Use link shop.ekster.com/theactman or code ACTMAN to get up to 35% off. Diablo is a monstrous franchise these days, it is massively successful and popular. Yet, the first game is mostly overshadowed by it's sequels. Let's go back and visit the Demonic roots of the Diablo series and see how well the first game holds up. But more importantly, we'll find out If Diablo 1 Is A MASTERPIECE?!
My uncle was a fan day 1. We played this series for so long. Diablo 4 was coming out and we were grinding the beta all hyped. Unfortunately, he suddenly passed away a week before it came out. Even though Diablo 4 is a huge joke, I made a character with his name so he can forever live in it. Rip uncle Max. I miss you buddy.
We approve this message! I first played this game when i was 9 or 10. I dont think any other game has left as much of an impression on me than Diablo 1. Enjoyed with every minute and talking point. Ah the memories! 666/10
Before she passed away, this was my sister’s favorite game. This and Diablo 2 were great ways for to relieve stress. Edit: I should probably clarify better. I remember backing from School when I was younger and quite a few times, I would see my sister playing this game. She was so engrossed with all the blizzard games mainly the first diablo games and Starcraft 1 and BW. Whenever I tried to play these games, she always did her best to help get through (I was probably about 8 or 10 when I really started to try Diablo). Even when she got married and had kids of her own, she would still try to play Diablo 2 whenever she could. She lost her battle with MS last year and though it's been a while the pain won't ever really go away. She was a huge reason that I became a PC gamer in the first place. So I probably could of worded my first response a little bit better.
I wonder if God lets her play diablo in heaven 🤔 seriously I'm curious, seems like a conflict of interest 😅 Seriously though sorry for your loss. Hopefully they make another good one so it brings up some of the nostalgia and good memories you made with her playing the original 🙂
For me Butcher was even more iconic for D1 than Diablo himself. Everything about that quest was perfect. The build up with dying townsman, later checking for any clues with the townsfolk, Farnham having PTSD. Then you go inside, you are still pretty weak, level 2 of the catacombs, you see the chamber filled with horrifically mutilated bodies, then you open and hear "fresh meat" and run. Having Butcher that early with so crazy stats, damage, speed was a genius move by the devs. I played along my younger brother and we had about 9-10 yo at the time. Butcher was so scary and difficult that we asked our dad for help. Good memories.
I agree. Probably it's because not many players get to see and fight Diablo himself, but 99% of players will meet, unexpectedly, the Butcher, and he's the first thing to get your smile off your face and say "This isn't your standard simple fun game where the world spins around you"
Something the Act Man doesn't mention (he may not be aware of it actually) is that the iconic "shove the soulstone into my forehead" ending cutscene was completely unintended by the original developers. The cinematics were made by a completely different team, and while they could discuss and suggest things they had no real control over them. Originally they intended the ending to be a lot more upbeat, and were absolutely shocked when they saw what had been made. By the time they got it it would have been very difficult to redo it, so they just made it work.
They could have just cut with him holding the stone. I guess the original idea might have been to shatter it, or store it in a box. I get the sense that the grim ending grew on em.
10 місяців тому+185
"Hello, my friend. Stay awhile and listend" This line is iconic. Diablo's got a special place in my heart, cuz was a very dear friend that showed it to me, and he passed away last year. Every time I play it, it feels like he's close to me ❤
As a child I played it through with my friend in grade school. I still know the poem 'Halls of the blind' by heart. It was such a unique and unforgiving experience, we were scared, we were thrilled. The feeling of hearing the Tristram theme when you teleported out of a bad situation was so relieveing too. Even though how eerie the music was, in the end, it became a relief. I remember fearing that the deeper we descend to hell, the more likely it is that Tristram will be overrun. And the first time the travel point to hell appeared, we shit our pants. It was such a unique experience. And that scream. I remember always skipping at as a kid, because how scary it was.
My grandmother played the first Diablo. She was my introduction to video games. I remember sitting hours with her watching her play Diablo, Nancy Drew, Myst, Syberia, and the original Legend of Zelda on the NES. She's gone now, but in some sense I still get to share time with her while gaming.
The voice acting in this game is AMAZING. It's soooo iconic, soooo memorable. All the little quotes, everyone is so dark yet full of life! Thanks for proving it isn't nostalgia, it isn't rose colored glasses, Diablo truly is one of the best games ever made.
if it wasnt nostalgia then newer generations would be able to pick the game up and it would still be popular. but that isnt the case. it literally is nostalgia.
"Big! Big cleaver killing all my friends. Couldn't stop him, had to run away, couldn't save them. Trapped in a room with so many bodies...so many friends...noooooooooo!" - Farnham the Drunk
Some of my most important gaming memories come from this gem. It caused my heart rate to shoot through the roof when I encountered a bunch of demons in a cave. I literally had to pause the game and physically go to another room to calm down for several minutes before I could continue playing. I had an absolute blast.
As a member of the "ring of 1000" beta tester, I remember the utter joy when I received my Beta CD in my college dorm mail box in the mid 90s. I will die happy knowing my name will forever be linked to this masterpiece 😂
please, in the name of us all, do an copy of that disc if you are still in the possession. I really doubt that it will still be any good (CD's lifespan is only like 10-15 years (Vs. Bluray 300+ years for example)) and I recently realised that even some of my mint condition ps1 games are already broken, but there's a slim chance that you can still use your CD, store it on your PC and upload it in 10 years, when you will be 100% safe from any copyrights.
@@Drejkol sadly I misplaced it 😭, we were spoiled with 10baseT in our dorms in the mid 90s, so physical media wasnt as cherished as you may think. I regret not holding on to it. I do recall being in a rather plain presentation, not pressed but burned CD possibly, it's hazy to remember, probably why it was tossed, as you see back in those days throwing out CDs you know longer really need was common practice.
@@Drejkol The phenomenon of "disc-rot" in optical media is when the bonded layers on a disc fail and the reflective metallic layer is exposed to air, allowing oxidation and delamination to occur . This can be because of direct physical damage (as in a big gouge that pierces the layers), or from longer periods of poor storage, such as being somewhere where humidity is high (like a leaky basement or the state of Florida), or being frequently left in the open to be exposed to direct sunlight for long periods of time. It can also be due to poor manufacturing, where the bonding wasn't done correctly, in which case the disc would still work, but it has a limited time span. There are certain known batches of disc media which are known and identified as having been poorly manufactured, like how certain movies on Laser Disc are still perfectly fine, while others are infamous for withering. If your CDs weren't of a shoddy make, and you've treated them well, then they're probably still perfectly good. Even if they have scratches which cause reading problems, often those can be polished away with a special machine, typically they're a very superficial kind of damage.
I preached for years how no ARPG captured the claustrophobic horror of Diablo 1 and i have no one, content creators or devs alike, seen praising this game for this exact reasons you presented so perfectly in your video. The horror of this game lies in how it delivers story telling and the combat/exploration. I hope more people will see this and appreciate the game for this reasons. It is one of a kind and i regularly come back to it with the hell mod and its plethora of classes and extra quests and character building mechanics. It would be great to see a dev studio pick up the strengths of D1 and make a modernised take on this unique ARPG formula.
I grew up playing Diablo 1 and 2, thanks to one of my aunts. I'm 33 years old and they're still top tier games to me. I can remember spending countless hours playing Diablo 2 with my cousins and aunt. These two games helped shaped me as a gamer today.
tried it, gameplay is too slow and boring. It's just nostalgia for people I think. theres a reason people dont play old games if they didnt grow up in that era.@@SCDJMU
@yangpaan453 I've played games from before my time and enjoyed them. A good game is a good game, no matter when. Can't speak for D1 tho, I've never played. But just based off what I've seen it looks decent. You gotta remember in the 90s there was A LOT of shit games that played like ass or had God awful controls, or both
Its ok if you don't like it, you are allowed your opinion, but theres a reason it was one of the fastest selling games of its time, people loved it and still do. As for the nostalgia argument, yeah im sure it plays a role but its a lazy argument for people who dont want to give old games a try. Why are you trying to convince people not to try something they may end up enjoying?
AcKsHuAlLy, there are more than 8 surviving people in Tristram, but you can only piece that through NPC dialogue. I can only think of 2 immediately and that's Ogden's wife - Garda and Gillian's grandmother. Thank you for tuning in Nayolak's Diablo trivia corner!
Everytime I see a new Act Man video uploaded, I can always safely assume it's going to have some of the most passionate, unique and interesting insight into gaming around right now, all while cracking jokes and keeping an upbeat and entertaining energy. I'm never dissapointed.
He used to be 100% more positive, like this video here. But ActMan lately also engages in a lot of unnecessary internet drama. Anyways, his style is unique and I am still around. Content made by a gamer to gamers. But I do still think he should stop engaing in useless drama.
24 years later, i can still recall the halls of the blind poem. This game will be eternally in my heart and i will always give it a replay every now and then. I spend 1 1/2 years playing it back then.
The Butcher to me is the most memorable first boss. The first time playing, I really liked how the townspeople would hype him up. You'd starrt off the first level thinking its a breeze, and when you finally encounter the Butcher, you get you ass whooped. After my first encounter with the Butcher, I knew I had to grind a bit more to strengthen myself. The Bucther is the quitessential first boss.
Simple and effective. Walk into a room full of carnage... "Ahhh FRESH MEAT!" Diablo 3 was more like introducing a WWE wrestler and then having a lame battle. It should just be a mindless brawl to fit the character. A for effort, D for result.
I don't know if it's just me, but I can't stop watching this video (it's maybe 7th time already), not just because of nostalgia, but because how GOOD the presentation is... This tells you exactly what the titles says, how this game was ahead of it's time and how huge impact it had moving forward. It's really sad where Blizzard ended up in the end... Thank you Act Man for bringing me back when I was 5 years old, when I played this MASTERPIECE! PS. When my dad started to install this game on PC, when the installation window booted up, I ran as fast as I could out of his room...
People habe no idea what old school internet was like when you'd do an iron man with 2 other good player's online. Warrior, rogue, sorc....go inside and never come back out. Use whatever you find and mske it work.
