Knew this game was gonna be a banger as soon as I recognised Paul Eiding as one of the townspeople. At one point he narrates an ancient tome found in the labyrinth in his serious Colonel Campbell voice and it was just wonderful. Anyway, there's more to this than Paul Eiding. There's other voice actors. And a game around them. That game is good.

I was struck by its simplicity most of all. Straightforward XP and level up system, just 5 stats, non-respawning enemies. The entire game takes place in one town and one labyrinth that descends ever further; as soon as you clear a floor, the difficulty of the next one is solely down to the decisions you've made. No amount of grinding goblins is going to help you. They're not even in the game for one.

The simplicity helps it endure though. How many flash or indie games use this scenario? There's something approachable about these ideas that transcend the basic gameplay, which is largely clicking on skeletons and goat men. There's a wonderful enemy progression through the floors, each floor will typically have at least one new enemy, and they get bigger and cooler the further you go. No longer do I just kill skeletons, I'm killing 50 huge armoured behemoths who explode in a cyclone of fire when they die. It's heartwarming.

The graphics are nicely evocative, particularly the enemy design and animations, but the sound design is what carries. Sound is more important anyway, never skimp on sound, especially when you're making a game in 1996 that'll be played by me in 2023. Get yourself some good voice actors (kinda hit and miss here, the witch's performance is a kind of wooden that loops back round to being animated somehow), good music (the town theme is a tune that totally sets the atmosphere and the dungeon themes continue it), and good sound effects. You know it's a good game when a ring drops and it makes a satisfying ting, because they knew the player should love that ting. You will love the ting.

Most of all, I'm just so glad I actually liked a game in this style because I've been fascinated by them for a while now. This is a focused game with such a grasp on the more alchemical aspects of game design that it really endears you to the company that made it. Blizzard made something timeless here. So excited to see what they'll do next!

Great fun in that classic PC game way, but man does it become nonsense near the end. Amounts of ranged enemies that feel like a joke. I fired infinite health on for the last quarter to stop me abandoning it. Lovely hammy high fantasy is gradually finding it's way into my heart.

It's a strange thing to say, but all I can think of when I look at Diablo is The Legend of Mir. That was the first time I ever saw a game that looked this way. It used to get shown all the time on a Sky channel we had in the UK called GameNetwork. An Italian channel but all presented in English. They ran LoM footage constantly. I mind the presenter was always in her bare feet, but I'm sure that awakened nothing in young me.

At night the channel became Babestation.

This for me is not the greatest Diablo game. Diablo II takes that price for sure.
This came out when I was like 15 or so.
I was a teenage boy, that listened to Nirvana and Metallica, had long hair, and an attitude.
I was in a dark period doing dumb stuff with my dumb teenage 🧠.
This game with it's dark themes and wonderful gameplay made sure that I had fewer hours to do other dumb stuff.

I was reading Dragon Lance, playing MtG and DnD so having a game give me a taste of hacking and slashing, leveling, finding gear, equipping, doing magic was unbelievably awesome for an idiot kid like me.

What wonderful hours I spent in this world.

I played Diablo when I was young, and found its atmosphere oppressively bleak (in a good way!) and its solitary dungeon crawling terrifying; and these things do, still, hold up the game's first 5-or-so hours rather nicely. Everything feels refreshingly stripped-down and no-frills compared to later entries in the series, and the art and music team at Blizzard combine to make every element of the game's presentation pulsate with dark, forbidden energy.

But, by the 15th time I had to portal to town to sell some junk to buy potions (some of which you can only get from the witch, who lives ridiculously far away from everyone else!), the seams in the game's structure had become all too evident. There's no actual skill element to the combat at all, and the whole affair just boils down to a barren, rinse-and-repeat hamster-wheel--a harbinger of the Loot Crate and Rare Drop addiction-stoking that has come define many of the modern gaming era's worst traits.

Play this one for an hour or two, get the general gist and vibe to the Tristram theme, and then get out.

As a series of game mechanics Diablo has a difficult time justifying itself. The gameplay loop is simple and lacking in variety, even for its short runtime. It's far too easy to circumvent nearly any obstacle by running headlong into it while sustaining yourself on a dripfeed of outrageously cheap potions. Tactical options (especially as the warrior I chose to play) are limited, with little more than some light kiting and funneling into chokepoints as options. Perhaps multiplayer increases what you can do here and the fun involved, but I chose to play solo.

Setting aside its gameplay faults, treating Diablo as 10ish hour experience about venturing deeper and deeper into the depths of depravity, melancholy and terror proves a far more worthwhile experience, and one I don't regret in the slightest.

In my short time with it the town of Tristram may be one of the most memorable locations I've experienced in a video game. The withered foliage and lifeless fields, melancholy soundtrack that plays with each return visit and the stories of its few, tortured inhabitants all sell the image of a decaying place, torn apart by the recent experiences wrought upon it. The story told here is straightforward and yet presents such a singular attitude with unwavering confidence in itself. By the end of the adventure I felt compelled to help rid the people here of the terror that had plagued them for too long.

