The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Intro: CRPGs in general

All right, I missed the days of "Chainmail" and "Eldritch Wizardry", but I've followed the history of RPGs fairly well since the "blue book" D&D; similarly, I've loved computers since the TRS-80. Many other folks share these dual interests, and it's no surprise that several "computer RPGs" have appeared throughout the years attempting to capture the thrill of pen-and-paper RPGs with the ease-of-use and flashy appearance of a computer game.

It's also no surprise that most of them, frankly, are pretty bad. Only a few (notably the Fallout series) have established an atmosphere of any depth and even among the best of those, character interaction is shallow and character development focused on combat. Play tends to be repetitive and consists mostly of "numbers" challenges (the mighty Blurfl guarding this gate does more damage than I and has more hit points. To solve this puzzle and defeat the mighty Blurfl, I shall go get a bigger weapon and better armor).

The reason is simple: computers are great at number-crunching and terrible at interaction, so CRPGs tend to focus on combat and shallow characters. This is generally seen as a great challenge to the industry, and most modern CRPGs do their best to showcase a "deep, branching storyline" or "complex character interaction". These goals are difficult to achieve, and I have yet to see a game handle them satisfactorily. Worse, many try and fail horribly (my wife and I actually played to the end of Baldur's Gate and still aren't sure why; absolutely terrible on almost all counts).

Diablo II takes a somewhat different approach--it's ALL ABOUT combat, combat, and combat. It tries to do only one thing, and actually succeeds spectacularly well--and if you want what it provides, it's a satisfying product indeed. Read on to see what I mean.

Description: Diablo II in Particular

Gauntlet on Steroids: The Basic Gameplay

When the original Diablo came out some time ago, a frequent comment was that it was more of a supercharged version of the arcade game "Gauntlet" than a proper RPG; Diablo II does little to change this comment's applicability. The game is played in real-time, on an isometric playing field--as if you were looking down on animated miniatures from a 45-degree angle. The real-time aspect of the game means that you must have some hand-eye coordination skills to play, particularly as the interface is mostly mouse-based. Each player (D2 is playable multiplayer or single player) controls a single character, and at its heart the interface is simple--sometimes too simple, as noted later. Click on a spot and your character walks to it; click on an object and your character picks it up. Click on a monster, and your character whomps it with its primary attack; right-click, and your character uses a secondary skill.

And that's the game, pretty much. Kill critters and pick up loot.

Class in the world of D2

To make the killing-critters-and-gathering-loot experience at least somewhat different for different players or characters, D2 falls into an established pattern: character classes. There are eight to choose from: Necromancer, Amazon, Barbarian, Paladin, and Sorceress. Like most class-based RPG systems, there's basically no overlap between class skills.

Skills

Each class is defined by a set of thirty skills which take various forms, and form a branching "skill tree" of prerequisites which determine progression (for example, you can't take the "bone prison" skill without taking "bone wall". Since most of the skills really are different and since each character can allocate skill points differently, there really is a fair amount of, well, differentiation between classes. Replay looks to be fairly high, and the "get another skill with the next level" means that players are always looking forward to new abilities. Some of the skills are fairly useless, however, while others are almost overpowered (the necromancer's "corpse explosion", for example), which means that the choices really aren't as broad as you might expect. Even so, it's a lot of fun to play with.

The Bad

"Hey, that cloud of insects was carrying around a polearm!": The perils of random generation

Everything in Diablo II is random. EVERYTHING. Monster locations. Map layouts (for the most part--some maps are static). Treasure. For the most part, this works, but it works for an unfortunate reason: since basically the only thing IN the game are monsters to beat on for treasure, you really don't care how random the monsters or treasure are--it wouldn't change the game any. But it's still absurd to see skeletons carrying healing potions, chests lying around in the open or, in a moment which made my wife almost collapse laughing, swarms of tiny insects which, when killed, drop suits of armor and major weapons.

