"Like many other games from its time, Diablo set the standards for its genre, and is still worth playing even to this very day."

Diablo was originally released for the PC ten years ago way back in 1996, which also led to a Playstation version of the original game, a sequel for the PC and an expansion pack for the sequel known as Diablo II: Lord of Destruction. Ten years ago Diablo put action RPGs on the map with its simple yet revolutionary style of gameplay and to this day remains a very thorough action RPG experience that can still be enjoyed by any fan of the genre. Diablo has withstood the test of time thus far, and is still going strong with ten years under its belt.

Story:
If you are one of a very religious nature you may not particularly enjoy the overall theme of a game titled "Diablo". As you may have guessed Diablo revolves around a mighty hero who battles against Diablo - Lord of Terror and his minions of Hell, trying to send them back to this abyss from whence they came from.

The story picks up with a nice CG cutscene showing what seems to be an abandoned town which eventually leads into a dungeon with a warrior inside who appears to be struck down by the demons of hell. Once beginning your adventure you must enter the Cathedral and endure its many levels to finally make it down to your final destination: Hell, where Diablo awaits you.

Gameplay:
Before you actually begin your adventure you are required to choose from one of three characters, the knight, the sorcerer or the rogue. Each character plays completely different from the other so the class that you choose is ultimately left to preference. The knight is obviously the melee class who depends on strong weapons, heavy armor and brute force to make his way through the game. While the knight depends mostly on strength alone he can still make use of some of the magic found within Diablo, but he is ultimately much more useful as a simple fighter. The sorcerer is there for those who are fond of black magic; this character has the forces of fire, lighting and other such magic at his side. While he heavily depends on magic, melee weapons and heavy armor are less significant and much more time is spent increasing his magic capacity and his skills in those areas. While the sorcerer can swing a staff at an enemy, he is much more effective disposing of his foes from a distance using his magic. The rogue is somewhat of a balance between the knight and the sorcerer, but ultimately ends up being more like the sorcerer and relying on keeping the distance between her and her enemies. The knight is simply able to rush into the fray, while the rogue likes to stay back and pick off her enemies with the likes of a bow, and she is also much better at using magic than the knight.

Each character levels up as in every other type of RPG by collecting experience points which you gain from slaying monsters. As you level up you will be able to distribute status points into several areas such as, strength, vitality, dexterity and magic. Strength and dexterity will make your character much more efficient at using weapons, while mana makes your character much more effective in using magic and vitality simply increases your characters health points helping you to sustain yourself more easily from the attacks of the minions of hell.

Magic is obtained by finding books which are usually found by slaying monsters or found by looking through old book shelves, some are even given to you as rewards for quests. Once you find these books if your character meets the mana requirements a simple right click will add this magic spell to your list of useable spells. The great thing about these skills is if you find the same book multiple times adding it again and again will continually increase the power of this magical attack. Most of the best magic within Diablo will sadly only be useable by the sorcerer class, although magic generally is best left to the sorcerer in the first place.

Other than books you can also discover scrolls and potions which are widely available throughout the entire game. Scrolls come in many different flavours, such as "scroll of healing", "scroll of firebolt" or even "scroll of mana shield". These scrolls are especially helpful if you have not found the book to the spell yet, simply because these scrolls are one-time use only and are not super expensive once you have collected a nice sum of gold. These scrolls also become very useful to the knight, since you can use these spells only when you need them from the scroll rather than wasting valuable attribute points in magic, when you could add them to your vitality or strength.

Any character in Diablo can use magic, or fight simply using weapons; however it is the restrictions of their classes that limit them to either melee or magic. For example the knight's maximum mana point distribution caps off at 50, so any magic ability that requires a higher number of mana points will not be learnable by the knight. The same goes for the sorcerer, as his strength caps off at 50, he will become very weak much later in the game.

Initially Diablo does not focus on the plot so the gameplay depends on quests which are irrelevant to the progression of the story for the first few levels of the game. There is really no instruction in Diablo when you start playing so you will eventually make your way to the Cathedral and start your journey into Hell. The Cathedral is part of what makes Diablo so interesting, because when you first enter, it is simply a Cathedral infested with the demons and the undead. However as you go deeper and deeper you soon realize that you are no simply going deeper into the Cathedral you are indeed actually venturing into the unknown depths of Hell. This is exciting because every four floors the background will change and your character will make note about the change in environment which ultimately enhances the overall experience of the game, making it much more intense.