The seemingly unending depths of the dungeon beneath the city reinforce the mood here exceptionally well, with only the dim radius of light around your hero as you venture further and further in, systematically clearing out floors and wary of danger at every turn.

It was interesting to see just how much of the roguelike DNA that Diablo was born from still lingered in its veins. I already knew the game originated from games like Angband and had even been turn based at one point in its development, but so many of the gameplay elements of the classic roguelike hold true here. The random shrines with blessings or curses, map layouts consisting of enormous rooms linked by tiny halls and even the presence of the game's villain as a regular enemy on the final map whose death calls an immediate end to the gameplay are all charming reminders of the game's historic roots.

(Difficulty: Normal)
I cut this game some slack because it was made in 1996. For the time maybe it was fine, but in 2023 Diablo is only for nostalgia sake and to get even more of an appreciation for Diablo 2 and 3.
Diablo is very old and very broken. Let the poor old daemon die.
I would skip this game at all cost. Enemies are frustrating and unfair. Resources are finite meaning if you spec wrong or allocate materials incorrectly you will soft lock yourself. Every move you make is incredibly punishing.
Diablo gets a star for the music and sound effects. The animations and atmosphere are solid as well. Beating bosses and clearing dungeons is tedious but can be rewarding in some cases. I did enjoy optimizing my gear and finding cool items. Unfortunately, finding a good item or ANY item is very rare. Dungeons are littered with empty chests and dead ends.
Diablo has it's moments and for me I enjoyed some elements but I am happy to never revisit Diablo 1.
This game is hell.

To anyone who want to have a great time with this game - search for DevilutionX

⭐ Okay visuals - cool sprites\animations\ui but messy tilesets, and dimmed visuals, making your eyes hurt finding dropped jewelry. It makes positive impact on immersiveness, but can be frustrating
⭐⭐ Great audio - momorable sounds and music
⭐ Okay gameplay - 1 button combat exept for magic, door fiesta, some tiring mechanics like restocking on mana potions
⭐⭐ Great aesthetics - feeling of dread all around
⭐ Bonus points - innovation

I've got a huge amount of love for simple, short dungeon crawlers. Ultima 1 (or, even more, Akalabeth) is kind of the ur-example here, being short, sweet, and filled with tiny little gameplay loops. Diablo honestly falls between Ultima 1 and Akalabeth in terms of narrative complexity, but is built way more out mechanically and, obviously since it's 15 years newer than ultima, is presentationally a bit more full. Still though, at it's core it's the same thing. Get a quest, explore the somewhat random dungeon, get gold, get better gear, dive back into the dungeon. The lore and story here are cool and imagination-provoking, the presentation is all super cool and very heavy metal atmosphere, but of course the real star is the dungeon and the kill-explore-loot loop. It's the perfect length, the perfect complexity, and the perfect amount of inscrutability. My only thing is I'm not fully into the mouse driven hack and slash thing, especially at such a low resolution. Just feels needlessly imprecise. Anyways definitely play it and probably don't buy it from blizzard if you can

D2's older sister is strange to go back to as a fan of the sequel, as its goals are jarringly different. Diablo is mechanically barebones to the point where the player rarely has to care much about what to level or what equipment to use. Equipment upgrades require very little thinking about pros and cons, you can usually easily tell if a new piece of armor or weapon is better than what you have. The drop rate is so low and the varieties of equipment and enemies is so limited that someone familiar with diablolikes at large will find themselves unchallenged and never asked to think all that much. Similarly, there's none of the involved questing or sometimes-cryptic hints that define the second. It's dreadfully simple: clear a level, go down the stairs, and repeat until you're in hell.

That sounds simplistic and dry, but the huge void left by the mechanical side of things is filled by the gorgeous gothic environments and the soundtrack which are every bit as haunting and unique as D2's. As was always the case with this era of Blizzard, passion and polish ooze from every inch of this thing. Atmosphere makes this game, but that's not to say that it's "more atmospheric" than its successor. It's very possible to play Diablo 2 in a way that brings out these same feelings just as well, there's just so much other shit going on that many will never slow down and enjoy it all. In this one, though, there's no other choice, no distractions. It's all about tone, and when you step into hell and see the cold, genuinely disturbing gore that leaves just enough to the imagination to really cut deep, you GET Diablo.

I'm glad I went back and played this. I never really got into it as a kid and would quickly go back to the sequel, but there's certainly a lot to appreciate here and it deserves its place in history.

I never played this game as a youth; I was to terrified of anything even remotely hellish because I was a dumb coward child. I've beaten it multiple times since on both PC and PS1. III may be more replayable and fun and II may be more challenging and vast but no game has come close to matching the tone of this. Its just you (and some friends if you play online, I have not), a dying village of weirdos and 16 floors of nightmares and hell. The character creation and equipment being entirely up to your choices reminds me of Dark Souls in a sense. Very possibly my favorite in the series, its a shame the name is tainted by way of Activision Blizzard's horrendous workplace abuses to the point that its impossible to recommend.

Gameplay: Great
Story: Great
Controls: Great
Graphics: Great (for its time)
Length: Great