Frankly, it's absurd. But, as mentioned earlier, if you were looking for depth and complexity, this isn't your game at all.

"Die, foozle, die": The complex and sophisticated (?) plots of CRPGs

In keeping with its major themes, the "plot" of D2 is straightforward: there's an evil foozle (Diablo), with his companion foozlettes (Baal and Mephisto), and your job is to whomp them. Very straightforward. In each of the games thematic "acts" (er... "thematic" in the sense that they have different graphics and music to attach to the random monsters which are otherwise similar to the critters in the other acts), there are six "quests", which usually consist of smaller foozles which need whomping. Some of the quests pretend to be deeper (of the "get these items and combine them into a third item" variety), but since each of the quest items is guarded by a major foozleino and his minions, they amount to the same thing: whomp monsters, get loot.

Not very interesting, if that's what you were hoping for. But it does kinda tie everything together in a way, and the constant supply of evil foozles does give you major encounters to look forward to.

"Stay a while, and listen!" : Deep conversations (?) with D2 NPCs

With all these self-similar monsters out there, it's a good thing there aren't any decent NPCs to distract you with conversations or the like. Talking with NPCs in D2 either gets you a service (repair of equipment, identification of magic items, etc), introduces a new quest with a long quote, or gets you some completely useless gossip. That is the extent of character interaction in D2. If you want more, bring more players.

"Sorry--I died before I could reach my innate skill button": A spare interface isn't always wonderful

At its heart, the D2 interface is straightforward. But you can only have one secondary skill handy at a time; to change that via the mouse, you click on the "secondary skill" button, bringing up a list of buttons, one per skill. Unlabeled buttons, I might add, unless you recognize the cryptic icons thereon. After selecting the right button, you then move the cursor over the target and right-click.

In the midst of a battle, of course, you'll be dead and back in town before you do all this, but Blizzard has included assignable "hotkeys" for skills. Good so far--but you can only have up to eight. With 30 skills per character, you can see the problem--since you can only have eight readily usable, there's not much point in investing in more (except for passive skills, which are "always on"). This is a major weakness, imho.

There are other minor problems--it'd be incredibly handy to have a "restock my belt from my inventory" command, for example--but except for the dearth of skill hotkeys, it works fairly well.

Another oddity is that there's no "save game" feature--you save your character constantly, but the game world is generated anew each game session, so there's absolutely no difference between a single-player game and a multiplayer game except for the additional characters. Since the entire game is random, and there's no history with the NPCs or anything like that, this isn't too much of a problem, but it takes some getting used to.

You may have the idea from the above that I'm not too fond of Diablo II--it's a ludicrously shallow game, consisting entirely of wandering around a randomly-generated countryside with randomly generated monsters carrying randomly-generated treasure that you can take back to the cardboard-character town and sell... so that you can get better equipment to whomp on the random monsters with.

On the contrary. Diablo II is a miserable role-playing game. But it is an outstanding computer game in many ways...

The Good

"Er... could we blow some stuff up tonight?" : Simple, addictive gameplay

Jo, my wife, loves RPGs; with a masters' in English and great taste in literature, she loves creating interesting, rich characters with a depth that I as a GM find rather daunting. She despised Baldur's Gate and most other CRPGs with great intensity because they tried and failed to create depth and variety. Yet very frequently these days she asks if we have time to blow things up in Diablo II for a couple of hours.

The reason? Simple, straightforward, reasonably addictive gameplay. Jo lacks the twitch reflexes necessary to play many fast-action computer games, and appreciates D2's simple interface. D2 doesn't try to provide depth and variety, and thus doesn't fail spectacularly--a lesson many game designers should take very much to heart. The graphics are clean and easy to see, and the system requirements are extraordinarily modest for a modern game (it runs acceptably on her K6-225).