Fun fact. I still have my original disc copy. Also fun tip. You can do the first few levels of the dungeon then start a new game and retain your level and then run through them again to gain some more levels. This doesn't necessarily put you way ahead, but it helps for sure. Also there's an item duplication glitch that again helps, but... the game is still so hard regardless.
Yeah, the difficulty expressed in this video is misleading because you can literally restart and restart as much a you want. If you have enough patience, you can potentially steamroll the game. And it's an important feature due to the randomness of the game. You can have bad luck and not getting anything good your entire playthrough.
I'll never forget this when I finally was able to pass this game as a kid I got the bad ending where the prince died and it weighed on me for years until in my adulthood I found out I got the bad ending 😭
The greatest of all the Diablos. One Dungeon that goes deeper and deeper underground. No running around outside. No teleportation way points. An artistic achievement that had to prove itself on its merit alone before Diablo became a franchise filled with lore and a "live service" universe for no-lifers who expect to spend 3,000 hrs in a single video game collecting pets and baubles to look ever sillier for their online friends. All hail Diablo.
I always liked that it was fairly straightforward about your goal, you have one main 'Quest', get to the end of the dungeon, there are other Quests but they're mostly along the way and needing only a bit of chatting in town to get going. Shows how it was inspired by Rogue and is truly one of the earlier Roguelikes (though you could say missing permadeath is 'casual' and disqualifies it) done outside of ascii, which was great for the time. Modern Diablos and the other games like it are so 'MMORPG lite', especially with MMORPGs themselves being more instanced-based these days, it all blends together for me and I don't really like any of it. Diablo 1 is a totally different game, really.
@@KnownAsKenji I just played Diablo 1 for the first time over the last few weeks and couldn't help but think how much potential there is still to be tapped in its game design. Yet no developer seems to be making a Diablo 1 clone, they all just copy Diablo 2. Given how much game development has advanced since 1996, it doesn't seem to me like it would be too difficult for even a small development studio to create a more expansive version of Diablo 1 with a larger selection of possible quests and longer more varied dungeon(s). It certainly seems like it would be much easier than attempting to follow in Diablo 2's footsteps.
I played this game for the first time after watching you talk about it in the diablo 4 video. I can confirm that your enjoyment from the game is not just nostalgia. I was surprised by the atmosphere of the game, it was still creepy despite how old it is. The loot was not too much and felt rewarding. Overcoming the stun lock mechanic was fun in its own way. I also think the voice acting aged really well. Overall, I was surprised how much I enjoyed the experience, I'm even planning to play beezlebub mod. Thank you for the videos. Thid helps me try games I would take forever to try out.
Ive rewatched this too many times due to the fact of how well this videos been crafted, loved every second of it Act Man keep up with the fantastic art and work.
I don't think I ever posted a message on youtube (that said, my memory could have lapsed as I have inserted the soulstone in my skull a fair few times now), but I think this video deserves it, in less than 45 minutes you have summarized exactly what Diablo is to me. That feeling of apprehension, fear and cautiousness. If anything, it's made me want to go down those corridors once again. It is very interesting to reflect on the slower gameplay and the popularity of WoW HC: there is definitely a public for these games where the difficulty doesn't come from fast and furious fights, you are showered with loot and you deal millions of damage. I long for a new game that gives me stat increments that can be counted on my hand, where hitting a mob for 300 damages is amazing and you need to be careful how/where you pull monsters. In any case, I just want to give you a massive thank you for the work that you have put in. It's really brought back amazing memories.
I agree. The slower pace of these types of games makes the so enjoyable compared to Diablo 3/4 or PoE. But I also love Classic Everquest so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
Diablo 1 is considered hard because when you died you were done. In D2 I think Duriel was hardest boss related to your level because of his frost effect and in the last patch when you enter his room he immediately jumps you, played it last year with some friends on PS4, we were kinda dead before the load screen finished.
@@alexg7146 that was a bug in the original game which got patched out and apparently seems to have been patched back into the remaster lmao also diablo 1 is hard if you pick the fighter, the ranger and mage have an easier time
thought the same thing for years about Duriel until i played Resurected and began checking hint, tricks and build. I then realize you can down a bunch of (i think) yellow potion (Tawning potion or something like this) and it gives you ton of resist cold and freeze. Duriel becomes WAY more easy after that.@@alexg7146
I find it the opposite! I think duriel defs was the hardest part of d2 tho. In d2 i was scared of how hard hell was gunna be because hell was like impossible for me in d1, but it was so much easier for me in d2 lol
i remember finding diablo at walmart in the 90's. It was miss-marked to almost half the price of any of the games on the shelf next to it. I immediately dragged my dad over to look at it, being 10 at the time. My dad was happy i found it and bought it for me, one of my greatest gaming memories.
It's fantastic that you are giving Diablo 1 it's due credit as one of the best games ever made. For me personally, this game is near perfect. I replay it every year and still have a huge blast. I wish you would've added more original soundtrack into your video - the catacombs (act 2) is my favourite part of the game and the music is so awesome and absolutely flawless at setting up the ambiance. Also, you should've mentioned that quests were also randomized and you could've started this game and played all to the end and never even seen the Butcher, Leoric or even Lachdanan ad be none the wiser. It also addes to the replayability. One time I've had to replay the game 3 times to get Leoric quest... I did play Diablo with friends locally - but my internet connection at the time was too slow to play online (my 486 barely chugged the game - if you thing walking was slow in town, try to play it on a 486 instead of a pentium and You will discover that it's even more ambiance building when each step take twice as long) I've beaten Diablo back in 1997, but I still remember the dread of facing the Butcher (I was afraid to open his room because I've seen what was inside) or Leoric - Leoric especially was hard as balls for me, back in the day. Diablo for some reason was quite easy for my first playthrough - I must've been lucky and had some good items on, because it took me years to figure out that the most important stat for beating the late game was fire, lightning and magic resists and extra damage on a weapon. Maybe I had the Stormshield :) The acting of the characters was pretty fine for me - actually having fully voiced character was still pretty new back then - when most games had just text, having voices and text was a fantastic boon for me to learn English as a foreigner. Only Adria and Wirt sound pretty cringy, all others are great - even characters like Gillian or Franham - they have some great monologues and are worth to listen. The monologues and character depth is even better than in Diablo 2 - just try to listen to all the monologues and compare it with Diablo 1.
Great video presentation you hit it right on all points. As part dinosaur, I fondly remember loading this up with our CD into the tray and seeing that devilish screen and dark music greet us with "connect to the internet" at the top 😄. I still play D1 to this day, presently a rogue in the D1 belzebub mod. The replayability is always there with this fantastic game.
Friend of mine, we both couch co-op complete Diablo 3 with a friend. The 3 of us beat it together. I played Diablo 1 on the ps1 with one of those 2 friends I completed Diablo 3 with together, a couple years later. I asked him which he preferred and enjoyed more. Without hesitation he said, “Diablo 1.” Even people who don’t have the nostalgia, know what a great game it is.
This was the first mainstream pc game I played at 7-8 years old. I still play it and the mod "The hell" by Mordor. Definitely worth giving the mod a try imo for all the added content and readding characters and quests that got scrapped from the original game.
My favorite way to kill The Butcher was to clear the level of every other monsters, lead him to a doorway and close the door, then pelt him with arrows.
What I love about Diablo is that how toned down and basic it is and yet complex enough to be compelling. I feel like new ARPGs cannot go back to that level of simplicity anymore. :(
For it's time and genre Diablo was actually quite complex, not full blown RPG complex, but it introduced complexity to the action genre that previously wasn't really a thing. People got used to that, and then Diablo 2 introduced more complexity, until people got used to that, and so on.
Also it looks like you mostly played as the warrior here, which as you mentioned is super easy at the beginning but very difficult at the end (if you’re mostly melee, which warriors usually would be though). The sorcerer, however, is the opposite - you will suffer with him so much in the early game but in the end game, you will be ethering whole floors.
I'm so glad a larger, well known channel like yours covered this game. This game was formative in my interest in games and writing, and its been a tragedy to see what's become of the Diablo series over time. I still listen to the OST to this day! I still have all the old books and manuals complete with old poetry and sketches from people like Metzen. Yes, poems lol. When I was really little, the red screen and frantic whacking of the enemies when you died used to scare me LOL
There was two other special elements of Diablo 1. 1. Diablo 1 was one of the first of it's kind to create the online lobby system and RPG multiplayer before every Steam game started to have online multiplayer. 2. Diablo 1 had friendly fire. Meaning it had another layer of challenge when playing through with friends for you not to hit them And guess what this friendly fire was ALSO the PvP. You have to be weary that your allies might not turn against you and there was no shear way to know if they are other than the actual socialization communication you have done with them. They can shoot an arrow at you from behind if you weren't careful.
This video is such a godsend. I played Diablo 1 on the PS1 when I was 9 years old. Currently 35 now, and I have always had tremendous respect for David Brevik for his vision on Diablo 1 & 2. It just breaks my heart how that style of play is lost by the monetization model as well as the high damage numbers and unbalanced stats.
Brevik wanted scummy monetization back then too. He wanted to sell item packs on CDs but it was too expensive to implement. It would have sucked if they could make it the way he wanted to back then. He's not a hero or a good guy. He was a money grubbing scumbag like most game devs these days.
Somebody should do some serious research and go back to these "limitations" and continue this legacy with another masterpiece and dark atmosphere. Seems highly unlikely that anyone will take that risk.
@@ITSAHARDNUGLIFE Once AI can code 95% of the game for me and generate the art, I totally will be building a new old school Diablo game. Also want to do a Cyberpunk themed one. Retirement goals if I ever get there.
Such a great video! I feel like the original Diablo doesn't get the love it deserves. I literally grew up playing Diablo 1, and eventually 2, and it's still fun to return (Especially with the Beelzebub mod)... In fact, this video makes me want to stream a new playthrough. If done right, I'd love to see a proper remake.
Blizzard needs to make a true diablo mmorpg or a true diablo action rpg with online and offline co-op. If theyd make one good complete game we fans would play it for the next 20 years and buy every dlc they make... do they not want our money for the next 20 years???
