I’m currently playing Diablo IV (and having a blast with it) but finding one small gripe which I only think is going to get worse and probably stop me playing it completely in the long run.
My girlfriend is currently pregnant. This means in 6 months time we’ll have a newborn. With this in mind I’m expecting to only be able to grab a few minutes at a time to game and even when I think I’ll have longer I may end up jumping off at short notice. This means I’ll almost certainly come to rely on games which I can pause. Unfortunately this isn’t possible with Diablo IV since it requires an always online connection even though I’m essentially playing it as a single player game.
What are other people’s thoughts?
If it’s single player game, having an always online component is straight up dumb. Fuck anybody who does this.
D4 is worse, imho. It forces you to play multiplayer at all times, completely destroying any immersion in the lore.
Sucks, too, because they nailed Diablo’s atmosphere (from games 1 & 2, not the WoW-ified D3 aesthetic.)
Is Diablo 2 still worth playing in 2023? I played D3 a few years back and thought it was just okay.
Absolutely… with mods!
Granted, I haven’t had time to sink into it recently, so I’m a bit out of the loop, but Path of Diablo is very popular, and I know there’s another big one I don’t have time to hunt down rn.
D2R is also an option.
That said, I have the nostalgia and patience for D2’s idiosyncrasies from having played it for years; I’m not sure how well it holds up for someone completely new, coming from the more streamlined/polished UX from modern games.
Sweet, thanks for the mod recommendations! Do you know how Diablo 2: Resurrected differs from the original version and if it’s worth the $30 extra?
If you’ve never played the original, take the Resurrected. They’re the same game, but Resurrected is beautiful. Be warned though that mechanically, it’s an old game, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who hasn’t played it back then.
That I don’t know. I’ve never played it. I just bought it myself in a bundle sale with the D3 stuff I didn’t have. I have to on D3 within a month of launch, so I thought I’d give it a try sometime since they say it’s a lot better since the expansion.
Diablo 2 has aged fantastically. It is still pretty much the king of the genre despite being 23 years old. D2R did a lot to bring the visuals up to date. Unlike other ARPGs, you can actually beat the game pretty fast if you know what you are doing. It’s a very efficient and clean game design. The game is a blast to play casually.
Not directly answering your question about D2, but if you’re looking for a more modern D2 style experience Grim Dawn is worth looking into. May scratch that itch.
Games that completely disable single-player with no internet connection bother me. I like to be able to play my games whenever I want. What happens to these games down the road when the servers go down?
And if ever they take their servers offline, the game becomes abandonware.