A clean interface is (usually) a wonderful thing

I complained about some aspects of the interface above, and they do bother me. But on the other hand, the interface works remarkably well about 95% of the time; the information provided for each on-screen item is minimal and efficient (moving the cursor over a monster reveals its name and significant abilities overlaid on a "fill-in" health bar--and since in D2 all you care about a monster is what it is and how close to death it is, that's all the information you need). An overlaid automap gives overall situational awareness, and large "fill-in" globes at the bottom of the screen show your health and "mana level" (for using special abilities). And since all you care about is how well you can whomp monsters, that's all you need to know about your character as well.

Do one thing, and do it well: Blizzard's maxim

In a way, that's the real theme that ties Diablo II together and makes it a successful product (and, judging by sales, it's a very successful product. It does one thing, does it well, and religiously removes anything unrelated. Diablo II is entirely about munchkinism--getting enough points to do enough damage to thump enough monsters to get enough treasure to do it all over again. There's nothing to distract you--no real plot, no real NPCs, no extraneous interface eye candy, nothing.

But because of that, it works, and works very well. I hate munchkinism in pen-and-paper RPGs, because the point there is to craft an interesting story and have dramatic fun with friends. In a game all about munchkinism, it's actually rather fun, and completely guiltless to boot. I would never, ever, ever want to play a face-to-face RPG that felt like Diablo II (I have, and it was terrible)--but Jo and I have already made plans to spend at least some of tonight with our Amazon/Necromancer team whomping faceless monsters for random loot in the jungles of Diablo II's world.