Just wanted to thank you for making this this video. It was a real nostalgic trip down memory lane for me. I fondly remember playing this with my best friend in South Africa who I lost contact with. I was 15 year's old again for 44 mins.
A go-to strategy for playing a warrior in the vanilla game (as in, not Beelzebub or Tchernobog) in the early game is to max out Dexterity as quickly as possible. You can get by with 30 strength for a very long time and use +Magic items for reading books. It makes you a tad fragile but you max Dexterity by level 9 or so and have gobs of ToHit% and Armor Class. Especially if you do what I do and troll Griswold for a 13AC leather armor, 4AC skull cap, and 8AC small shield. I also grab a war hammer as quickly as possible - it doesn’t do as much max damage as a Claymore or Broad Sword but it has a higher minimum damage and does 50% more damage to undead, which is most of what you’re facing in the church, and is still useful in the catacombs to an extent. Also take the Undead Crown from Leoric if you’re playing single player. That basically makes you a walking buzzsaw for the butcher, Leoric, hell you should be fairly survivable through the early Catacombs to pick up Arkaine’s Valor in single player. Later on, your holy grail will be a King’s Bastard Sword of Speed or Haste - either works, you’ll hit the animation breakpoint for fastest attack on a warrior either way, and King’s as a prefix adds both damage% and +ToHit%. This advice is more for all classes, but max your resists early from jewelry if you can. Emerald and Obsidian prefixes are white whales. And Stormshield is basically THE best shield in the game, though an Obsidian shield with a +health suffix will also be fine. You can look for hidden shrines and set up your inventory such that you’re always boosting the durability of whatever item you want. It’s permanent and if you can get it to 255 it becomes indestructible due to that number being what signifies indestructible status. If you’re willing to G R I N D, you can have a loadout that would make people swear you’re running hacks. I disagree when you say that Beelzebub is the definitive way to play the game. It’s a fun mod, but it changes far too much to be faithful to the original. The definitive way to play the game is actually the DevilutionX source port, able to run on basically anything that gcc can compile for that has an SDL2 port. :) You have a lot of the quality of life fixes, but the game is still basically the same.
My context on how good this game was: I used to play D@D before it was popular back in the 90s. My mom did not want me to play it because the whole "you'll start worshipping vampires and kill me in my sleep" meme was still alive back then. We had one of the BEST DMs ever. I can't stress this enough. Dude would go to GENCON and sell out his campaigns everytime. One of the highest ranking DMs on WoTC. We were so lucky to have him as a DM looking back. The campaigns he made for us were INSANE. And despite all that you actually didn't mind if your character was knocked out of a fight (you always cared if they were dead(dead)), because it meant you got to go play D1 on his pc while everyone else kept battling. This was my introduction to arpgs and as an avid fan still to this day, I'll never forget this time I spent in D1.
I still vividly remember playing this the first time when I was 16 years old during my first internship at a games store. I bought it a couple days later to play it at home. Needless to say it really sucked me in until this very day.
It wasn't the antithesis to other RPG's, that is a bit of historical revisionism. Consoles had a large JRPG influence because those games happened to be huge hits in Japan and those were less dark. Regular RPG's were all basically dark and medieval killing demons and skeletons and D&D oriented. I remember when Diablo came out, it came across as a standard RPG classes of knights in armor killing monsters. The monsters from Hell thing just reminded me of Doom which was pretty much on trend. These games came from text based MUD's that were a dime a dozen and they were all wandering through crypts killing monsters and looting, just without the graphical front end (all text). It was original for being real time, although Diablo was originally created as a turn based RPG like the MUD genre was. They shifted to real time and that was the big breakthrough. For me, trying to say it wasn't like other RPG's is pushing it, it was bog standard D&D shit but the first really well made real time hack and slash looter.
What a great video! I remember I dedicated my whole spring break to playing Diablo shortly after it came out. It's an absolute masterpiece. It was a time when hardcore gamers made games for gamers and without being dictated by greedy execs. And, yes, I'm one of the rare ones who actually beat the game back in the spring of '97 (I bought it a few months after it came out)! Like so many others, the music and the Butcher "Ahh... Fresh Meat!" and so many other encounters and sounds will be forever engraved in my brain.
I actually did a playthrough of Diablo and the original Diablo 2 just last year! The original Diablo is a true classic to me, right up there with games like Super Mario Bros. and Doom.
As someone that plays Diablo 2: Resurrected as his main game, and has played Diablo for his entire life at this point, hearing the Tristram theme kick in STILL gives me chills.
I remember beating this game for the first time maybe a year or or two after it came out in the late 90’s. I went over to my friend Dom’s house after school and we played it on his old CRT monitor Pc, getting through hell and beating Diablo for the first time is a great memory
My favourite game of all time and my favourite Diablo game. Back when gamers hadn't been convinced to think they needed : * 16 head shapes for their character * 16 hair colours for their character * 16 eye brow styles for their character * 16 skin tones for their character * Motion Blur * Shadows settings * Texture settings * Ray Tracing * DLSS * Graphical 'Style' modes * DLCs * + 400 other settings taking the developers 50% of the game's development time to include and hope it's what players wanted. All we asked for back then was that the game supported our Mouse and Keyboard. And be GOOD. That's it.
I'm working on a game that should be next Diablo 1 I love the game and played it for years and now when I got skills and people I decided to follow my dream and create This Dark DND adventure like Diablo1. I hope to finish the project and see people fall in love with the game/ difficulty and darkness like i once did
This game music takes me way back to 1999, when I was a broke pvt in the army stationed in Hawaii and couldn’t afford to do anything when off duty. One of the guys shipping out sold me his PlayStation and a stack of games for $300 and in the evening and on the weekends all I did was play video games in the barracks, until I started making rank and made enough money to actually do things off base. Even when I wasn’t playing it I could walk past any other barracks room and hear this music and the goldeneye music. Although my only worldly possessions were a 25” TV, a plantation, Diablo, RE2, FF7, tenchu, metal gear, Warcraft, Risk, and tony hawk….I would give everything I own now to go back to that year and live it again. The following year one of my buddies got sent to Europe and he sold me his Pentium 3, PC with windows 98se, a voodoo2 gfx card and a bunch of late 90s pc games for like $500 total. It was the first PC I ever owned. What a nostalgia rush from hearing that damn theme song, I had to watch the video 3 times because I kept spacing out for like 10 minutes and just started reminiscing about that entire year every time I heard the theme 😆
You should make a decently long review of Diablo 2, as while 1 set the ground work for action RPGs, 2 improved in many ways, which I think is worth mentioning.
Diablo 2 defined the genre in a way that's still followed to this day. Every Blizzard game does it, but not as much as Diablo 2 did for hack and slash.
@@christopherniewiadomski4075 Yeah, that's kind of what I've heard. It really did a lot for evolving action RPGs from Diablo 1, with things like skill trees and such.
Diablo 2 elevated the series to a mainstream hit, however some D1 fans were quite disappointed when the D2 came out, because it shifted its tone from gothic horror towards action fantasy and was much more colorful. Ironically, it's a similar criticism Diablo3 got when it released, however the D3 pushed it too far. D2 made the atmosphere lighter, but at the same time offered a generational leap in gameplay improvements, so most of the naysayers forgave it. D3 couldn't defend itself, because almost everything was a downgrade.
@@kazioo2 Well, maybe, but I think that that is a pretty ridiculous reason to be "disappointed" with a game, just because it's not so grimdark that it goes straight into grimderp territory. Because if you look back at D1's art style, it's simple but also seems like it was trying way too hard to be scary and all that. I mean, I wasn't the biggest fan of D3, but I hardly think that its art style was as bad as some people make it out to be. It honestly just felt like updated designs and such rather than trying to change the themes. I just think that far too many people tend to try to cling to the old ways and just assume that they were all just 100 times better simply because they're older.
@@christopherniewiadomski4075D2 nailed something very early that is common psychology in slots - create a gameplay loop that provides the 3 components: 1) You know you will get a reward if you do activity X eventually (in d2 case loot) 2) The reward can widely vary 3) The task is repeteable The genius twist of Blizzard was to then use the above to drive fighting stronger and stronger monsters hence repeating the entire loop but with increasing risk/reward. It works amazingly well, and D2 probably still has the best loot system ever designed.
I find it so very odd how now diablo 1 and 2 are getting as much love as they deserve given how bad 4 was and now 3 is the really hit or miss one. Hope The Man goes on to review 2 and try 3 finally.
I'm glad you mentioned class specific gear. That's one of the things that made me fall in love with the Dark Souls/soulslike genre in general. You can build your character how ever you want. It crushed my soul when I found out that so much of the items in D4 were class specific. I thought they learned their lesson from D3. Guess not.
They learned that you can charge the same amount of money for the same shit for every class seperately. When you wonder why something is designed in certain way in a blizzard game the answer is always money.
Lesson? The lesson they learned is that games don’t have to be perfect to turn a profit. Slap a battle pass and some MTX in there and you’ve made the investors happy
There was also the fact that an additional 'game disk' labeled 'spawn disk' was provided with each purchased copy, this 'spawn disk' would act as a multiplayer only install copy for your friends.
Glad to see Brevik on the vid! Brevik's panel at the GDC on Diablo game design post mortem was one of the best out there. Very entertaining and crazy informative.
Playes this when I was like 8 or 10, met some russian dude that said hed be my guardian. We became really good friends so easily through this game lol.
This video feels like a bonfire in DS1. You run through these really important videos that make you see how terrible the world is but finally you can sit down and remember good times. Of course what you are doing with many of the bad UA-cam stuff is great but this just feels like a breath of fresh air
I played so much I eventually started doing ironman runs. I remember I had a rogue who found a Windforce at lvl 17 the first time she stepped into hell. In a way I was slightly disappointed I'd never find a better weapon. Good times.
I learned to speak English because of this game. Brazilian guy here. When I was 10 I found a cool CD with Diablo on the cover. I had already asked to buy one game of my choice that day and I hid the cover so my grandmother wouldn't see the the name on the cover, which we all know means Devil. I stumbled my way through it with a dictionary at hand. Voice narration + text crawl was the best thing and I had basic English skills a few months later. During my adult life I landed better jobs because of that.