The enemies in Diablo are very diverse and come in many different shapes and sizes. Most enemies you will find are generally defeated by rapidly clicking on the left mouse button, be it magic or melee attacks that you are using. The game does have quite a lot of depth since even when you are a knight you cannot always simply run into a group of 20 archers or you will not last very long. If there was a drawback to Diablo, which was changed in its successor Diablo II, and may seem as a setback by today's standards, is the fact that you cannot run in Diablo. Diablo was not meant to be a fast paced game and running is not an option, you can only walk. This can cause some problems when traversing long distances or trying to catch those pesky ranged enemies as a knight, but is generally forgivable. This is mostly because there are many extra exits you can find from the dungeon even when you are on floor 9, so you don't always have to walk all the way up and down every time you want to visit the town. You can also simply by a "scroll of town portal" which will make traveling to and from the town much easier on your end, thankfully the monsters cannot follow you through the portal so even if you are surrounded by 20 Steel Lords or 15 Succubi that you've encountered in Hell you can still manage to run away.

Graphics:
Being a fan of 2D graphics and pre-rendered backgrounds I had no problem enjoying the visuals of Diablo even ten years after the game has been made. I found Diablo to be a very clean and neat looking game and the sprites are all well drawn and nice to look at, and the game was overall very pleasing on the eyes for such an old game. Diablo was much easier to sit through rather than say an older game you might find on the Playstation or Nintendo 64 that suffers from that blocky look. Since Diablo is in fact 2D and not 3D the graphics are still very nice, despite whether you are playing it on PC or Playstation. The nice thing about Diablo is also that because the game is so old even if your system is considered a piece of garbage anyone who has purchased a computer within the last 8 years should be able to run and enjoy Diablo no problem.

Sound:
The music is Diablo is wonderfully composed and while the selection of tracks is not entirely high compared to its successor Diablo II, the music that is in Diablo is of exceptional quality. The music changes every four levels and changes accordingly with the background changes but ultimately fits the mood of the game quite nicely. What it does an exceptionally good job of doing is creating a disturbing atmosphere in the later levels of the game and really pushing the mood and fear factor up a notch. Come on you are venturing into the depths of Hell, you can expect to hear at least one scream or two.

The voice acting is also superbly done. Each character in the village is fully brought to life by great voice actors with a lot of text and back-story for your enjoyment, if that is your kind of thing in an RPG. Each of the playable characters also has a nice little group of voice samples which they appropriately speak when the time is right, such as when defeating a boss or when entering a new area for the first time.

Value:
Considering the fact that Diablo is still played now ten years later is really saying something, but what really stands out is that there are still people who are playing this game online all these years later. There are not many quests that are available online but the fact that Blizzard has kept this game alive even when it has been almost completely overshadowed by its sometimes inferior successor is simply astonishing. Also considering that Diablo has quests randomly assigned to your game whenever you start a new single player game you can rest assured that your gameplay experience will not always be the same. While the chance of you getting the same quests will be high after you have played through the game three or four times, there is still the sense that your gameplay experience will be unique to you, and the level layout will also not always be the same so you will never really feel like you are always playing the same thing. Although keep in mind that there are still a few major quests that you will always be required to complete.

Even though Diablo is no longer sold on its own (to the best of my knowledge) Diablo is still widely available in that big fat rectangle box you most likely see every time you visit your local game store which is labelled "Diablo II Battle Chest". Although it's called Diablo II, Diablo was in fact quietly tucked into that battle chest as well. So if you are really willing to give the Diablo series a go, the Battle Chest is your best bet and since its not entirely expensive you are getting several great games for great value with long lasting gameplay.

Score:
Gameplay: 10
Graphics: 9
Sound: 10
Value: 9
Tilt: 10

Overall: 9.7
Diablo is one of those extraordinary PC games from the 90's that we have all heard about being tossed around along with words like "Masterpiece" and "Revolutionary". The thing that you must know is that these games truly set the standards in their genre for the PC. Much like previous games have done on consoles, which in some sense do not apply anymore when a new console comes out, PCs never become replaced with new consoles. Diablo was made for the PC ten years ago and is still available and playable on the PC ten years later. The point is this game is part of the legacy of PC gaming and helped define the current genre into what it is today. If you consider yourself a fan of action RPGs and have yet to experience Diablo, do not be turned off by its age and lack of new age graphics, Diablo is a PC game that is still inspiring many new action RPGs to date and must be played by anyone interested in its genre.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 03/31/06