Conclusion and end notes

Diablo II succeeds because it identifies a core theme and focuses entirely and simply on that. This sort of undivided focus is a hallmark of many successful games, and that is a lesson which should be tattooed on the foreheads of many overambitious game designers--both CRPG and pen-and-paper--who try and cram too much into a conceptual space which is much too small. I can't recommend D2 on the basis of its position as a computer RPG, but I can recommend it heartily as a fun munchkin-o-rama which can provide hours of enjoyment as well as some excellent guidelines on design-for-a-purpose.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Diablo II
Author: (various) Category: Computer "rpg" Company/Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment Line: n/a Cost: about $50 Page count: n/a Playtest Review by Victor Putz on 07/30/00. Genre tags: Fantasy	Intro: CRPGs in general All right, I missed the days of "Chainmail" and "Eldritch Wizardry", but I've followed the history of RPGs fairly well since the "blue book" D&D; similarly, I've loved computers since the TRS-80. Many other folks share these dual interests, and it's no surprise that several "computer RPGs" have appeared throughout the years attempting to capture the thrill of pen-and-paper RPGs with the ease-of-use and flashy appearance of a computer game. It's also no surprise that most of them, frankly, are pretty bad. Only a few (notably the Fallout series) have established an atmosphere of any depth and even among the best of those, character interaction is shallow and character development focused on combat. Play tends to be repetitive and consists mostly of "numbers" challenges (the mighty Blurfl guarding this gate does more damage than I and has more hit points. To solve this puzzle and defeat the mighty Blurfl, I shall go get a bigger weapon and better armor). The reason is simple: computers are great at number-crunching and terrible at interaction, so CRPGs tend to focus on combat and shallow characters. This is generally seen as a great challenge to the industry, and most modern CRPGs do their best to showcase a "deep, branching storyline" or "complex character interaction". These goals are difficult to achieve, and I have yet to see a game handle them satisfactorily. Worse, many try and fail horribly (my wife and I actually played to the end of Baldur's Gate and still aren't sure why; absolutely terrible on almost all counts). Diablo II takes a somewhat different approach--it's ALL ABOUT combat, combat, and combat. It tries to do only one thing, and actually succeeds spectacularly well--and if you want what it provides, it's a satisfying product indeed. Read on to see what I mean. Description: Diablo II in Particular Gauntlet on Steroids: The Basic Gameplay When the original Diablo came out some time ago, a frequent comment was that it was more of a supercharged version of the arcade game "Gauntlet" than a proper RPG; Diablo II does little to change this comment's applicability. The game is played in real-time, on an isometric playing field--as if you were looking down on animated miniatures from a 45-degree angle. The real-time aspect of the game means that you must have some hand-eye coordination skills to play, particularly as the interface is mostly mouse-based. Each player (D2 is playable multiplayer or single player) controls a single character, and at its heart the interface is simple--sometimes too simple, as noted later. Click on a spot and your character walks to it; click on an object and your character picks it up. Click on a monster, and your character whomps it with its primary attack; right-click, and your character uses a secondary skill. And that's the game, pretty much. Kill critters and pick up loot. Class in the world of D2 To make the killing-critters-and-gathering-loot experience at least somewhat different for different players or characters, D2 falls into an established pattern: character classes. There are eight to choose from: Necromancer, Amazon, Barbarian, Paladin, and Sorceress. Like most class-based RPG systems, there's basically no overlap between class skills. Skills Each class is defined by a set of thirty skills which take various forms, and form a branching "skill tree" of prerequisites which determine progression (for example, you can't take the "bone prison" skill without taking "bone wall". Since most of the skills really are different and since each character can allocate skill points differently, there really is a fair amount of, well, differentiation between classes. Replay looks to be fairly high, and the "get another skill with the next level" means that players are always looking forward to new abilities. Some of the skills are fairly useless, however, while others are almost overpowered (the necromancer's "corpse explosion", for example), which means that the choices really aren't as broad as you might expect. Even so, it's a lot of fun to play with. The Bad "Hey, that cloud of insects was carrying around a polearm!": The perils of random generation Everything in Diablo II is random. EVERYTHING. Monster locations. Map layouts (for the most part--some maps are static). Treasure. For the most part, this works, but it works for an unfortunate reason: since basically the only thing IN the game are monsters to beat on for treasure, you really don't care how random the monsters or treasure are--it wouldn't change the game any. But it's still absurd to see skeletons carrying healing potions, chests lying around in the open or, in a moment which made my wife almost collapse laughing, swarms of tiny insects which, when killed, drop suits of armor and major weapons. Frankly, it's absurd. But, as mentioned earlier, if you were looking for depth and complexity, this isn't your game at all. "Die, foozle, die": The complex and sophisticated (?) plots of CRPGs In keeping with its major themes, the "plot" of D2 is straightforward: there's an evil foozle (Diablo), with his companion foozlettes (Baal and Mephisto), and your job is to whomp them. Very straightforward. In each of the games thematic "acts" (er... "thematic" in the sense that they have different graphics and music to attach to the random monsters which are otherwise similar to the critters in the other acts), there are six "quests", which usually consist of smaller foozles which need whomping. Some of the quests pretend to be deeper (of the "get these items and combine them into a third item" variety), but