Recently started playing this. Never played many isometric ARPGs. I'm at the very beginning, but it seems very basic in terms of gameplay. Should I just wait for more recent games like Titan Quest 2 or Path of Exile 2 or does it open up a little?
Recently started playing this. Never played many isometric ARPGs.
no. it's the pinnacle of arpgs which is like standing on top of a mountain of shit. purely for addicts. be thankful that you aren't one.
Dia BLOWS
Might as well play it, you're already gay for booting it up
D2 is an iconic game, path of exile is pure autism
This.
Maybe the genre isn't for you. I like d2 and grim dawn a lot, but it gets repetitive. After beating everything, the game instantly dies. This can leave you with a void feeling. Arpg a good time killers, nothing else.
I finished the first quest in a cave that went through another ricefield and entered another similar cave. I don't mind repetition but it's just a jarring way to present your game to new players. I played the Van Helsing games before and they at least had some semblance of level design to funnel players through
Is Titan Quest Anniversary Edition good?
>I don't mind repetition but it's just a jarring way to present your game to new players.
...how?
Its a _gameplay_ focused game, are you sad that there isn't 10 minute cut scenes?
Because the gameplay is incredibly shallow and repetitive
>inb4 zoom zoom
I played D2 in elementary school when it was new and it was great as a ten year old child in the early 2000's, it's been two decades, there's better games now
Diablo 2 was basic but fun, before patches came in and made normal difficulty completely trivial.
>before patches came in and made normal difficulty completely trivial.
While things got easier, I still have to say, frick old Claw Viper Temple 2, frick the Thorns curse, and frick old Duriel.
>While things got easier
They got trivialized in the beginning, then ending is impossible for solo except for select builds because synergies require dumping points into useless and prevent player from getting into different elements.
>frick old Duriel.
OG Duriel was soul, everyone has memories of getting 1-shotted
>everyone has memories of getting 1-shotted
Remember corpse running him non-stop with other people keeping portals open and people getting hyped after we'd finally down him after everyone died at least a dozen times.
And doing this over dial-up so sometimes you'd just die because of getting sling shotted with latency.
Was genuinely fun times, but more because of the old b.net community was just fun to play with
While I still load up and play 1.05 every now and then, current patch is genuinely the better game. But if I'm playing current patch I exclusively play hardcore.
It's better if you play it with intentions of just grinding and getting OP build, if you play it like regular game for story experience OG diablo 2 and its shenengians are more interesting than current smooth pipeline into baalruns on hell.
>baalruns
Na, I only do those if I'm lagging behind in level. Even on HC I'll often just go right in to the next difficulty after downing baal.
Farming other zones is more fun anyways when you've made it in to hell.
The stupid thing with arpg is they have an optimal way to play. What you say is right, farming is only reasonable at max level.
>The stupid thing with arpg is they have an optimal way to play.
All games are solvable anon, its moronic to point out since it's implicit.
Barb is the weakest class to solo play, but its still fun in it's own way and has a feel and flow to it self.
You're the kind of person that would look up tier charts for games and only choose the meta pick in stead of playing what you may actually find and fun/enjoyable.
Yeah, I don't think that all games have an exact optimum solution.
What I was referring to was farming makes no sense before max level. With optimal way to play I was saying rushing to level 100 never repeating anything before act 4 or 5 hell is pointless. You'll get the most xp and the best loot when you keep progressing. Act 1 has no replay value, at least in terms of items and xp.
>tier blabla
No, I'm not. I use a random process when selecting skills and when deciding how many points into each skill.
>Act 1 has no replay value, at least in terms of items and xp.
>and xp.
t. has never played d2
There was steep xp penalties if your level was too far from mob level. They introduced the penalties because people would rush lvl 1 chars to hell cows and ding 75 after an hour of leeching.
https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/Michaelangel007/d2_cheat_sheet/blob/master/index.html
The optimal grind zones for leveling are listed somewhere on that page.