Using Doom music for Diablo was interesting. Also. Would love to see your takes on Max Payne (if you've ever played them... Only 3 games I'm aware of and IMO all are PHENOMENAL)
I’ll be honest, had a chance to play D1 on my uncle’s old CRT monitor PC when I was a kid. Seemed very spooky and gloomy at first, and to then small child, the gory sprites looked very striking and fear inducing. Still, had a fun learning the game mechanics, especially having burst of successful monster slaying in the first level... well, right until I stumbled upon the Butcher. Stopped playing the game immediately after the encounter. Never touched the game LOL. Will not forget him stunlocking me in a tight corridor
Played Diablo upon it's initial shareware release as a 22 year old. One of the things that has always made this game special for me was that it had a perfect difficulty curve. The game actually starts out quite hard, especially if playing a sorcerer - where you would start with 50 gold, for a couple of minor healing pots, and a staff of firebolt with 24 charges. As you would soon discover, you could die very quickly if not careful. By the end of normal mode and through nightmare you would be ahead of the power curve and then the game would get tougher once you moved into hell difficulty. This is a far cry from the way Diablo 2 and 3 launched, where the game was a complete sleepwalk until you got to higher levels (Diablo 3 did get it right with torment levels in xpac). Builds and experimentation don't matter if everything dies quickly, and one of the things the first Diablo did well was make you try out all the spells and items as you fought to overcome the initial difficulty curve. It was from a time when developers weren't afraid to make their games hard before commercial interests tookover and games were required by publishers to be more accessible for mass market appeal.
Thank you, The Act Man. I haven't watched your video yet, but for me, the answer is obvious: it's a masterpiece. Because it's a completely coherent experience, a mood, a descent into hell, towards madness, a theme so simple yet metaphysical. I don't think we emphasize enough how the composer Matt Uelmen defined the franchise. It's hard to put it into words, it gets to your core, you feel the despair and absolute evil, all while pursuing a mystical quest. Not to mention the ending that offers no relief, the ultimate sacrifice, the irony of fate. When I was younger, I couldn't even get past level 8 because this game was so terrifying.
Love you Act Man for this video, of course Diablo 1 is a masterpiece! Still playin' it, still have the first batch disc from 1996, not 1997. What a game!
Diablo I was what really got me interested in online play. I remember sitting in the chatroom and watching people talk incomprehensible levels of shit. The original bnet truly was the predecessor of Barrens Chat. I also remember harvesting ears with a bunch of hacked equipment.
I remember trying to beat this game when I was 11 and it was so unforgiving that I never beat it. After watching this video I might play it soon, what a fantastic piece of art you just made ActMan!
Blood knights...hit them with fitewalls...they resist but are not immune...and they are legit tough...honestly firewall works for most crowd situations
Do that, you won't regret it. OG Diablo is great, but it's a little short and frustrating. Still worth playing, but you might be better off just getting The Hell 1 2 or 3 mods, or even Beelzebub mod for that matter. But anyways I've been playing D1 for over 20 years, it's still amazing.
I recently replayed it twice. Best Diablo game. It hasn’t aged well, but the passion behind it still comes through. Unlike some followups. Most followups.
I had a cousin who is getting married to a guy with a laptop back in the early 90s. We were at a family event and he had just gotten Diablo one and let me play. Now I was only 8-9 at the time but for the next three hours I was in focused on trying to get through the butcher. I never really wanted to try PC games until after that night and I never looked back. Major life changing moment for me.
I have never played a Diablo game but I always watch your content, ActMan, and appreciate how you manage to share nostalgia with your fans. You instil a sense of belonging by inviting us in to your passions and deliver content with a sense of inclusivity with pretentiousness. I love you, man.
Thank you so much for bringing this masterpiece to light once more. It was the very first game I ever played, I got the demo in a PC-magazine where the first 2 levels were playable. I was 8 years old and scared shitless everytime I head down the stairs to the catacombs. Amazing game and your take on it was 10/10.
Same here. Except my PC wasnt good enough. My fathers one was strictly forbidden. Diablo was the only time I shitted on this rule. So I hided the Demo in some System Folder, and only played at night. 4 nights long. Scared the shit out of me. When I got a better PC the full-version was the first game installed.
I've been a fan since day 1 back on 12/31/1996. I was 6 years old, watching my mom play the game, eventually she'd let me play and i was immediately hooked. It took several years for me to beat, but i did do it. Have figured out how to beat all the bosses, and collected about 80% of all the unique items. Top tier game, still holds its own as one of my all-time favorites
This was a great video, thanks. I remember playing this game for hours and hours on the family computer when I was a kid, and it's actually the only Diablo game I ever beat. I just never felt like the sequels had the same magic, even though Diablo 2 was probably the better game. I remember one time towards the deeper levels I skipped enemies and moved down to a much harder floor before I was leveled up enough. I almost quit the game then, it was probably a lot like what you described, but I was able to run away and went back some floors and killed everything I missed and then was eventually able to move on. Diablo along with Return to Krondor and Knights of the Old Republic are probably my three favorite games I ever played on a computer.
This game is very special to me and this coming from someone who got into the series with D3 and then went back and realized how much better the games used to be.
30:08, Bottlenecking enemies was a favorite tactic of a D&D party I ran with, to the point where a giant fire elemental demigod was killed by our group because it didn't fit through a tunnel and we all had ranged capabilities.
I loved D1(along with D2), i was hooked on it as a kid in the 90s. Its too dated in comparison to other ARPGs nowadays but it always holds a special place for me.
Plenty of QoL mods for both have come out in the decades since they were new. Belzebub is basically all you'd want for D1, and PlugY and/or Basemod fix a lot of D2's annoyances.
One of the scariest things about Diablo was playing online with dial up. You were always scared because you never knew when someone was going to pick up the phone and disconnect you.
16:06 onwards. Top tier voice acting to make up for somewhat minimalist graphics in today's sense. I love it. No motion capture needed. I can visualize it in my head.
As a 54 year old gamer I did play and complete Diablo in my 30s. It is definitely a masterpiece and I speak from experience. The constantly charging dungeon design was genius as was the unpredictable branches in what you might encounter.
I remember being 8 and introduced to this by a friends dad.... I pretended to sleep, snuck away, and played for 8 hours til morning, snuck back into bed, and pretended I slept.
Use link shop.ekster.com/theactman or code ACTMAN to get up to 35% off.
Diablo is a monstrous franchise these days, it is massively successful and popular. Yet, the first game is mostly overshadowed by it's sequels. Let's go back and visit the Demonic roots of the Diablo series and see how well the first game holds up. But more importantly, we'll find out If Diablo 1 Is A MASTERPIECE?!
Will do sugar cheeks
Hi. 😊
Yes sir !!! I want to get into Diablo so bad, and this video was just the motivation.
I kind of want to try the first 3 diablo games sometime.
Shame they never did a remaster for it that would be cool!
My uncle was a fan day 1. We played this series for so long. Diablo 4 was coming out and we were grinding the beta all hyped. Unfortunately, he suddenly passed away a week before it came out. Even though Diablo 4 is a huge joke, I made a character with his name so he can forever live in it. Rip uncle Max. I miss you buddy.
My condolences for your loss.
RIP Uncle Max. Those are good memories to have
o7
My condolences, man. This is a beautiful way to hold your uncle in memory :)
He sounds like a wonderful man! RIP
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I first played this game when i was 9 or 10. I dont think any other game has left as much of an impression on me than Diablo 1. Enjoyed with every minute and talking point. Ah the memories!
666/10
Yo thank you Carbot. I have been watching your videos since the 1st episode of Starcrafts.
Everyone's best friend
CARBOTTT!!!!!
Carbot! what a pleasant surprise!
I played the second one around the same age...
Before she passed away, this was my sister’s favorite game. This and Diablo 2 were great ways for to relieve stress.
Edit: I should probably clarify better. I remember backing from School when I was younger and quite a few times, I would see my sister playing this game. She was so engrossed with all the blizzard games mainly the first diablo games and Starcraft 1 and BW. Whenever I tried to play these games, she always did her best to help get through (I was probably about 8 or 10 when I really started to try Diablo). Even when she got married and had kids of her own, she would still try to play Diablo 2 whenever she could. She lost her battle with MS last year and though it's been a while the pain won't ever really go away. She was a huge reason that I became a PC gamer in the first place. So I probably could of worded my first response a little bit better.
I’m so sorry for your loss.
I hope she plays a game located in hell in heaven
bro sorry for the bad joke , r.i.p
I wonder if God lets her play diablo in heaven 🤔 seriously I'm curious, seems like a conflict of interest 😅
Seriously though sorry for your loss. Hopefully they make another good one so it brings up some of the nostalgia and good memories you made with her playing the original 🙂
I'm sorry for your loss 😞
For me Butcher was even more iconic for D1 than Diablo himself. Everything about that quest was perfect. The build up with dying townsman, later checking for any clues with the townsfolk, Farnham having PTSD. Then you go inside, you are still pretty weak, level 2 of the catacombs, you see the chamber filled with horrifically mutilated bodies, then you open and hear "fresh meat" and run. Having Butcher that early with so crazy stats, damage, speed was a genius move by the devs. I played along my younger brother and we had about 9-10 yo at the time. Butcher was so scary and difficult that we asked our dad for help. Good memories.
I agree. Probably it's because not many players get to see and fight Diablo himself, but 99% of players will meet, unexpectedly, the Butcher, and he's the first thing to get your smile off your face and say "This isn't your standard simple fun game where the world spins around you"
first playthrough i never dared to even go back to lvl2 lol
And the fact that he jump scares you out of the door. Shat myself the first time he showed up.
I definitely fought the butcher more times than I battled Diablo.
Something the Act Man doesn't mention (he may not be aware of it actually) is that the iconic "shove the soulstone into my forehead" ending cutscene was completely unintended by the original developers. The cinematics were made by a completely different team, and while they could discuss and suggest things they had no real control over them. Originally they intended the ending to be a lot more upbeat, and were absolutely shocked when they saw what had been made. By the time they got it it would have been very difficult to redo it, so they just made it work.
