They’re two very different takes on the same core concept. Without knowing what it is you value in a gameplaying experience it’s impossible to recommend one over the other. I much preferred D3’s relentless action pacing, lack of meaningless fiddly inventory (especially potions and that fucking cube), actual endgame activities that don’t just involve farming the same boss over and over with a sorceress, etc. etc… But there are plenty of people here who’d disagree with all that and say D2 is the better option because of all those things. ¯\(°_o)/¯
I bought D2 remastered and spent some time with it, I got my money’s worth out of it for sure but despite the cool graphics I thought it had aged, badly.
That said, probably the worst thing you can do with either game is try and care about the storyline so jump in with either? D3 at least offers Adventure mode so you can avoid practically all of that nonsense. In D2 all you have is the campaign (tho the cutscenes are still kinda cool from an aesthetic POV in both).
The main difference between Diablo 2 and 3 (imo) is the sense that you’re “building” a character in 2, and that you can make suboptimal decisions that affect how good or bad that character plays (or at least, how efficient that character moves through the levels). You can pick to upgrade your energy on a non-energy melee character in 2 and have fun with your ‘hybrid’ build for a while in lower difficulty levels, with a build that fits your playstyle - knowing (or maybe not) that this build is doomed at higher difficulty levels.
For some people that’s fun, for other that’s pointless, because they’ll just look up a build guide and follow that to the letter and see no reason all the options to mess up the build of a character even exist in D2. But i’m a Normal difficulty player only (more or less) - the idea the the “real” game begins at Hell difficulty is so horrifying looming a timesink that i literally cannot maintain the interest in the game (i’ve never reached the 3rd difficulty tier of 2 or 3 in the 20-odd years of Diablo-ing, i can’t force myself to grind through the levels saving skill points for the ‘real game’.).
I don’t think so. For Diablo I & II playing through all difficulties in order is the entire game. It’s the New Game+ model. Hell difficulty is just New Game++ and the final playthrough. It is also where I tend to lose steam and quit the game. Usually somewhere in Act II, and usually the maggot tunnels.
Even if the story is kind of eh, the voice acting and cutscenes have always been very good. So I vote for trying out the D2R campaign once and if the jank is too much watch the cutscenes on YouTube and move on to the D3 campaign.
If you then want to try other classes and such make some and play adventure mode.
It has been so long, I can’t remember can you run rifts immediately, or do you need to go through the campaign once in seasonal before getting access to rifts?
You get access to rifts right off the bat in adventure mode. No muss, no fuss. Greater rifts I think you may need to be L70 for, though.
That said, the ‘optimal’ way to start a season is to do the challenge mode (where you need to beat a single rift using a specific class/gear/skill setup) then open the reward for that on your newly created seasonal char. That gives you enough gold to level up all the crafters to max with plenty left over, plus the mats don’t hurt for cube recipes, either.
Exactly. I don’t even have the sound on any more. Pair it with a podcast. I found this episode of Hardcore History to accompany the game very nicely:
Murderous millennial preachers and prophets take over the German city of Munster after Martin Luther unleashes a Pandora’s Box of religious anarchy with the Protestant Reformation.
But yeah, I pair all ARPGs with either podcast or music, especially after the first playthrough. No offense to the music in these games, but I’d rather multitask when playing an ARPG and learn about history or games or something.
Oh right, Diablo 3 is the game in which we go to heaven and kick ass there? I’d totally forgotten about all of it. I’ve played the Diablo 2 campaign a million times and still see it in my sleep, but I’ve totally forgotten about the D3 campaign until just now.
