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

Reviewed on Jun 22, 2023


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