🚀 go-pugleaf

Mark P. Nelson <markp...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> Hi there Jamie!
> 
> So the name of the game you want to play is "Kill Monsters, Get shinies,"
> in a way that doesn't seem too totally pointless.
> 
> Well, there's things like Torchlight (1 & 2), which is a bit more 
> simplistic than Diablo, and I don't much like the style of the artwork. I
> also felt that 2 was pretty MOTSOLS (More of the same only less so).
> 
> There's Nox (which has serious game balance issues), the Dungeon Siege
> games (which have some really dull chapters to grind through-think the
> Kurast jungle about five times bigger), and the Japanese-themed Throne of
> Darkness, which was actually quite fun to start with.
> 
> A bit more recent are Grim Dawn and Van Helsing (play the Final Cut 
> version) and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.

I'll investigate, thanks :-)

> Diablo spawned  a whole slew of imitators, and many of them were OK, at
> least in some respects, while many were really not. Most of those that are
> OK  really lack Diablo's replayability factor. They may have five 
> different classes to play but they really boil down to melee or ranged and
> you play the story once and it's cute but that's enough.

Yeah, no other action RPG I've tried has ever captured my interest
longer than a month. Most less than a week.

> You say you're getting bored, but man, it's been 22 years since I started
> playing the original Diablo on Battle Net. That's not a bad deal for what
> we paid for the game; I bought two copies of each, plus expansions, and
> figure the hours of entertainment they have afforded me cost well under a
> penny each.

I've often called MMORPGs the best value entertainment going, but Diablo
2 would be a close second! D1 and 2 together would easily equal the most
time I've ever played a single game series in my life.

> My personal favorite of the spin-offs is Titan Quest; if you're a fan of
> Ray Harryhausen, the first half of the game is so like being in one of his
> movies it's a real hoot. I love Harryhausen and I kept having to pause the
> game to indulge a fit of the giggles. Joe-Bob says check it out.
> 
> Mark.

You know, I actually own Titan Quest - it was a super low Steam special
some time years back. I recall getting a bit bored early on. The combat
seemed rather sparse, I kept having to travel back to the original camp
to sell and buy stuff, and I honestly had no idea what skills made a
decent character.

To be fair, part of my problem was that unlike Titan Quest, I knew
Diablo very well and had D1 to come from when I got D2, so nothing in D2
was totally unfamiliar. Plus, of course, AGD and AGD2 regulars inspired
me back in the day with their tales and advice as to what was fun and
effective.

What I really want, when I get down to it, is basically D2 with a couple
new classes and the same high intensity non-stop play. I guess what I'm
describing is a second D2 expansion *grins* I never could work out why
Blizzard was so sparing with their expansion packs. Sure, I appreciate
quality over raw quantity, but it's not like LOD wasn't... isn't still
riddled with bugs :-D Nonetheless it has been the source of fantastic
fun over the years.
-- 
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.