Was honestly surprised at how much of Metal Gear's bones were in place from the very beginning. Honestly, compared to other games from that era, especially 8 bit games, this fucking rocks.

The game, like many of its time, is opaque. It does give some direction, which is appreciated, but it let's many things go unsaid. Sometimes you get a "Snake, punch the walls!" and other times you just have to trial and error it until it happens.

Using a guide became vital to save myself from doubling my playtime due to back-tracking.

The save system is nowhere near as brutal as many other games of the era, but still nowhere near as friendly as the modern day.

I don't know that I would play it again, but I'm glad I played it once. It is the birth of an pillar of the video game medium. The rough diamond that Kojima would spend 25 years of his life polishing.

(Master Collection on Windows and on the Steam Deck sucks shit. MG1 and now MG2:SS both crash randomly. 30 year old games, crashing randomly. Don't give Konami your money if you can help it.)

An all-timer, so good that Chris Wilson from Grinding Gear Games is still trying to capture those halcyon days. Diablo is so much more than just the game, it is where I first interacted with the internet.

I remember being 12 years old and sitting in the chat talking to a 26 y/o woman who was going back to school for her masters. I remember getting scammed. I remember joining hacked lobbies (which we had a name for, but I can't remember what it is rn and that dumbass bing ai refuses to tell me it.) and asking for my level to be edited to 99 but forgetting I also needed to up my stats with it, thus bricking one of my characters lmao.

The gameplay, while seen as clunky and obtuse today, was like no other. While others of a similar nature came before Diablo, Diablo created everything the ARPG genre is. And that may be for the worse. In some respects, ARPGs have mostly only lived within the shadow of Diablo II, scared to venture too far off the path it laid out.

I don't even think it's a super bad thing, not in the way some other genres are stuck living as shadows of their progenitors. Tbh, murking hundreds of mobs, grabbing gear off their corpses, developing out my fucked up unviable build, and then repeating ad infinitum is a gameplay loop so pure its only matched by the slightly different flavor of Monster Hunter.

Add in satanic art design, you can't beat it. It seems like 90% of ARPGs opt for a dark, gloomy art design that calls back to Diablo II and I literally never get tired of it. It's too good, and I wish we got to see it more. Sure, we see grimdark shit all the time, moody atmospheres and sad boys, but I'm talking Satan shit, baphomet surrounding by naked dead corpses, pentagrams and sacrifices and demons and fallen angels. That is not often seen, probably in part because Christians are kinda prissy about using their religion for aesthetic. Hell, I think even Blizzard would prefer if they could move away from the satanic art style. Too bad for them, Satanism is Diablo. Dark and fucked up and Berserk-esque is Diablo.

Basically, Diablo II is dope. You know that. Only people who'd read this review are people who cut their teeth on the first, and best ARPG ever made. But if by some chance you aren't, download Diablo II Resurrected, turn on a 5 hour retrospective on Diablo, and accept and forgive it for being made 20 years ago. If you let your guard down, and give it a couple hours to fall into its rhythm, you'll be pulled right down into the pits of hell. Just like the rest of us were, back in those dark, dreary, amazing days.