"It was great......in it's time"

If you happened to somehow get onto my computer, you wouldn’t find any software installed, along the lines of Quake 3, Unreal Tournament, Half-Life, and many of the other popular games of today. No, what would you would find would be a TON of Blizzard games, including this one. Diablo, a great Action/RPG for the PC, made the way for one of the most popular games today, Diablo II. Yes, there was a Diablo before Diablo II, for all you people who didn’t know. No, it probably wasn’t as popular as Diablo II is, but for the people who did like it, they knew how to have a good time with it. I’m speaking of course, of Blizzard’s Battle.net service. Loved by some, hated by others, this service gave you a chance to play online with other games across the world. Of course, with Diablo….there was one small problem. Everywhere you went on b.net, you were sure to find hackers. From my experiences on Diablo’s b.net, hackers were EVERYWHERE. You couldn’t get away from them, they were just everywhere. This is what led many gamers away from Diablo, and it caused a major splash on it’s use on B.net. Of course, today, with the use of realms, Blizzard has fixed that problem for Diablo II, but I still remember the hours of fun that I had playing the original Diablo back before Diablo II.

Gameplay:

The gameplay is very simple to understand, and to adjust to. It’s not like most Action/RPGs, where you find a target, slash him, then wait a few seconds to power back up. You just find a target, then click him like crazy. Just pray that you have strong fingers, because after a long game of Diablo, your fingers might just be a bit sore after all that clicking. You also have a belt to put your potions on, and an easy to navigate inventory screen, which makes it quite easy to do. The bad side is, once you run out of space to hold your items, your basically out of options, unless you feel like trading something, or selling something to make room.

Story:

Well, this game does have a story, but not a very involving and elaborate story, like many RPGs of today have. You pick from one of three classes, which are Warrior, Rogue, and Sorcerer. The warrior excels in close combat, the Rogue good at combat with ranged weapons, and Sorcerer good at casting spells. You’ll take your character into the town of Tristram ,where Diablo has been causing Pandemonium, and is waiting, deep within the large labyrinth underneath the town. Your task? Well, you’ll have to get yourself quite strong, and then you’ll have to go down to that bottom floor, and destroy Diablo? Easy task you think? Not really…

Audio/Visual:

For a game made in 1996, the graphics are decent. The character animation of them walking is nice, although it is quite slow, and can get on your nerves after a while. The spells that the sorcerer can cast are also done quite nice. Casting about 20+ Fire walls all over the screen with your Sorcerer is something fun to do now and then, and it’s what I did all the time when I would use my Sorcerer. The music is ok, but in a game like this, your not really focused on the music. Although the voice acting, what IS there, is decently done. Especially the sounds that your enemies make, when you hit them, and then they are eventually defeated, was beautifully done.

Overall:

Today, this game is hardly played anymore. With the release of Diablo II, your much better off getting that game, as opposed to the original Diablo. It just has so many more features, it’s much longer, and it’s very very fun. However, if you remember back before Diablo II, the original Diablo was quite a fun game to play, if you could get a decent group of friends who all had the game to play with, so you could avoid the hackers. Although, today, with Diablo II released, in my opinion, the original Diablo just doesn’t stack up.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/07/01, Updated 01/07/01