Yep, I did hear this. I'm glad they ended up sneaking it in
Man, I loooove dark "bad ends" like this. They're so rare, and it's just perfect for Diablo.
Really proves this game truly was lightning in a bottle.
would've almost ruined the game if they made it a happy ending after all that
@WayStedYou we wouldn't know that really, bad stuff can still happen after a happy ending.
They could have just cut with him holding the stone.
I guess the original idea might have been to shatter it, or store it in a box.
I get the sense that the grim ending grew on em.
"Hello, my friend. Stay awhile and listend"
This line is iconic.
Diablo's got a special place in my heart, cuz was a very dear friend that showed it to me, and he passed away last year. Every time I play it, it feels like he's close to me ❤
"Hellod myd friendd stayd awhiled andd listend" - Deckard "putting the d in" Cain
Wow! What can I do for ya?
The way the levels generated different each time made the replayability amazing.
makes* ... makes the replayability amazing.
@@wheeze9378 penis* ... penis thou wish for christmas.
@@wheeze9378 true diablo chad
@@wheeze9378 The OP is speaking in past tense, so your correction is incorrect.
@@wheeze9378no.. "generated" is the past. Hence, "made" is right.
As a child I played it through with my friend in grade school. I still know the poem 'Halls of the blind' by heart. It was such a unique and unforgiving experience, we were scared, we were thrilled.
The feeling of hearing the Tristram theme when you teleported out of a bad situation was so relieveing too. Even though how eerie the music was, in the end, it became a relief.
I remember fearing that the deeper we descend to hell, the more likely it is that Tristram will be overrun. And the first time the travel point to hell appeared, we shit our pants.
It was such a unique experience. And that scream. I remember always skipping at as a kid, because how scary it was.
My grandmother played the first Diablo. She was my introduction to video games. I remember sitting hours with her watching her play Diablo, Nancy Drew, Myst, Syberia, and the original Legend of Zelda on the NES. She's gone now, but in some sense I still get to share time with her while gaming.
That's fantastic. I grew up much the same, watching my Dad. Have a good life friend.
I've never had relatives like that, but I hope to be that relative one day 😁 I'm glad you guys had good memories like that!!
Grandmother?! Damn!
Love Myst
MYST!!!
The voice acting in this game is AMAZING. It's soooo iconic, soooo memorable. All the little quotes, everyone is so dark yet full of life! Thanks for proving it isn't nostalgia, it isn't rose colored glasses, Diablo truly is one of the best games ever made.
I also adore the voice acting. It's like sitting in at an old school D&D table with a DM that loves grimdark fantasy
if it wasnt nostalgia then newer generations would be able to pick the game up and it would still be popular. but that isnt the case. it literally is nostalgia.
did you know all of this was made by blizzard south not blizzard north? north focused exclusively on combat and loot
Greetings good master, welcome to the tavern of the rising sun!
I recognized Paul Eiding from metal gear in some of the cutscenes. Great job from all VAs.
I know there is a limited amount of masterpieces out there, but this is one of my favorite series on all of UA-cam, and we need more.
I just have to shout out Spec Ops: The Line, Unreal World, and Deep Rock Galactic.
there are a lot of masterpieces out there haha it just takes a long ass time to make a video worthy of them
There are so many masterpieces out there that you could not play them all in a lifetime.
@@TheActMan Human beings may not be perfect, but "the Act Man's review on why deus ex is so awesome" is probably the answer to the world's problems.
"Here's a club with a nail, now go kill Satan" Peak game story design.
"Big! Big cleaver killing all my friends. Couldn't stop him, had to run away, couldn't save them. Trapped in a room with so many bodies...so many friends...noooooooooo!" - Farnham the Drunk
Thanks for the amazing lore videos, man ❤
What a classic, genre defining game. I cant wait to watch this!
Its literally just a dungeon out of the 1E D&D DMG which already had plenty of games just like this.
@@h347hchill out nerd
@@Bigdogeatkid okay incel
@@h347h nerd
@@h347h damn i just got owned
Some of my most important gaming memories come from this gem. It caused my heart rate to shoot through the roof when I encountered a bunch of demons in a cave. I literally had to pause the game and physically go to another room to calm down for several minutes before I could continue playing. I had an absolute blast.
thats so fucken weak lmao.
Same. I will never forget the butcher chase me down for the first time, "hmmm, fresh meat!"
That's slightly pathetic, ngl.
@@Cheximus I was a pathetic child, what can I say 🤷♂️🤣 I cringe myself when reflecting back.
"Did you know Diablo was the first Strand-type game?"
I'm listening to this playing Angband, an acknowledged inspiration for Diablo.
As a member of the "ring of 1000" beta tester, I remember the utter joy when I received my Beta CD in my college dorm mail box in the mid 90s. I will die happy knowing my name will forever be linked to this masterpiece 😂
We need to put u in a museum of video game history God damn
please, in the name of us all, do an copy of that disc if you are still in the possession. I really doubt that it will still be any good (CD's lifespan is only like 10-15 years (Vs. Bluray 300+ years for example)) and I recently realised that even some of my mint condition ps1 games are already broken, but there's a slim chance that you can still use your CD, store it on your PC and upload it in 10 years, when you will be 100% safe from any copyrights.
@@Drejkol sadly I misplaced it 😭, we were spoiled with 10baseT in our dorms in the mid 90s, so physical media wasnt as cherished as you may think. I regret not holding on to it. I do recall being in a rather plain presentation, not pressed but burned CD possibly, it's hazy to remember, probably why it was tossed, as you see back in those days throwing out CDs you know longer really need was common practice.
@@Drejkol The phenomenon of "disc-rot" in optical media is when the bonded layers on a disc fail and the reflective metallic layer is exposed to air, allowing oxidation and delamination to occur . This can be because of direct physical damage (as in a big gouge that pierces the layers), or from longer periods of poor storage, such as being somewhere where humidity is high (like a leaky basement or the state of Florida), or being frequently left in the open to be exposed to direct sunlight for long periods of time.
It can also be due to poor manufacturing, where the bonding wasn't done correctly, in which case the disc would still work, but it has a limited time span.
There are certain known batches of disc media which are known and identified as having been poorly manufactured, like how certain movies on Laser Disc are still perfectly fine, while others are infamous for withering.
If your CDs weren't of a shoddy make, and you've treated them well, then they're probably still perfectly good. Even if they have scratches which cause reading problems, often those can be polished away with a special machine, typically they're a very superficial kind of damage.
Yessss ... I remember Diablo echoing in the dorm hall in 1996!
I preached for years how no ARPG captured the claustrophobic horror of Diablo 1 and i have no one, content creators or devs alike, seen praising this game for this exact reasons you presented so perfectly in your video. The horror of this game lies in how it delivers story telling and the combat/exploration. I hope more people will see this and appreciate the game for this reasons. It is one of a kind and i regularly come back to it with the hell mod and its plethora of classes and extra quests and character building mechanics. It would be great to see a dev studio pick up the strengths of D1 and make a modernised take on this unique ARPG formula.
I grew up playing Diablo 1 and 2, thanks to one of my aunts. I'm 33 years old and they're still top tier games to me. I can remember spending countless hours playing Diablo 2 with my cousins and aunt. These two games helped shaped me as a gamer today.
Sound is so key in gaming. And great observation about the clarity associated with the results of doing things.
The Act Man always manages to invest me into a game that I otherwise wouldn't be interested in
you haven't played diablo 1? wtf kid go play it now
Yeah he's a salesman lol
tried it, gameplay is too slow and boring. It's just nostalgia for people I think. theres a reason people dont play old games if they didnt grow up in that era.@@SCDJMU
@yangpaan453 I've played games from before my time and enjoyed them. A good game is a good game, no matter when. Can't speak for D1 tho, I've never played. But just based off what I've seen it looks decent. You gotta remember in the 90s there was A LOT of shit games that played like ass or had God awful controls, or both
Its ok if you don't like it, you are allowed your opinion, but theres a reason it was one of the fastest selling games of its time, people loved it and still do. As for the nostalgia argument, yeah im sure it plays a role but its a lazy argument for people who dont want to give old games a try. Why are you trying to convince people not to try something they may end up enjoying?
AcKsHuAlLy, there are more than 8 surviving people in Tristram, but you can only piece that through NPC dialogue. I can only think of 2 immediately and that's Ogden's wife - Garda and Gillian's grandmother.
Thank you for tuning in Nayolak's Diablo trivia corner!
Everytime I see a new Act Man video uploaded, I can always safely assume it's going to have some of the most passionate, unique and interesting insight into gaming around right now, all while cracking jokes and keeping an upbeat and entertaining energy. I'm never dissapointed.
Thank you, kind sir
@@TheActMan Human beings may not be perfect, but "the Act Man's review on why deus ex is so awesome" is probably the answer to the world's problems.
the majority of the time he just. makes. sense.
love his content also
He used to be 100% more positive, like this video here. But ActMan lately also engages in a lot of unnecessary internet drama.
Anyways, his style is unique and I am still around. Content made by a gamer to gamers. But I do still think he should stop engaing in useless drama.
That's funny, I just expect more lies, being wrong, and arrogance.
24 years later, i can still recall the halls of the blind poem.
This game will be eternally in my heart and i will always give it a replay every now and then.
I spend 1 1/2 years playing it back then.
The Butcher to me is the most memorable first boss. The first time playing, I really liked how the townspeople would hype him up. You'd starrt off the first level thinking its a breeze, and when you finally encounter the Butcher, you get you ass whooped. After my first encounter with the Butcher, I knew I had to grind a bit more to strengthen myself. The Bucther is the quitessential first boss.
So iconic he's even referenced in Fallout 2. Head slaver is named Metzger (german for butcher) and says "Ah, fresh meat" when you open the door.
Cant we have a video about Grim Dawn to end creatively bankrupt companies Monopoly
Simple and effective. Walk into a room full of carnage... "Ahhh FRESH MEAT!"
Diablo 3 was more like introducing a WWE wrestler and then having a lame battle. It should just be a mindless brawl to fit the character. A for effort, D for result.
