If you haven’t tried Grim Dawn, you might give it a whirl. I’m not a big ARPG aficionado normally (I couldn’t help parsing Diablo in 1996 as a sort of degrading/dumbing down of the CRPG genre, though I’ve come to understand it’s really just its own thing), but Grim Dawn completely got its hooks into me.
I miss those days…
Looks like the game isn’t launching right now - claims you have to be launching it from the client, even if you DO launch it from the client. Even the PR firm this Ars guy reached out to, as well as the other guy that’s streaming this now, can’t get in.
lol no streamer can actually manage to get connected
Error 37 D2 edition
This pained me to read, I had forgotten about it, somehow.
You’d think Blizzard learned the lesson… ;)
Funny enough i was the opposite player, I suppose my contrarian nature was still in play even then. I liked the difficulty spike and really didn’t like the later adjustments - mainly because i hated the idea of multiple playthroughs. Once Diablo became a game that “required” multiple runs, i more or less drifted away from it. I never picked up the expansion for D2.
Even today my preferred style in Diablo 3 - if and when i ever play it again - is to crank up the difficulty level to as much as i can stand, play through once, then quit.
It’s adjacent to why i hate MMOs, and why i hate D&D style games like Pathfinder, i think.
I do remember the skill trees being not particularly well balanced at all though. Titan Quest certainly picked up that torch. Maybe the worst offender action-RPG knock off was Sacred 2, a game that actually punished you for putting points into skills.
Yeah, to me it was finally a true sequel to Gateway to Apshai! Naw, I loved Rogue/Nethack and had fond memories of playing them in the computer lab at school. Obviously I’m a hardcore RPG fan, but I also liked these. The joy I used to get out of these games has largely been supplanted by FTL and similar type roguelikes.
I had the chance to review Grim Dark for a major pub, and do another feature, and I couldn’t even get up the enthusiasm to install it - despite it genuinely looking good. The last games in this genre that peaked my interest at all were the Sacred games (or Divine Divinity), and largely because of their world-building and exploration, not their development systems or combat.
OldManMurray called it a ‘Telengard clone,’ which amused me greatly.
He’s in now.
I saw - and it looks glorious.
Just watching him play the first area is making me itch to play this again. I’m probably going to pre-order.
Yeah, looks fun and appears to hold up well.
It’s pretty neat you can press a key and switch back to the old graphics quickly.
It does indeed look glorious. Love the lighting effects when he casts fireball too.
Can’t wait to play it. Controller support seems good too.
Blizzard has been dead for over a decade. The people that made the magic there are long, LONG gone. How gullible do you have to be to keep pumping money into Bobby Kotick’s bloated corpse every time they dangle some beloved IP they give no shits about in front of you? I’m not willing to support a shitty company or spit on the grave of something I once loved just to get 40 more hours out of a worn out, 20 year old game design. Have some shame. Geez.
I’m not sure anger at Blizzard justifies insulting anyone who just wants to play D2 again. I mean… I might buy it, and I don’t think that makes me complicit or dumb.
Yeah, we can just agree to disagree on Blizzard’s actions without making it personal.
Jeez Louise find another hill to die on, one that really matters
Please stop pretending that supporting shitty companies doesn’t have consequences. Also, I’m capable of dying on plenty of hills, so don’t worry about me.
While I certainly dislike their political behavior of late, the fact is that the server nonsense killed Blizzard for me long before. The day I went to play Diablo 3 and was placed in a90 minute queue because there was a new WoW expansion is the day I stopped dealing with them. Everything since has just validated that decision over and over.
I don’t think anyone is pretending that. I think the decision whether or not to boycott Blizzard (I decided to boycott them after Blitzchung, FWIW) remains within the realm of things people can disagree on without insulting each other.
If the issue is just that they make shitty games, again, one can agree to disagree civilly.