since each of the quest items is guarded by a major foozleino and his minions, they amount to the same thing: whomp monsters, get loot. Not very interesting, if that's what you were hoping for. But it does kinda tie everything together in a way, and the constant supply of evil foozles does give you major encounters to look forward to. "Stay a while, and listen!" : Deep conversations (?) with D2 NPCs With all these self-similar monsters out there, it's a good thing there aren't any decent NPCs to distract you with conversations or the like. Talking with NPCs in D2 either gets you a service (repair of equipment, identification of magic items, etc), introduces a new quest with a long quote, or gets you some completely useless gossip. That is the extent of character interaction in D2. If you want more, bring more players. "Sorry--I died before I could reach my innate skill button": A spare interface isn't always wonderful At its heart, the D2 interface is straightforward. But you can only have one secondary skill handy at a time; to change that via the mouse, you click on the "secondary skill" button, bringing up a list of buttons, one per skill. Unlabeled buttons, I might add, unless you recognize the cryptic icons thereon. After selecting the right button, you then move the cursor over the target and right-click. In the midst of a battle, of course, you'll be dead and back in town before you do all this, but Blizzard has included assignable "hotkeys" for skills. Good so far--but you can only have up to eight. With 30 skills per character, you can see the problem--since you can only have eight readily usable, there's not much point in investing in more (except for passive skills, which are "always on"). This is a major weakness, imho. There are other minor problems--it'd be incredibly handy to have a "restock my belt from my inventory" command, for example--but except for the dearth of skill hotkeys, it works fairly well. Another oddity is that there's no "save game" feature--you save your character constantly, but the game world is generated anew each game session, so there's absolutely no difference between a single-player game and a multiplayer game except for the additional characters. Since the entire game is random, and there's no history with the NPCs or anything like that, this isn't too much of a problem, but it takes some getting used to. You may have the idea from the above that I'm not too fond of Diablo II--it's a ludicrously shallow game, consisting entirely of wandering around a randomly-generated countryside with randomly generated monsters carrying randomly-generated treasure that you can take back to the cardboard-character town and sell... so that you can get better equipment to whomp on the random monsters with. On the contrary. Diablo II is a miserable role-playing game. But it is an outstanding computer game in many ways... The Good "Er... could we blow some stuff up tonight?" : Simple, addictive gameplay Jo, my wife, loves RPGs; with a masters' in English and great taste in literature, she loves creating interesting, rich characters with a depth that I as a GM find rather daunting. She despised Baldur's Gate and most other CRPGs with great intensity because they tried and failed to create depth and variety. Yet very frequently these days she asks if we have time to blow things up in Diablo II for a couple of hours. The reason? Simple, straightforward, reasonably addictive gameplay. Jo lacks the twitch reflexes necessary to play many fast-action computer games, and appreciates D2's simple interface. D2 doesn't try to provide depth and variety, and thus doesn't fail spectacularly--a lesson many game designers should take very much to heart. The graphics are clean and easy to see, and the system requirements are extraordinarily modest for a modern game (it runs acceptably on her K6-225). A clean interface is (usually) a wonderful thing I complained about some aspects of the interface above, and they do bother me. But on the other hand, the interface works remarkably well about 95% of the time; the information provided for each on-screen item is minimal and efficient (moving the cursor over a monster reveals its name and significant abilities overlaid on a "fill-in" health bar--and since in D2 all you care about a monster is what it is and how close to death it is, that's all the information you need). An overlaid automap gives overall situational awareness, and large "fill-in" globes at the bottom of the screen show your health and "mana level" (for using special abilities). And since all you care about is how well you can whomp monsters, that's all you need to know about your character as well. Do one thing, and do it well: Blizzard's maxim In a way, that's the real theme that ties Diablo II together and makes it a successful product (and, judging by sales, it's a very successful product. It does one thing, does it well, and religiously removes anything unrelated. Diablo II is entirely about munchkinism--getting enough points to do enough damage to thump enough monsters to get enough treasure to do it all over again. There's nothing to distract you--no real plot, no real NPCs, no extraneous interface eye candy, nothing. But because of that, it works, and works very well. I hate munchkinism in pen-and-paper RPGs, because the point there is to craft an interesting story and have dramatic fun with friends. In a game all about munchkinism, it's actually rather fun, and completely guiltless to boot. I would never, ever, ever want to play a face-to-face RPG that felt like Diablo II (I have, and it was terrible)--but Jo and I have already made plans to spend at least some of tonight with our Amazon/Necromancer team whomping faceless monsters for random loot in the jungles of Diablo II's world. Conclusion and end notes Diablo II succeeds because it identifies a core theme and focuses entirely and simply on that. This sort of undivided focus is a hallmark of many successful games, and that is a lesson which should be tattooed on the foreheads of many overambitious game designers--both CRPG and pen-and-paper--who try and cram too much into a conceptual space which is much too small. I can't recommend D2 on the basis of its position as a computer RPG, but I can recommend it heartily as a fun munchkin-o-rama which can provide hours of enjoyment as well as some excellent guidelines on design-for-a-purpose. Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 5 (Excellent!)