I don't know if it's just me, but I can't stop watching this video (it's maybe 7th time already), not just because of nostalgia, but because how GOOD the presentation is...
This tells you exactly what the titles says, how this game was ahead of it's time and how huge impact it had moving forward. It's really sad where Blizzard ended up in the end...
Thank you Act Man for bringing me back when I was 5 years old, when I played this MASTERPIECE!
PS. When my dad started to install this game on PC, when the installation window booted up, I ran as fast as I could out of his room...
People habe no idea what old school internet was like when you'd do an iron man with 2 other good player's online.
Warrior, rogue, sorc....go inside and never come back out. Use whatever you find and mske it work.
Fun fact. I still have my original disc copy.
Also fun tip. You can do the first few levels of the dungeon then start a new game and retain your level and then run through them again to gain some more levels. This doesn't necessarily put you way ahead, but it helps for sure.
Also there's an item duplication glitch that again helps, but... the game is still so hard regardless.
Yeah, the difficulty expressed in this video is misleading because you can literally restart and restart as much a you want. If you have enough patience, you can potentially steamroll the game. And it's an important feature due to the randomness of the game. You can have bad luck and not getting anything good your entire playthrough.
I'll never forget this when I finally was able to pass this game as a kid I got the bad ending where the prince died and it weighed on me for years until in my adulthood I found out I got the bad ending 😭
The greatest of all the Diablos. One Dungeon that goes deeper and deeper underground. No running around outside. No teleportation way points. An artistic achievement that had to prove itself on its merit alone before Diablo became a franchise filled with lore and a "live service" universe for no-lifers who expect to spend 3,000 hrs in a single video game collecting pets and baubles to look ever sillier for their online friends. All hail Diablo.
I always liked that it was fairly straightforward about your goal, you have one main 'Quest', get to the end of the dungeon, there are other Quests but they're mostly along the way and needing only a bit of chatting in town to get going. Shows how it was inspired by Rogue and is truly one of the earlier Roguelikes (though you could say missing permadeath is 'casual' and disqualifies it) done outside of ascii, which was great for the time.
Modern Diablos and the other games like it are so 'MMORPG lite', especially with MMORPGs themselves being more instanced-based these days, it all blends together for me and I don't really like any of it. Diablo 1 is a totally different game, really.
@@KnownAsKenji I just played Diablo 1 for the first time over the last few weeks and couldn't help but think how much potential there is still to be tapped in its game design. Yet no developer seems to be making a Diablo 1 clone, they all just copy Diablo 2.
Given how much game development has advanced since 1996, it doesn't seem to me like it would be too difficult for even a small development studio to create a more expansive version of Diablo 1 with a larger selection of possible quests and longer more varied dungeon(s). It certainly seems like it would be much easier than attempting to follow in Diablo 2's footsteps.
@@yewtewbstew547You should really play The Hell 3 mod for D1.
I played this game for the first time after watching you talk about it in the diablo 4 video. I can confirm that your enjoyment from the game is not just nostalgia.
I was surprised by the atmosphere of the game, it was still creepy despite how old it is. The loot was not too much and felt rewarding. Overcoming the stun lock mechanic was fun in its own way. I also think the voice acting aged really well.
Overall, I was surprised how much I enjoyed the experience, I'm even planning to play beezlebub mod.
Thank you for the videos. Thid helps me try games I would take forever to try out.
Ive rewatched this too many times due to the fact of how well this videos been crafted, loved every second of it Act Man keep up with the fantastic art and work.
I don't think I ever posted a message on youtube (that said, my memory could have lapsed as I have inserted the soulstone in my skull a fair few times now), but I think this video deserves it, in less than 45 minutes you have summarized exactly what Diablo is to me. That feeling of apprehension, fear and cautiousness. If anything, it's made me want to go down those corridors once again.
It is very interesting to reflect on the slower gameplay and the popularity of WoW HC: there is definitely a public for these games where the difficulty doesn't come from fast and furious fights, you are showered with loot and you deal millions of damage. I long for a new game that gives me stat increments that can be counted on my hand, where hitting a mob for 300 damages is amazing and you need to be careful how/where you pull monsters.
In any case, I just want to give you a massive thank you for the work that you have put in. It's really brought back amazing memories.
I agree. The slower pace of these types of games makes the so enjoyable compared to Diablo 3/4 or PoE.
But I also love Classic Everquest so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
I never thought it was hard. I finished it many times as a kid. Now Diablo 2 was brutal, Duriel and Diablo itself were total pain
Diablo 1 is considered hard because when you died you were done. In D2 I think Duriel was hardest boss related to your level because of his frost effect and in the last patch when you enter his room he immediately jumps you, played it last year with some friends on PS4, we were kinda dead before the load screen finished.
Duriel is easy@@alexg7146
@@alexg7146 that was a bug in the original game which got patched out and apparently seems to have been patched back into the remaster lmao
also diablo 1 is hard if you pick the fighter, the ranger and mage have an easier time
thought the same thing for years about Duriel until i played Resurected and began checking hint, tricks and build. I then realize you can down a bunch of (i think) yellow potion (Tawning potion or something like this) and it gives you ton of resist cold and freeze. Duriel becomes WAY more easy after that.@@alexg7146
I find it the opposite! I think duriel defs was the hardest part of d2 tho. In d2 i was scared of how hard hell was gunna be because hell was like impossible for me in d1, but it was so much easier for me in d2 lol
i remember finding diablo at walmart in the 90's. It was miss-marked to almost half the price of any of the games on the shelf next to it. I immediately dragged my dad over to look at it, being 10 at the time. My dad was happy i found it and bought it for me, one of my greatest gaming memories.
Love this
Crazy video, he’s clearly passionate and had fun producing this.
It's fantastic that you are giving Diablo 1 it's due credit as one of the best games ever made. For me personally, this game is near perfect. I replay it every year and still have a huge blast. I wish you would've added more original soundtrack into your video - the catacombs (act 2) is my favourite part of the game and the music is so awesome and absolutely flawless at setting up the ambiance.
Also, you should've mentioned that quests were also randomized and you could've started this game and played all to the end and never even seen the Butcher, Leoric or even Lachdanan ad be none the wiser. It also addes to the replayability. One time I've had to replay the game 3 times to get Leoric quest...
I did play Diablo with friends locally - but my internet connection at the time was too slow to play online (my 486 barely chugged the game - if you thing walking was slow in town, try to play it on a 486 instead of a pentium and You will discover that it's even more ambiance building when each step take twice as long)
I've beaten Diablo back in 1997, but I still remember the dread of facing the Butcher (I was afraid to open his room because I've seen what was inside) or Leoric - Leoric especially was hard as balls for me, back in the day. Diablo for some reason was quite easy for my first playthrough - I must've been lucky and had some good items on, because it took me years to figure out that the most important stat for beating the late game was fire, lightning and magic resists and extra damage on a weapon. Maybe I had the Stormshield :)
The acting of the characters was pretty fine for me - actually having fully voiced character was still pretty new back then - when most games had just text, having voices and text was a fantastic boon for me to learn English as a foreigner. Only Adria and Wirt sound pretty cringy, all others are great - even characters like Gillian or Franham - they have some great monologues and are worth to listen. The monologues and character depth is even better than in Diablo 2 - just try to listen to all the monologues and compare it with Diablo 1.
Great video presentation you hit it right on all points. As part dinosaur, I fondly remember loading this up with our CD into the tray and seeing that devilish screen and dark music greet us with "connect to the internet" at the top 😄. I still play D1 to this day, presently a rogue in the D1 belzebub mod. The replayability is always there with this fantastic game.
Friend of mine, we both couch co-op complete Diablo 3 with a friend. The 3 of us beat it together. I played Diablo 1 on the ps1 with one of those 2 friends I completed Diablo 3 with together, a couple years later. I asked him which he preferred and enjoyed more. Without hesitation he said, “Diablo 1.” Even people who don’t have the nostalgia, know what a great game it is.
This was the first mainstream pc game I played at 7-8 years old. I still play it and the mod "The hell" by Mordor. Definitely worth giving the mod a try imo for all the added content and readding characters and quests that got scrapped from the original game.
My favorite way to kill The Butcher was to clear the level of every other monsters, lead him to a doorway and close the door, then pelt him with arrows.
What I love about Diablo is that how toned down and basic it is and yet complex enough to be compelling. I feel like new ARPGs cannot go back to that level of simplicity anymore. :(
Ikr? Everything has to be insane builds. Love the feeling this one has and the aesthetics and art style wrap it together nicely.
It's like we can't have a dungeon crawler anymore, has to be a dungeon annihilator.
Games like Elden Ring & Blasphemous feel closer if anything.
You need 10000000000 factors and different RNGs and builds now.. And 50000000000000 different items with 500000000 different variance
For it's time and genre Diablo was actually quite complex, not full blown RPG complex, but it introduced complexity to the action genre that previously wasn't really a thing.
People got used to that, and then Diablo 2 introduced more complexity, until people got used to that, and so on.
diablo was great in that it did addictivity of nethack/rogue while being a LOT more accessible.
being a lot simpler and realtime goes with that too.
Also it looks like you mostly played as the warrior here, which as you mentioned is super easy at the beginning but very difficult at the end (if you’re mostly melee, which warriors usually would be though). The sorcerer, however, is the opposite - you will suffer with him so much in the early game but in the end game, you will be ethering whole floors.
I'm so glad a larger, well known channel like yours covered this game. This game was formative in my interest in games and writing, and its been a tragedy to see what's become of the Diablo series over time. I still listen to the OST to this day! I still have all the old books and manuals complete with old poetry and sketches from people like Metzen. Yes, poems lol. When I was really little, the red screen and frantic whacking of the enemies when you died used to scare me LOL
There was two other special elements of Diablo 1.
1. Diablo 1 was one of the first of it's kind to create the online lobby system and RPG multiplayer before every Steam game started to have online multiplayer.
2. Diablo 1 had friendly fire. Meaning it had another layer of challenge when playing through with friends for you not to hit them And guess what this friendly fire was ALSO the PvP. You have to be weary that your allies might not turn against you and there was no shear way to know if they are other than the actual socialization communication you have done with them. They can shoot an arrow at you from behind if you weren't careful.