>https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/Michaelangel007/d2_cheat_sheet/blob/master/index.html
Now that's a great page I didn't know!
Thanks anon
Worst thread on Ganker
Yeah good luck with rushing to level 100 in Diablo 2 you stupid moron
>While I still load up and play 1.05 every now and then, current patch is genuinely the better game. But if I'm playing current patch I exclusively play hardcore.
i'm a total baby. I can't play anything but 1.13c+ with plugy and basemod (for auto gold pickup) anymore.
Diablo 2 is about timing and opportunity management. It's gameplay is more about the meta decision making on the player end then it is so much the actual clickening of the monsters. But you can say this about basically every (good) game of the gnere.
Super Mario Bros is mechanically a very simple game, but is still very satisfying to play.
Also, you're making these observations before you're actually anywhere in the game. You've got no gear, and no skills to utilize. Of course its being to be simple at this point.
The existence of Kaizo Mario shows the level of mechanical skill it can have
Diablo does not have that
Uber bosses in PoE and Diablo 4 blow D2 out of the water. The genre moved on grandpa, actual gameplay matters
>Kaizo Mario
Anon, thats a rom hack that requires you to utilize meta knowledge of bugs in the engine... Its like you're intentionally being obtuse.
Its a hack where they just make jump timings tighter and make you do shell kick jumps
It's evidence the game can be hard as is, Nintendo just didn't make it as such because it's a game for children
I'm saying its a stupid fricking point to bring up a rom hack since it compleatly changes the subject. Since if you're doing that now you're going to need to drag in things like Median XL, Project Diablo 2, Eastern Sun, etc, etc, in regards of Diablo 2 mods when the core topic was THE BASE GAME.
You know that there is a huge ecosystem of D2 mods... right?
1. All of those hacks are still piss easy cookie clicker content
2. Kaizo generally isn't changing game mechanics, it's just new levels designed by a masochist. Those mods start overhauling countless mechanics, items, etc to try to cover up the massive gaping flaws of diablo 2
Again, you can do a ton of tricks in mario games without a kaizo hack because they offer skill expression, kaizo just changes that to be required. Diablo does not have room for skill expression because it's cookie clicker in an edgy skin
> All of those hacks are still piss easy cookie clicker content
This but instead I assert in a similarly conclusory fashion that what you think is good and is piss easy cookie clicker content.
combat is a facet of gameplay, it is not the gameplay in its entirety. Character building and progression is more satisfying in Diablo 2 and that is a larger part of what a player is doing in these games.
>It was good when it was new and shiny now the gameplay isn't fun because it's old
If you're looking for a cinematic game and graphical fidelity just buy a triple AAA story game.
>there's better games now
But there aren't. That's the tragedy.
You mean Path of Exile, the only game that is supposedly better. It's not better in all aspects, though, active skills are replaced with gem support system where every class has access to every gem and there are only 6 slots max (with some exceptions). Also drop rate is tied to multiplayer, SSF was impossible to play at some point. Graphics, animations, AI, "kick" after you use an ability - Diablo II does it better most of the time
Yeah this
>there's better games now
not in the "diablo like" genre there aren't, except for path of exile which pulled most of its inspiration directly from diablo 2.
for someone who doesn't play these kinds of games a lot, something like grim yawn or diablo 3/4 would be more your speed. very low learning curves and no autism required. those games are designed for slow-thinking normies.
Titan Quest is good but it's really outdated and feels clunky. It's missing a lot of QoL. If you can deal with that it's good to play.
Best ARPG is Grim Dawn though, no question. Play that. It trumps all others with ease.
By far. I'm so positively surprised. Not only best arpg besides d2, but also one of the most polished games in the last decade. Really curious if their in progress game (rts during grim dawn) will be as great.
Maybe play lost ark. Diabe-girlkes are about slow, mindless grinding, if you don't like it don't try. The point is you set some goal ingame and just grind hard to reach it.
No Titanquest is extremely dated. Play Grim Dawn if you want, it built on TQs skill tree system but is a bit more modern.
