Patient Gamers

You should give Path Of Exile a shot. It's very much like Diablo, but it's free to play (just pay for cosmetics).

If you like action RPGs, diablo 2 is the game that made it into what the genre is today for the most part. It's practically a perfect game from a fundamentals and gameplay standpoint (meaning it's perfect at what it aimed to do and the impact it's had, not that it's without flaws). I have never been as into AARPGs as my friends, I burn out on them too quickly usually, and I don't have the patience for the grind. But for people who like that style, it's the OG. Its probably the first game I ever sunk more than 100 hours into, but those are rookie numbers for AARPG vets.

Diablo 1 is fantastic, but is very dated at this point. Partly because Diablo 2 improved on damn near everything.

Diablo 3 was...fine. I played through it twice when it launched and I've never touched it again. It was/is insanely popular but it wasn't for me.

I haven't played 4 and personally don't plan to, but it seems like people really like it so far! I'm not against it by any means, I'm just not into the seasonal content type games, and I really prefer to play single player, and I play offline a ton. I can't keep up with the grind or the time commitment, but wish the best for those that can and enjoy that game style.

I personally love the games; they provide a satisfying gameplay loop of murdering hoardes of enemies to get better equipment so you can kill even stronger enemies. Using new builds and discovering new attack combinations/synergies is a lot of fun as well!

Diablo 1 has a great atmosphere but is pretty lacking by modern game standards. If you decide to play it, I'd recommend adding the Hellfire expansion so you get an extra class and the ability to sprint.

Diablo 2 is brilliant and lets you party up with up to 7 people instead of the max of 4 in D3 and D4. It's definitely a tougher game compared to the newer releases.

Diablo 3 is a fantastic game now that they've added the Adventure mode and rifts which make it way easier to tackle quests and grind for gear. It's also almost limitless on its difficulty unless you invest hundreds of hours into a character.

I've been jamming on Diablo 4 since it came out, and it could work out to being the best in the series; however, it's clear that it has a bit of growing to do. The skills are fun and fair though, and the five classes are diverse enough to give you plenty to chew on as you discover your preferred play style.

Obviously I love them, but I could see how others might find them repetitive. I'd snag D3 on sale (or it's probably discounted now) and decide if you feel like D4 would be worth $70.

I only ever played diablo 2, but I had a lot of fun playing it!

I’ll throw my vote for Diablo 3. The game can be wicked addictive. I got the platinum trophy on PlayStation which was no quick feat. I just couldn’t stop playing. I would suggest choosing the Crusader to play as first. Super fun and has these flails that are specific weapons to his character. I had so much fun with the Akkhan armor set and the legendary flail called Fate of the Fell. Can take you well into the torment difficulty levels. Chef’s kiss of a game. I think people should really give it a chance if they like the Diablo style of game at all.

I played 1 through 3, including a bit of Resurrected. I definitely favour 2, though, having played it for probably thousands of hours.

I'd recommend any of them, 2 even more so, what's with the release of Resurrected.

Diablo 1 has an almost old-school D&D feel to it, establishing many staples of the series, such as the itemization, the lore, the character stats and inventory management aspects, among others. It definitely feels a bit dated, but I'd recommend trying out DevilutionX (on GitHub) to mitigate that. It's a project that adds many quality of life features and allows the game to feel a bit more of a modern experience, with larger resolutions, better and configurable controls, access to content that was cut from the original, and many other things.

Diablo 3 is the one I played the least, but I'd still say to give it a go. It's more of an arcade experience, with combos, hordes of enemies, giant numbers on wearable loot and, as much as I could gather, a simpler experience all around. It's probably the most hated entry on the series, but I still had loads of fun with it if only for lore reasons.

Diablo 2 is… well, Diablo 2. Depending on whether you play LoD ("Classic", you could say), or Resurrected, it can be a very unbalanced game. Builds and classes are clearly better than others. Itemization is on its own level, being the best I've encountered in my entire life and the main reason why I keep coming back to it. It's also why it's such a grind of a game, which is not for everyone. Anyway, I definitely recommend 2 over the others, which is not to say that they are not good games.

As for plot… well, you can play all games without reading a single line of dialogue, but you can if you want and I like the games for that.

Edit for clarity: you don't need to play the games in any order, as the plots are mostly self contained, but I do think it's very rewarding to go through them and seeing the plot unfold. There are many iconic moments.

A lot of people don't like Diablo 3, and I can see why if they loved D2. Frankly, D2 felt like I wasnt getting much of anywhere even though I beat the campaign and such. On the other hand, while much more colorful and flashy, D3 felt well adapted to grinding all night for better gear and build optimizing. I haven't played either much lately, but would probably prefer 3...

I’ve played 2 and it’s amazing. check out the reissue. Diablo 3 was fun. That’s about it.