This video is such a godsend. I played Diablo 1 on the PS1 when I was 9 years old. Currently 35 now, and I have always had tremendous respect for David Brevik for his vision on Diablo 1 & 2. It just breaks my heart how that style of play is lost by the monetization model as well as the high damage numbers and unbalanced stats.
Brevik wanted scummy monetization back then too. He wanted to sell item packs on CDs but it was too expensive to implement. It would have sucked if they could make it the way he wanted to back then. He's not a hero or a good guy. He was a money grubbing scumbag like most game devs these days.
Somebody should do some serious research and go back to these "limitations" and continue this legacy with another masterpiece and dark atmosphere. Seems highly unlikely that anyone will take that risk.
@@ITSAHARDNUGLIFEthere are plenty of indie games. But you have to work to find them.
@@ITSAHARDNUGLIFE Once AI can code 95% of the game for me and generate the art, I totally will be building a new old school Diablo game. Also want to do a Cyberpunk themed one. Retirement goals if I ever get there.
Such a great video!
I feel like the original Diablo doesn't get the love it deserves. I literally grew up playing Diablo 1, and eventually 2, and it's still fun to return (Especially with the Beelzebub mod)... In fact, this video makes me want to stream a new playthrough.
If done right, I'd love to see a proper remake.
It is absolutely underrated
Blizzard needs to make a true diablo mmorpg or a true diablo action rpg with online and offline co-op. If theyd make one good complete game we fans would play it for the next 20 years and buy every dlc they make... do they not want our money for the next 20 years???
@@TheActManDiablo 2 review in the future acting male?
Diablo 1 was a big deal back then. It was not just an overlooked game. PC gaming was just not that big yet
You should play Diablo: The Hell 2
Just wanted to thank you for making this this video. It was a real nostalgic trip down memory lane for me. I fondly remember playing this with my best friend in South Africa who I lost contact with. I was 15 year's old again for 44 mins.
A go-to strategy for playing a warrior in the vanilla game (as in, not Beelzebub or Tchernobog) in the early game is to max out Dexterity as quickly as possible. You can get by with 30 strength for a very long time and use +Magic items for reading books. It makes you a tad fragile but you max Dexterity by level 9 or so and have gobs of ToHit% and Armor Class.
Especially if you do what I do and troll Griswold for a 13AC leather armor, 4AC skull cap, and 8AC small shield. I also grab a war hammer as quickly as possible - it doesn’t do as much max damage as a Claymore or Broad Sword but it has a higher minimum damage and does 50% more damage to undead, which is most of what you’re facing in the church, and is still useful in the catacombs to an extent. Also take the Undead Crown from Leoric if you’re playing single player.
That basically makes you a walking buzzsaw for the butcher, Leoric, hell you should be fairly survivable through the early Catacombs to pick up Arkaine’s Valor in single player.
Later on, your holy grail will be a King’s Bastard Sword of Speed or Haste - either works, you’ll hit the animation breakpoint for fastest attack on a warrior either way, and King’s as a prefix adds both damage% and +ToHit%.
This advice is more for all classes, but max your resists early from jewelry if you can. Emerald and Obsidian prefixes are white whales. And Stormshield is basically THE best shield in the game, though an Obsidian shield with a +health suffix will also be fine.
You can look for hidden shrines and set up your inventory such that you’re always boosting the durability of whatever item you want. It’s permanent and if you can get it to 255 it becomes indestructible due to that number being what signifies indestructible status. If you’re willing to G R I N D, you can have a loadout that would make people swear you’re running hacks.
I disagree when you say that Beelzebub is the definitive way to play the game. It’s a fun mod, but it changes far too much to be faithful to the original. The definitive way to play the game is actually the DevilutionX source port, able to run on basically anything that gcc can compile for that has an SDL2 port. :) You have a lot of the quality of life fixes, but the game is still basically the same.
Finally someone else who appreciates this game as much as I do.
My context on how good this game was: I used to play D@D before it was popular back in the 90s. My mom did not want me to play it because the whole "you'll start worshipping vampires and kill me in my sleep" meme was still alive back then. We had one of the BEST DMs ever. I can't stress this enough. Dude would go to GENCON and sell out his campaigns everytime. One of the highest ranking DMs on WoTC. We were so lucky to have him as a DM looking back. The campaigns he made for us were INSANE. And despite all that you actually didn't mind if your character was knocked out of a fight (you always cared if they were dead(dead)), because it meant you got to go play D1 on his pc while everyone else kept battling. This was my introduction to arpgs and as an avid fan still to this day, I'll never forget this time I spent in D1.
I still vividly remember playing this the first time when I was 16 years old during my first internship at a games store. I bought it a couple days later to play it at home. Needless to say it really sucked me in until this very day.
It wasn't the antithesis to other RPG's, that is a bit of historical revisionism. Consoles had a large JRPG influence because those games happened to be huge hits in Japan and those were less dark. Regular RPG's were all basically dark and medieval killing demons and skeletons and D&D oriented. I remember when Diablo came out, it came across as a standard RPG classes of knights in armor killing monsters. The monsters from Hell thing just reminded me of Doom which was pretty much on trend.
These games came from text based MUD's that were a dime a dozen and they were all wandering through crypts killing monsters and looting, just without the graphical front end (all text).
It was original for being real time, although Diablo was originally created as a turn based RPG like the MUD genre was. They shifted to real time and that was the big breakthrough. For me, trying to say it wasn't like other RPG's is pushing it, it was bog standard D&D shit but the first really well made real time hack and slash looter.
What a great video! I remember I dedicated my whole spring break to playing Diablo shortly after it came out. It's an absolute masterpiece. It was a time when hardcore gamers made games for gamers and without being dictated by greedy execs. And, yes, I'm one of the rare ones who actually beat the game back in the spring of '97 (I bought it a few months after it came out)! Like so many others, the music and the Butcher "Ahh... Fresh Meat!" and so many other encounters and sounds will be forever engraved in my brain.
I actually did a playthrough of Diablo and the original Diablo 2 just last year! The original Diablo is a true classic to me, right up there with games like Super Mario Bros. and Doom.
My dad introduced me to this game when I was a kid. He never told me about the butcher.
I had to learn it the hard way.
As someone that plays Diablo 2: Resurrected as his main game, and has played Diablo for his entire life at this point, hearing the Tristram theme kick in STILL gives me chills.
An Actman video on Diablo at 10 in the morning on a Saturday!? Bring it on baby!
After a horrible day at work, an Act Man video is JUST what I needed. You're a homie, Act Man.
I remember beating this game for the first time maybe a year or or two after it came out in the late 90’s. I went over to my friend Dom’s house after school and we played it on his old CRT monitor Pc, getting through hell and beating Diablo for the first time is a great memory
My favourite game of all time and my favourite Diablo game.
Back when gamers hadn't been convinced to think they needed :
* 16 head shapes for their character
* 16 hair colours for their character
* 16 eye brow styles for their character
* 16 skin tones for their character
* Motion Blur
* Shadows settings
* Texture settings
* Ray Tracing
* DLSS
* Graphical 'Style' modes
* DLCs
* + 400 other settings taking the developers 50% of the game's development time to include and hope it's what players wanted.
All we asked for back then was that the game supported our Mouse and Keyboard. And be GOOD. That's it.
I'm working on a game that should be next Diablo 1
I love the game and played it for years and now when I got skills and people I decided to follow my dream and create This Dark DND adventure like Diablo1. I hope to finish the project and see people fall in love with the game/ difficulty and darkness like i once did
Game of my childhood…..and nightmares. The butchers opening lining “AHHHH FRESH MEAT” always used to creep me out.
This game music takes me way back to 1999, when I was a broke pvt in the army stationed in Hawaii and couldn’t afford to do anything when off duty. One of the guys shipping out sold me his PlayStation and a stack of games for $300 and in the evening and on the weekends all I did was play video games in the barracks, until I started making rank and made enough money to actually do things off base. Even when I wasn’t playing it I could walk past any other barracks room and hear this music and the goldeneye music. Although my only worldly possessions were a 25” TV, a plantation, Diablo, RE2, FF7, tenchu, metal gear, Warcraft, Risk, and tony hawk….I would give everything I own now to go back to that year and live it again. The following year one of my buddies got sent to Europe and he sold me his Pentium 3, PC with windows 98se, a voodoo2 gfx card and a bunch of late 90s pc games for like $500 total. It was the first PC I ever owned. What a nostalgia rush from hearing that damn theme song, I had to watch the video 3 times because I kept spacing out for like 10 minutes and just started reminiscing about that entire year every time I heard the theme 😆
You should make a decently long review of Diablo 2, as while 1 set the ground work for action RPGs, 2 improved in many ways, which I think is worth mentioning.
Diablo 2 defined the genre in a way that's still followed to this day. Every Blizzard game does it, but not as much as Diablo 2 did for hack and slash.
@@christopherniewiadomski4075
Yeah, that's kind of what I've heard.
It really did a lot for evolving action RPGs from Diablo 1, with things like skill trees and such.
Diablo 2 elevated the series to a mainstream hit, however some D1 fans were quite disappointed when the D2 came out, because it shifted its tone from gothic horror towards action fantasy and was much more colorful. Ironically, it's a similar criticism Diablo3 got when it released, however the D3 pushed it too far. D2 made the atmosphere lighter, but at the same time offered a generational leap in gameplay improvements, so most of the naysayers forgave it. D3 couldn't defend itself, because almost everything was a downgrade.
@@kazioo2
Well, maybe, but I think that that is a pretty ridiculous reason to be "disappointed" with a game, just because it's not so grimdark that it goes straight into grimderp territory.
Because if you look back at D1's art style, it's simple but also seems like it was trying way too hard to be scary and all that.
I mean, I wasn't the biggest fan of D3, but I hardly think that its art style was as bad as some people make it out to be. It honestly just felt like updated designs and such rather than trying to change the themes.
I just think that far too many people tend to try to cling to the old ways and just assume that they were all just 100 times better simply because they're older.