True, but gd has the downside that everything has 300 different elements of damage.
The focus of these games is gameplay and grinding so if you're thrown off by repetition and looking for visual appeal/story you should probably try a different genre.
Yes Titan Quest is one of the few ARPGs that i feel gets close to the enjoyment that D2 brought me. nothing quite so good as the free-form building of your character. no handholding, just pure ARPG goodness
ill be honest with you i dont think you deserve diablo 2
>I played the Van Helsing games before
Those games are pure anus. If you can't see the difference in quality then you should go eat feces out of your toilet bowl because that is essentially the type of content you prefer.
They're not technically bad games. A bit Euro jank of course, but it's part of the charm.
>plays 20 minutes up to the very first possible quest
>"does this game open up soon? is it always so basic? it's so jarring that there's another cave in the same area"
why not try playing more of the game you whining piss baby, act 1 takes like 2 hours if you want to do everything and 1 hour if you just stick to the essentials
Except it is always that basic. It's cookie clicker gameplay but grimdark for boomers
>Boot up gameplay
>NPC tells you to go in that cave
>If you try to exit area another NPC warns you that the cave quest is nasically a tutorial
>Finish tutorial
>New area is identical and with yet another fricking cave
Play soulslike games, they are modern takes on diablo formula. Or play some earlier diablo patch, because it has been driven into dirt by constant "balancing" which removed all fun from the game. And yes, Diablo 2 is best of the bunch btw.
Ok so let me explain something for you. Almost EVERY ARPG out there is like that: you point at an enemy and click one button. The difficulty lies in the ways to get loot and in the planning of your character, gear-, stat- and skillwise. If you have figured out from the beginning how to build, let's say, a javazon (MrLlamaSC has a recent guide on that) - congrats, you have RUINED yourself all the fun. It's not meant to be played with a wiki.
Maybe you are just not very lucky and good at the game? Maybe you are trying to melee fallens with a sword as a Sorceress? Yes if you play very wrong or don't have good items, the gameplay will be really dull. For example, it takes 3 minutes to kill one white monster on Hell difficulty as a barbarian, who defeated normal and nighmare and got loot from there. You click one monster, drink all the potions - then there are hundreds more, and you have to kill them one by one. The secret is that some classes are unplayable (only with the gg gear), if you figure that out by yourself, you get a dopamine/serotonine boost
Loot in the most soulslikes is low variety (Dark Souls) or the stats are mostly meaningless (Nioh). Some of the best weapons in DaS (BK weapons) are hidden with low droprate, but these are rather exceptions than rule: most items you can pick up in designated locations, and Zweihander will always be the same white Zweihander, and so on. In Diablo II if you get a good unique, you can feel the kick immediately. Combat in soulslikes is good, but looting is far worse than in D2/PoE.
I made a Travzerker last season and got so rich in a week of playing, I found more food stuff than all of my other years playing D2 combined. I found ever single rune up to Ber and Jah kek
>play game for 10 minutes
>immediately come to Ganker
Zooms are so fricked
Doubt OP even plays games he just watched a video of someone else playing
it's the best game ever made
>pick barbarian
>the first skill that isn't left clicking each individual enemy until it dies is locked behind 20 levels
Is this what boomers consider peak gaming?
Barbarian could use throwing pots. Those were viable in normal before everything got 10x HP pool to accomodate from damage from synergies.
barb is infamously a pain in the ass to level due both to being entirely gear-dependent and both of his viable aoe skills being locked behind level 24/30. that's the only thing I don't really like about D2 and how solved its meta is. every season start is always the same. blizzard sorc, hammerdin, maybe the odd trapsin here and there, and that's basically it until the high runes start flowing, and people start transitioning into grief CB smiters to do ubers and get some torchs and annis into the economy.
We told you to play Diablo 3, but you didn't listen. You bought Diablo 2
You deserve this.