I like to explore old games that are popular to see the development of the AI and such. From that perspective, it's most definitely worth playing just to see the experience. The graphics of the earlier ones are not on par with modern games, but I doubt you expected that they would be:-). As for whether the process will be FUN ah... it actually very well might.

It does involve a LOT of grinding - so mod it if you want to cheat yourself of that portion of the experience? (there are game-state editors to like give yourself a bunch of EXP or some such) Forewarned is forearmed and all... Note that gear sets are almost impossible to collect for playing casually, at least they were originally iirc although I don't know about any later releases.

Also there were expansion packs - like you could play D1 as a Monk and have access to additional levels. That was kinda fun:-), so maybe start right with those, as you can still play through the original classes on it (iirc).

It's a LOT of resource management. Like as a mage fighting Diablo (the uh...end boss:-D), I'd literally make multiple trips down to the bottom and set out piles of potions on the ground, then do that again and also set additional piles further away. It isn't like modern games - you could actually LOSE, as in tens of hours, all down the drain (I forget how saves were handled precisely but you could definitely get stuck with no way out). Note there's a duplication trick in D1, so you can choose to abuse that if you want to make that aspect easier.

Also not all builds are viable in a single-player environment. I remember making a barbarian in D2 with a whirlwind crashing through huge hordes... but that makes it super tough to deal with "curses" that reflect enemy damage back onto you, and which iirc only appear in the final battle (against again Diablo), but blocks a necessary key to unlock him. I recall leading off each enemy individually away from the main one... and still had such enormous trouble fighting the guy doing the cursing that I started another account to have more fun, and I don't think I ever went back:-). They may have done some re-balancing since then, I have no idea.

I gave it all up b/c it's kinda dark. I like dark even but... damn, it's just a lot, like that's ALL that it is, no variety really. Hours and hours (and hours and hours) of just nothing but that gothic music (which I also like) and themes of torture (which I...don't mind really). I unreservedly recommend D1 & 2 (never tried D3 but my brother loved it iirc) as an "experience" to try, but do be aware if you are sensitive to that kinda thing. D2 does have more variety at least - plains, desert, jungle, ruins, then you go to hell, literally. :-) It was great music too, for its time (or maybe just in general).

I've personally only played Diablo 3, however I have put a couple hundred hours into it at this point. I would 100% recommend it, just be prepared for the urge to play it for hours on end!

Also curious about this. I’ve played torchlight and it’s similar and I enjoyed that

Having sunk tons of time into D3, I can say it's worth a look. The paragon leveling system from D3/D4 is a clever way of rewarding players who keep playing well after the main 3 (or 4 with D3 DLC) acts. I think I was at Paragon level 1100 or so when I stopped playing.

The biggest complaint people had about D3 IIRC was it's too colorful (something they poked fun at with the Whimsydale/rainbow goblin).

D2 was a favorite in college, but admittedly I never played outside of some lab parties.

D4 is shaping up to be a solid game, but this is patient gamers, so I don't know if that counts.

You're in for a treat, start with Diablo 1.
Thanks to it's color palette, it's still very atmospheric, even today. There's HD mod that not only makes it no hassle to run this on modern PC with higher resolution but also adds ton of content that was originally cut from the game. It even adds re-imagined cut content that was only just mentioned somewhere in-game or was planned for Diablo 1 but actually ended up being part of Diablo 2 later on. Purists will whine about too many balance/item changes, it's worth it to try the game firsthand.
https://mod.diablo.noktis.pl/download

Yeah, but they aren't fun if you run into cheaters. They're a blast if you play with some of your friends. There are other similar games too, so I recommend you give the whole genre a shot.

I never played 1 growing up, but I think d2 is pretty similar to 1 but improved on it a lot.

If you are going to play, I’d say play d3 or the d2 remake. D3 is nice due to quality of life improvements and you can switch skill trees at any time.

But I think d2 was more fun overall.

I’ve been meaning to try the series for about 20 years now, and just pulled the plug on Diablo IV. I’ve only done a couple of quests but I’m really enjoying it so far.

The gameplay feels relatively basic at the moment, but I realise there’s probably a lot of complexity I’ve not revealed yet. For now I’m having a great time just hitting mobs, finding better gear and exploring the over world.

I’ve also picked up Diablo 1 from GOG and am enjoying that - it feels even simpler, but is a lot of fun. I’m using the DevilutionX port which adds a lot of modern features to the game.

I’m playing both games mostly on my Steam Deck, and they play really well with the gamepad controls. IV looks fantastic too. I do intend to play some on my PC though, I need to justify that graphics card I told my wife I needed…

PS: first post on BeeHaw, it’s nice here!

I wouldn't recommend going as far back as the first one. Diablo 2 Resurrected came out last year and is a good starting point for the series if you're thinking about trying it out. I never got into 3, but so far 4 feels really good.