too neat, but Diablo was the first commercial game to use the prefix/suffix system.

That's basically it. You can waste days of your life on this game (playing games is a waste of time in general, albiet a fun one, I know; my point is, looking back, you won't understand why you wasted this time). Once you're done, you can play as a different class, or online.

The Bad
Okay, minor gripes first.

For one thing, the whole game atmosphere is dark, oppresive, and hopeless. This annoys the hellfire out of me. Not only that, but in the sequel you find out that all you did by winning the game was doom the world even more. Just great-- I really want to finish now.

The game is also pretty unbalanced. Sorcerers can happily blast away with spells and Fighters can use all sorts of weapons and armor, but poor, hapless Rogues are stuck halfway inbetween, wondering what in the world they shoul do. The only good reason to play them is because they are the only class that looks good no matter what they're wearing...

Now the major problem.

Diablo stole all these ideas from roguelikes. The idea of a town above a big dungeon filled with monsters. The idea of random dungeon generation. Even the word of recall scrolls and the prefix/suffix system was grabbed! Nothing in this game is original, and yet absolutely no credit whatsoever is given to the brilliant masterminds who developed the roguelikes. I'm saying 'roguelikes' here, but it's mainly Angband that these ideas are taken from. Go ahead and play the game. It's the exact same darn thing.

Another major gripe is that the game is really darn short. You can finish it in a day of full playing if you don't spend time clearing everything out of levels anyways. Playing online ads to the fun, but not much-- teamplay just dosen't work in Diablo, because there is no teamplay element. Get some heroes, get some evil corrupting malicious essenses of utter destruction and primal gore, and toss them in a big, dark dungeon. That's it.

The Bottom Line
You may have noticed that this review is very down on the game, although I said it was an okay game in itself. That's because it is an okay game, but only because it stole ideas. It's a 2.5/5.

I actually do recommend buying the game at the price it is at right now. If you add on the Hellfire expansion, you've got 3 new classes and about a day more of play time. The game does have its high points. But all the acclaim it got for being a breakthrough, brilliant game should have gone to Angband-- a free game that started decades ago, and hardly anyone knows about it.

Windows · by ShadowShrike (277) · 2004

1 part RPG + 2 parts real-time action + 1 random generator = Ongoing fun

The Good
Diablo kind of remonds me of an old ASCII based game called Rogue. You were a little hero that went tramping into a randomly generated dungeon that went on for 30 - 40 levels. You killed monsters and gathered treasure. That was a lot of fun then, and Diablo is a lot of fun now.

At first, Diablo seemed a little unassuming. Just another hero going to save the day. Then I kept needing to get to the next level. Then I needed to complete the next quest. I need money for that new weapon! Just one more level to the catacombs! -the caves! -hell! I was addicted. Plain and simple. And if you died, and chose a new game... all new dungeon layouts. Every time you play, its a new experience.

Those graphices were something else. I started getting a little cluastrophobic down there sometimes. I had to go back to town just to see some light. They definitely added to the whole experience without seeming too dark.

The Bad
The sounds for the game were fairly good, but they could have been a little better.

The Bottom Line
This game can be played forever! Well, maybe not, but with a different experience every time you play, plus three different characters to play as, the replay value is pretty high.

Windows · by Narf! (132) · 2000

[ View all 21 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Diablo appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Bosses

The game treats the Dark Lord (Diablo), the final boss, as a regular enemy rather than a boss monster. He has no catchphrase (e.g. the Butcher's 'Fresh Meat'), his name appears in white instead of gold, and if the player kills him enough times (by starting a new game with the same character) the game will even show the player his stats.

Cheats

At one time, cheat programs for Diablo were sold in stores that allowed the player to obtain special objects, increase levels, and such.

Development

  • Blizzard North was originally going to make Diablo a turn-based game;
  • Outlined in the game's original pitch document were plans for releasing cheap expansion pack discs, containing, as an example, a handful of weapons, items, and/or room types, which would be sold like Magic: The Gathering card packs to appeal to collectors. While expansions were eventually made for Diablo, none were developed by any Blizzard studio.
  • There were persistent rumors about a special quest that had to do with the cows (the player had to click on it X time in a special way at certain time of the day after doing so and so and things like that). It's false of course, but it didn't stop the newbies from asking. Blizzard was so amused, that Cow Quest was officially added to Diablo II.

Gags

In most (if not all) Blizzard games, the player can get a quick laugh from repeatedly clicking on certain objects. In Diablo, try the cow outside the city.

Messages

The Diablo art team were fans of Natalie Portman. Embedded in the menu image are messages that are only visible if you capture the image and reduce the image to 16 colors.

Novels

Numerous published novels have been inspired by the Diablo campaign setting, among them: * Moon of the Spider (2005) by Richard A. Knaak. * Kingdom of Shadow, The (2002), by Richard A. Knaak. * Black Road, The (2001), by Mel Odom. * Legacy of Blood (2001), by Richard A. Knaak. * Demonsbane (2000), a Robert B. Marks' e-book.

Online Multiplayer

As of 2016 Diablo's online peer-to-peer matching remains officially supported by Battle.net.

References

Cain's real name is Deckard Cain the Elder. It may be a reference to Rick Deckard played by Harrison Ford in the movie Blade Runner.

Shareware Version

There was also a shareware version available on CD which featured a fair amount of gameplay including all three classes and even multiplayer. The player could buy it for a small amount of money in many stores around the time of the release of the full game.

System Compatibility

This is one of the few games that will run natively on Windows NT. Diablo requires DirectX 3, but the installation CD comes with DirectX 5.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • May 1997 (Issue #154) – Game of the Year.
    • October 2001 - #7 in the "Top 50 Games of All Time" list.
    • May 1997 (Issue #154) – Role-Playing Game of the Year (Readers' Choice).
    • December 1999 (Issue #185) - Introduced into the Hall of Fame.
    • March 2001 (Issue #200) - #8 Best Game of All Time (Readers' Vote).
    • April 2005 - #6 in the "50 Best Games of All Time" list.
    • Hall of Fame member.
  • GameSpy

    • 2001 – #6 Top Game of All Time.
    • GameStar (Germany)

    • Issue 12/1999 - #11 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking.

    • PC Gamer

    • April 2000 - #3 in the "All-Time Top 50 Games" poll.

    • PC Player (Germany)

    • Issue 01/1998 - Best RPG in 1997.

    • Power Play

    • Issue 02/1998 – Best Game in 1997.

French SELL Rating

Diablo first SELL rating was 12, which was later changed to 16

French Version

The Windows version of Diablo was never localized in French. Though the box included a coupon which was meant to be mailed in order to receive the localized version as soon as it would have been completed, it was actually never released. The 2nd edition of the game (which claimed to be the "definitive" one) only included a booklet with the translated dialogues written inside. Oddly enough, a fully localized French version of the game (even including a full professional cast for the voice acting) does exist but was released only for the PlayStation.

Information also contributed by Adam Baratz, Alan Chan, Isak, Entorphane, Kalirion, Kasey Chang, kbmb, Patrick Bregger, PCGamer77, Pseudo_Intellectual, Scott Monster, Sicarius.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by robotriot.

PlayStation added by Kartanym. Macintosh added by Xoleras.

Additional contributors: Indra was here, Jeanne, Sciere, jean-louis, Vaelor, Cantillon, Patrick Bregger, Lain Crowley, FatherJack, MalenkiyPoslannik, RetroArchives.fr.

Game added October 31, 1999. Last modified March 19, 2024.