>Bought
lol
Top 4 best diablo games:
4) Diablo 4
3) DIablo 3
2) Diablo 2
1) Diablo 1
D1 is better than D2 because it's a closed loop
D2 has you playing forever but it never gets good, D1 you finish and are done no carrot to string you along
D1 is an ARPG tech demo
>D2 has you playing forever
No one is holding a gun up to your head anon
I play purely HC and consider my character "done" when I down hell Baal.
Its fun to reroll and adapt to whatever drops.
>D2 has you playing forever but it never gets good
If it gets you playing forever, by definition, it is good
>Play game 30 years ago
>wax on about ebin atmospheres
>never play game again because it's boring
woah deep
But that's wrong, here's the real order.
2>1>shit>piss>more shit>3=4>2R (because it's censored)
And 2 still needs QoL tweaks like the ones mousepad had in maphack to be a 10/10.
Nope, gameplay is all that matters in a game
3>4>1>2
Cope boomer
Combat is the entire gameplay actually. You can theorycraft (laughable given how shallow the builds are) without launching the game, therefore it's not part of playing it
And d2 progression is just baal runs, utter dogshit. Please play PoE so you can see a decent arpg for once in your life
PoE is ugly and doesnt feel good to play
Deranged boomer cope, it plays 100x better than d2
Deranged zoomer cope, it plays 100x worse than D2
>Combat is the entire gameplay actually
So when you're doing anything ingame that isn't active combat you aren't playing it? Does your handler move your character around for you and sort through gear on your behalf?
>Please play PoE so you can see a decent arpg for once in your life
I play and enjoy both because I'm not a shitposter.
Inventory tetris is absolutely not gameplay you mental midget
>his handler has to look at the drops and determine what to use because he can't figure it out
>his handler decides where to go and what to do next to progress the character because it's not combat
I'm sorry that you, by your own admission, cannot comprehend equipping/evaluating gear and can only think about it as
>durr have to sort these weird symbols in my inventory
>where to go
Is this the level of cope you're on? Pretending like this extremely linear game is actually open ended exploration?
you were saying?
>inb4 it was a kickstarter fail
>gameplay is all that matters
Well obviously. That's why I had a blast with 2, playing it for for 5 years straight, but dropped 3 after 400 hours of hoping it would get better soon. Then I gave it another chance with RoS, only to drop it again after another 400 hours of hoping. I haven't given bl*zzard as much as a bent nickle ever since.
Except 3 has better gameplay than 2, it sounds like you just got filtered because you aren't good enough to push grifts
Guess its easier to buy chink duped enigmas huh
3 > 1 > 2 > 4
Oh. So you're emulating Switch version?
it's just a google search pic
The gameplay may be "basic" as you say, but the way you choose to build your character is not. The beauty lies in the itemization and plethora of builds available to you
Every build is 1 button and teleport though
And yet I still see players dying to the dumbest shit on a daily basis. How are they screwing up 1 button gameplay so bad?
So far I picked the Assassin and unlocked and upgraded the far away stab move, and played a little with Necromancer and upgraded the skellies. I replaced the Katar for a Javelin and it was basically the same. It's not a great intro tbh
Dude it's long journey and doesn't really start until lvl 30
what a dumb argument. the game starts at level 1. if its not fun at level 1 then the game is shit
>Not going traps when starting an Assassin
You're going to have a really bad time
After playing d2 a week back i was pretty disappointed with it. Bosses just try to rush you and one or two shot, the worst rushing offender you fight in cramped ass space and get slowed every 3 seconds, normal enemies could as well just not exist, abilities are all either broken as shit or completely worthless, you can just abuse town portals to push through anything, most waypoints are completely worthless and to get anything worth shit for endgame you have to abuse guides and wikis. If i could play it 20 years back i would probably like it but for now much better grinds exist, that aren't just literally run exactly the same shit thousands of times to minmax.