@@christopherniewiadomski4075D2 nailed something very early that is common psychology in slots - create a gameplay loop that provides the 3 components:
1) You know you will get a reward if you do activity X eventually (in d2 case loot)
2) The reward can widely vary
3) The task is repeteable
The genius twist of Blizzard was to then use the above to drive fighting stronger and stronger monsters hence repeating the entire loop but with increasing risk/reward. It works amazingly well, and D2 probably still has the best loot system ever designed.
I find it so very odd how now diablo 1 and 2 are getting as much love as they deserve given how bad 4 was and now 3 is the really hit or miss one. Hope The Man goes on to review 2 and try 3 finally.
4 is much better than 3 was at launch. and it's getting better by the season.
@@sauvagemusic1844 Whoopi Goldberg begs to differ, mf.
@@sauvagemusic1844 Brother im gonna to absolutely disagree with that.
@@sauvagemusic1844 Cope harder, 3 and 4 are dogshit
3 was dog shit at launch. 4 was an even bigger pile of dog shit at launch
I'm glad you mentioned class specific gear. That's one of the things that made me fall in love with the Dark Souls/soulslike genre in general. You can build your character how ever you want.
It crushed my soul when I found out that so much of the items in D4 were class specific. I thought they learned their lesson from D3. Guess not.
They learned that you can charge the same amount of money for the same shit for every class seperately. When you wonder why something is designed in certain way in a blizzard game the answer is always money.
Lesson? The lesson they learned is that games don’t have to be perfect to turn a profit. Slap a battle pass and some MTX in there and you’ve made the investors happy
There was also the fact that an additional 'game disk' labeled 'spawn disk' was provided with each purchased copy, this 'spawn disk' would act as a multiplayer only install copy for your friends.
Glad to see Brevik on the vid! Brevik's panel at the GDC on Diablo game design post mortem was one of the best out there. Very entertaining and crazy informative.
I love listening to Brevik!
Absolute masterpiece. First game that I've ever played online. Oh, the memories.
I spent a lot of time in the PKK bounty hunter lobby. I don't think I can think of an equivalent gaming experience to this day.
Playes this when I was like 8 or 10, met some russian dude that said hed be my guardian. We became really good friends so easily through this game lol.
Remember the first time I went online I was so excited, then I got PKd almost immediately :D
Learning the Dupe hack and cloning the knockback axe and bow and apocalypse staff were hilariously broken lol
D3 and D4 is a slap AND spit in the face to true fans
This video feels like a bonfire in DS1. You run through these really important videos that make you see how terrible the world is but finally you can sit down and remember good times. Of course what you are doing with many of the bad UA-cam stuff is great but this just feels like a breath of fresh air
I played so much I eventually started doing ironman runs. I remember I had a rogue who found a Windforce at lvl 17 the first time she stepped into hell. In a way I was slightly disappointed I'd never find a better weapon. Good times.
Ironman runs are epic.
I learned to speak English because of this game. Brazilian guy here. When I was 10 I found a cool CD with Diablo on the cover. I had already asked to buy one game of my choice that day and I hid the cover so my grandmother wouldn't see the the name on the cover, which we all know means Devil. I stumbled my way through it with a dictionary at hand. Voice narration + text crawl was the best thing and I had basic English skills a few months later. During my adult life I landed better jobs because of that.
recently played diablo 1 and was surprised by how much i loved it. truly a different feel from all the others.
Its honestly a perfect game that even time can not diminish its value. They simply don't make them like this any more.
Using Doom music for Diablo was interesting.
Also.
Would love to see your takes on Max Payne (if you've ever played them... Only 3 games I'm aware of and IMO all are PHENOMENAL)
I was grinning ear to ear when Abandoned Pit from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night played over the Halls of the Blind poem.
I’ll be honest, had a chance to play D1 on my uncle’s old CRT monitor PC when I was a kid. Seemed very spooky and gloomy at first, and to then small child, the gory sprites looked very striking and fear inducing. Still, had a fun learning the game mechanics, especially having burst of successful monster slaying in the first level... well, right until I stumbled upon the Butcher. Stopped playing the game immediately after the encounter. Never touched the game LOL. Will not forget him stunlocking me in a tight corridor
He's a classic beginner's trap, lol. Go give the game another try, you can beat him pretty easily.
Played Diablo upon it's initial shareware release as a 22 year old. One of the things that has always made this game special for me was that it had a perfect difficulty curve. The game actually starts out quite hard, especially if playing a sorcerer - where you would start with 50 gold, for a couple of minor healing pots, and a staff of firebolt with 24 charges. As you would soon discover, you could die very quickly if not careful. By the end of normal mode and through nightmare you would be ahead of the power curve and then the game would get tougher once you moved into hell difficulty.
This is a far cry from the way Diablo 2 and 3 launched, where the game was a complete sleepwalk until you got to higher levels (Diablo 3 did get it right with torment levels in xpac). Builds and experimentation don't matter if everything dies quickly, and one of the things the first Diablo did well was make you try out all the spells and items as you fought to overcome the initial difficulty curve. It was from a time when developers weren't afraid to make their games hard before commercial interests tookover and games were required by publishers to be more accessible for mass market appeal.
Thank you, The Act Man. I haven't watched your video yet, but for me, the answer is obvious: it's a masterpiece. Because it's a completely coherent experience, a mood, a descent into hell, towards madness, a theme so simple yet metaphysical. I don't think we emphasize enough how the composer Matt Uelmen defined the franchise. It's hard to put it into words, it gets to your core, you feel the despair and absolute evil, all while pursuing a mystical quest. Not to mention the ending that offers no relief, the ultimate sacrifice, the irony of fate. When I was younger, I couldn't even get past level 8 because this game was so terrifying.
Love you Act Man for this video, of course Diablo 1 is a masterpiece!
Still playin' it, still have the first batch disc from 1996, not 1997.
What a game!
Those Blood Knights are no joke. The only thing they'd truly fear is The Doomslayer himself.
Diablo I was what really got me interested in online play. I remember sitting in the chatroom and watching people talk incomprehensible levels of shit. The original bnet truly was the predecessor of Barrens Chat. I also remember harvesting ears with a bunch of hacked equipment.
I remember trying to beat this game when I was 11 and it was so unforgiving that I never beat it. After watching this video I might play it soon, what a fantastic piece of art you just made ActMan!
Blood knights...hit them with fitewalls...they resist but are not immune...and they are legit tough...honestly firewall works for most crowd situations
Do that, you won't regret it. OG Diablo is great, but it's a little short and frustrating. Still worth playing, but you might be better off just getting The Hell 1 2 or 3 mods, or even Beelzebub mod for that matter. But anyways I've been playing D1 for over 20 years, it's still amazing.
I recently replayed it twice. Best Diablo game. It hasn’t aged well, but the passion behind it still comes through. Unlike some followups. Most followups.
I had a cousin who is getting married to a guy with a laptop back in the early 90s. We were at a family event and he had just gotten Diablo one and let me play. Now I was only 8-9 at the time but for the next three hours I was in focused on trying to get through the butcher. I never really wanted to try PC games until after that night and I never looked back. Major life changing moment for me.
I have never played a Diablo game but I always watch your content, ActMan, and appreciate how you manage to share nostalgia with your fans. You instil a sense of belonging by inviting us in to your passions and deliver content with a sense of inclusivity with pretentiousness. I love you, man.
An OST so iconic it transcends IP and time.
Thank you so much for bringing this masterpiece to light once more. It was the very first game I ever played, I got the demo in a PC-magazine where the first 2 levels were playable. I was 8 years old and scared shitless everytime I head down the stairs to the catacombs. Amazing game and your take on it was 10/10.
Same here. Except my PC wasnt good enough. My fathers one was strictly forbidden. Diablo was the only time I shitted on this rule. So I hided the Demo in some System Folder, and only played at night. 4 nights long. Scared the shit out of me. When I got a better PC the full-version was the first game installed.
I've been a fan since day 1 back on 12/31/1996. I was 6 years old, watching my mom play the game, eventually she'd let me play and i was immediately hooked. It took several years for me to beat, but i did do it. Have figured out how to beat all the bosses, and collected about 80% of all the unique items. Top tier game, still holds its own as one of my all-time favorites
This one is by far my favourite in the series. Thanks for making it justice.
This was a great video, thanks. I remember playing this game for hours and hours on the family computer when I was a kid, and it's actually the only Diablo game I ever beat. I just never felt like the sequels had the same magic, even though Diablo 2 was probably the better game. I remember one time towards the deeper levels I skipped enemies and moved down to a much harder floor before I was leveled up enough. I almost quit the game then, it was probably a lot like what you described, but I was able to run away and went back some floors and killed everything I missed and then was eventually able to move on. Diablo along with Return to Krondor and Knights of the Old Republic are probably my three favorite games I ever played on a computer.
This game is very special to me and this coming from someone who got into the series with D3 and then went back and realized how much better the games used to be.
30:08, Bottlenecking enemies was a favorite tactic of a D&D party I ran with, to the point where a giant fire elemental demigod was killed by our group because it didn't fit through a tunnel and we all had ranged capabilities.
I loved D1(along with D2), i was hooked on it as a kid in the 90s. Its too dated in comparison to other ARPGs nowadays but it always holds a special place for me.
Plenty of QoL mods for both have come out in the decades since they were new. Belzebub is basically all you'd want for D1, and PlugY and/or Basemod fix a lot of D2's annoyances.
One of the scariest things about Diablo was playing online with dial up. You were always scared because you never knew when someone was going to pick up the phone and disconnect you.
Launch this game right now and you’d all shoot it down so hard. This is pure nostalgia.
16:06 onwards. Top tier voice acting to make up for somewhat minimalist graphics in today's sense. I love it. No motion capture needed. I can visualize it in my head.
As a 54 year old gamer I did play and complete Diablo in my 30s. It is definitely a masterpiece and I speak from experience. The constantly charging dungeon design was genius as was the unpredictable branches in what you might encounter.
I remember being 8 and introduced to this by a friends dad.... I pretended to sleep, snuck away, and played for 8 hours til morning, snuck back into bed, and pretended I slept.