Act 1 in both TQ and Diablo 2 is a bit of a bore, that’s usually the norm in these types of games from the few that I’ve played (though I recall having a bit of fun right off the bat in Torchlight, but my memory is fuzzy).
So they were supposed to rebalance TQ with the anniversary edition - I take it it didn’t extend to the final boss?
Guess I will stick to the PC version - I’m assuming the port is the original game without the new improvements and I recall the one thing that really bugged me about TQ was the slow movement speed and this was supposed to be improved in new edition.
Interesting, just saw they are working on a Switch edition.
One big thing that I felt was a flaw in TQ was the loot. In general, it was very boring. They needed a hell of a lot more prefixes and suffixes. I really discovered the limits of the system when there was thing called TQ defiler. You could make everything a loot pinata. Once I did that, I realised that all the cool loot I was trying to find simply didn’t exist. The most interesting effects were attack speed and run speed.
Diablo 2, on the other hand, and something D3 seems to be missing, had really interesting modifiers. Like when you were hit, you had a chance to cast frost nova, or when you attacked with a weapon that some other effect might happen.
I really thing D3 or any other ARPG should incorporate that any item can have any power. That could make the rare find really interesting.
Anniversary Edition increased the run speed, which helps
Also, a lot of new items were added that give you interesting skills. There is a crappy thrown weapon, but it gives you Hunter Ability to fire multiple times as a passive.
I found a shield that allows me to throw down a Banner, which was great for my wolf and trap build.
Age of Wonders III for $5.99 through tomorrow as the featured deal on the Indiegala store. Steam key. They also have the Golden Realms DLC for $5.99 as well, and the Eternal Lords DLC for $9.99. Get an extra 25% off the final price of any/all if you pay with a supported cryptocurrency (not required).
I hate cryptocurrency too, but I don’t really see it as a danger to established currency regimes. Do you think they give the discounts because they’re going to use the crypto for shady stuff?
FWIW I also bet they will get close to zero takers of people who want to save one fitty on AoW III or Golden Realms DLC but have to jump through twelve hoops to get their hands on some Etherium or whatever in the first place. “Ain’t nobody got time for that.”
I can’t imagine wanting to use crypto to buy piddly shit like this right now unless you’re super paranoid about privacy. If you have money in crypto, the point at the moment is hoping it’ll shoot up in value. If you don’t, ain’t no way in hell it’s worth buying any for 25% off some DLC or whatever.
Honestly, I think that’s all that crypto will ever be, unless national/central governments take the colossally idiotic step of accepting it as payment for tax obligations.
Here’s the thing: Diablo 2 came out in 2000. Was it the king of its particular genre in 2000? Absolutely. Was it still king of that heap in 2005? 2010? Maybe, depending on who you ask. Is there any real need to go back to it in 2018, when I’m pretty sure almost anyone who likes ARPGs has a game they now like better than it? Not so sure about that.
Yeah, I think Diablo 2 has finally been eclipsed. I’d stay it was still king until Grim Dawn came out. But there’s a new king now. Console Diablo 3 is really good too, as is Path of Exile. All 3 are quite different from Diablo 2, and better for different reasons.
A little inside baseball. I worked on the online part of Diablo II and Battle.net. Diablo II’s contribution to the genre was to show how single player online play could ensure character integrity. Diablo (1) was rife with character hacks and D2 solved that technical (and financial) challenge successfully. It also taught me much about running an always online game and operating games at scale. Building and growing D2 globally (read: going to South Korea a lot) was a huge challenge. No examples of how to do it existed previously.
Several years later I designed the game infrastructure for World of Warcraft. The lessons I learned from building and running D2 directly contributed to WoW’s architecture in game server, database, and network systems. WoW would not have worked without the lessons learned from D2.
Ultimately D2 was a major milestone in Blizzard’s online gaming dominance and the industry’s shift towards online games. That helped give rise to eSports as well. Not bad for one game.
Diablo 2 is a game I may have spent 5 hours offline before figuring it was really an instanced MMORPG. It then sucked 6 months of my life, dry, leaving nothing behind. But it also inoculated me against any other time-eating MMORPG. So thank you, Big D!
Score! Thank you for posting that, it’s been on my wishlist forever and at 95% off I can’t pass it up.
Know before you purchase though, it’s not a Steam key. You have to download the installer via Amazon, then it installs the Deluxe version of the game DRM free. For only a buck though, I’m totally willing to forgo adding it to my Steam collection.