Diablo 2 resurrected is a troony game.
they made the amazon ugly and the assassin chink wears pants now so you cant see her butt.
play the original diablo and afterwards play diablo 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPpTgCho5ZA
Tacobaal-09
pp
Hot take
I enjoy Diablo 1, 2 and PoE all for their own reasons.
All ARPG are shit.
Im looking forward to the new grim dawn expansion in 2024
Diablo 1 is unironically better and held up better over time than D2.
Ironically both games about going to Hell to kill Diablo have rushed and unfinished Hell portions. Act 4 is only half complete in D2 and the dungeon gen and tile set of Hell in D1 is clearly half baked as it's almost entirely featureless.
At least in Diablo 1
>Enemy AI is superior, enemies will retreat to heal (scavengers) or encircle you (goats), in d2 everything clumps up and comes at you from one direction
>No running means you can't skip 90% of the content
>The less 'developed' loot and the clear endpoint of killing Diablo give a satisfying end to each 'run' instead of the shitty gambling sim that still has people hooked today
I still play D1 every now and then, but D2 is simply not fun unless your a tweaker reddit gay who likes to "grind".
Diablo was never good, it's a niche game made for dopamine hits, gameplay never changes after 1 hour in, killing random enemies is all you do, boggles mind how this franchise got popular
Diablo 2 is a bad game with objectively bad game mechanics which somehow fix mutually each other and turn it into a good game. The rest of the genre shouldn't exist though.
Diablo 2 is the only good ARPG. You're literally complaining you're not endgame build before the first act has ended. Stop having adhd you drug addict.
>grind addict talking about drug addicts
>be OP
>dont have friends
>i know ill look for social interaction on a reddit imageboard called Ganker
>w-what kind of thread should i make
>ill shitpost about ARPGs
wow
wtf are you talking about?
NTA but I can only assume he's referring to people bothering to post only to make bad faith shitposts because they cannot hold, share or defend a genuine opinion.
>I'm at the very beginning, but it seems very basic in terms of gameplay.
that's normal for like 99% of video games
Diablo 2 doesnt really 'start' until like Act 3 or 4 of Nightmare.
Diablo 1 and 2 had genuinely interesting quests and good storylines. Far better than the slop in Titan Quest or Morrowind
>go frick up at stopping the bad guys again
>i guess you killed them, it counts?
>go do the next frick up
>"good story"
Not to mention the cut scenes that are absolutely goated. I still get comfy and watch them together like it was a film from time to time
What even is this stupid thread?
Some zoomer tried Diablo, didn't know what to do, cleared every monster the slow way, reached the next area and thought it looks too similar and proceeds to shit on the game by making a thread on a basket weaving image board about a 50 year old game.
Why are zoomers so dumb?
Some lonely moron wanted to farm (You)s by shitting on a beloved game, because it's the closest he can get to human interaction. I stopped feeding him once it became obvious.
>cleared every monster the slow way
Is there a fast way?
speedrun to boss ignoring everything and spam whatever op ability
That's how it works in poe. In d2 you get someone to rush you.
I bought the game back in '00 because I played a demo in a game store and fell in love with it.
But whenever I got to the third act I just gave up on it, I wasn't feeling that act but people told me the fourth act and the expansion were the best.
Replayed it last month, finally to completion. Sad to say that the fourth and fifth acts are just as boring as the third, which is weird because the first two acts are actually amazing. Great quest pacing, incredible atmosphere and soundtrack. The climax of the second act, where you go into the harem is superb. I'd be happy if Lut Gholein was the finale and Diablo was there instead of Duriel.
It's like they gave up after the second act and thought they couldn't top it after that and half assed it.
Now I understand why people say Diablo 1 is better, it knew when to end properly
>when to end properly
People play Diablo 2 for the postgame grinding and character building so it's apples and oranges. Either the people you were listening to mislead you or you didn't understand what type of game D2 is.
misled*
hit things until you can hit bigger things until you get bored
What's a good and fun class I should start with?
What should I eat for breakfast? Am I enjoying myself right now? Will you teach me what to think?
For me it was the cinematics that set the mood.
