Diablo

The Good
This game was made in a time where 3D-graphics were becoming the norm. You've got vibrant textures and colour variety, some lava flow effects, and the most prominent effect is the lighting which challenges the player to find hidden items, chests and incoming enemies. To top it off, your character's attire changes depending what you outfit on him/her. Bringing out the atmosphere with the graphics are the well-composed music tracks with real instrumentation and chorus voices.

Controls in the game are responsive. The mouse cursor keeps you informed when you point at a certain object and highlights the items hidden in the dark. It's handy that the right-mouse button casts your currently selected spell. And to add to ease are hotkeys for quick-use items and choosing spells. Spell slots would've been nice, but I guess you can't have it all.

There is replay value in the game given that you have a choice between three classes with their own talents. Keep in mind that a certain class has an absolute cap on a trait so you'll need to utilise what you have. And when entering the dungeon levels, you'll have adapt to the randomly generated layout, which luckily is automapped as you go. Also you'll find and buy random items, the unique ones being rewarding if they're suited your character's class. Even though the town is not open world, there's enough services that make you want to spend, get some flavour text and gain a new quest. What you might find surprising is that quests are random for every new game, which is all the more reason to play the game many times.

The Bad
Gameplay is not entirely balanced when it comes to fighting enemies for a few annoying reasons. One of them is that you are restricted to moving in only eight directions. In 2D RPGs that works out okay, but here this isometric angle makes it difficult to move away from enemies in a without running into more or bumping into obstacles. You have to position your mouse cursor in the correct area of the screen to move in any cardinal direction, otherwise your doing this zig-zag movement. And the fact that the levels are grid-based means that you can't easily retreat from enemy attacks, because when you're halfway between the square you shuffled off and the one you're about to go on, enemy projectiles or melee weapons will grab you and shift you back for some more repeated attacks, which is one of the most common causes for repeated deaths. Adding to this is that you can't cast a spell when you're moving, you have to be absolutely standing still, and before you know it a split-second later, you're taking damage from an opponent. You really have to fight with the mouse controls sometimes to fight your opponents effectively.

And speaking of shuffling, there's no option to turn off that annoying footsteps sound your character makes. It just ruins the music tunes and becomes an incessant distraction.

The Bottom Line
The structure of this game is almost a homage to the Epic Megagames RPG "Castle of the Winds". This game was a very good idea and next to Warcraft, it's one of Blizzard Entertainment's best. If not for the difficult mouse controls and awkward movements, I'd call this one a total winner. But hey, it sold millions, it built potential lore and release sequels, and it still runs on modern Windows operating systems, so make this one part of your personal PC collection. We might see a remastered version in future.