Lut gholein was really cool too.
Other than that it's a shameless skinnerbox with 1 in a million droprates.
Keep looking for those HRs...
Play Titan Quest 1
Stay far away from path of autism
If you want my honest advice avoid any game with RPG in the title because they're always for losers and padded to frick with boring gameplay and busywork. Sometimes a WRPG remembers to be fun but generally if you see a game described as an "RPG" steer clear
>mmoRPG
>aRPG
>cRPG
>jRPG
None of them are good. Just go play a real genre instead of having dorks piss and shit themselves because you didn't like doing the same thing for 50 years while a sub-Dan Brown story played out.
D2R is genuinely such a good remaster it's scary that it was something that happened in the modern blizzard era. A shame VV got absorbed into the greater body of Acti-Blizz instead of remaining it's own studio.
>censored
>good
Those words are mutually exclusive.
>muh breasts
If that's your only argument then alright.
There was more censorship than that. If you actually knew your bati material you'd know this. Up your game (You)farmer-kun.
It's still good despite the censorship and the censorship is so blatantly obvious coming from some stupid higher up suit it's hilarious. The amazon 3D model for example looks actually GOOD. But they uglyfied it for virtue signaling. There are still images of the original model around.
This tells me that the devs were good, but some of their stuff got gutted in the ESG filter. That's different than SJW diversity devs failing with game creation in the first place.
Doesn't matter where the censorship comes from. If it's censored it should only be pirated. Vote with your wallet and all that jazz.
>original model
Really? I didn't know the ama model got censored as well. Post the stills.
That would make for at least 4 seperate instances of censorship.
>Doesn't matter where the censorship comes from. If it's censored it should only be pirated. Vote with your wallet and all that jazz
Yea but I can't play online with a pirates version and I can 100% ignore the censorship in this game.
I am still on your side and hate it, but I can cope
Grow a backbone. Your kind is the reason games get pozzed. Also, frick online. PlugY adds the online stuff you'd otherwise miss and /players 8 takes care of the xp.
I only bought it in a sale for 15 bucks I think after it was out for a year alread if that helps
I don't buy any AAA garbage games if you think that
Its good because it wasn't made by Blizzard.
It was outsorced to a company that luckily actually liked D2. Blizzard still was the final say in ascetics.
D2R is literally using the same scripting for D2 but with a new wrapper, hence why the bugs from the original persist in D2R almost 1:1
D2 might be the most overrated game ever, there's frickall to even do in it. What so you do when you're done with the short campaign? Do 1000 runs of meph or Baal and get an upgrade that lets you kill the boss in 9.8 seconds instead of 10.1
Women will never get it
you just dont get it poe troony, dont you
>What so you do when you're done with the short campaign?
When I was young it took me about a year to beat Baal on Hell
I have a friend who likes to smoke weed and play D2 on and off - he still didn't beat Baal on Hell after a couple of months of playing.
I have replayed D2 recently, I think last year. It took me two weeks of playing every day to kill Baal on Hell, and it wasn't easy because the Ancients were wienerblocking my spearzon, and not only that. I even thought at some point that I will never do it without grinding, but I have found a way. And that is only on one character out of 7 and I was using all my knowledge from years of playing and learning. A new player will be unable to beat the game in 2 weeks on spearzon (it's the 2nd most OP character after sorc btw).
So yeah if 2 weeks of constant playing and having fun every time is "frick all to do", then I don't know.
>spear
>OP
Surely you jest. I haven't played in forever, but back then spearzon was even less viable than warcry barb.
Reminder that spearzon and javazon are NOT the same thing.
Hmm maybe it was javazon. I was using Static Strike as a main skill. But I had to resort to LFury because some enemies were crazy strong. But I was able to farm Mephisto on players 8 in under 1.5 minutes per run, not even sorc can do that.
There is no Static Strike, and LF is exclusively for java. You were using Charged Strike, because it shotguns.
I bet you're over rated irl. And no one likes you.