Coming from a diet of Tolkien and The Forgotten Realms via Baldur’s Gate, my teenage brain lapped it up. In the process the gothic menace of Diablo 1 evolved into something more colourful, but no less metal. With the return of Deckard Cain, the series started to establish its own canon, as Blizzard games do. Instead of sending the player back into the original’s gloomy crypts, the sequel drew the demons out and scattered them across grey human settlements, golden deserts and a massive jungle. The sequel lost some of the mystique of Diablo 1’s mostly context-free plunge into the netherworld, but recast the player as a hero fighting the entire hierarchy of hell. Iconic classes, varied acts, a wealth of procedurally generated dungeons and a new cast of high demons put dripping flesh onto the sparse structure established by Diablo 1. The journey to level 60 represents an incremental widening of your toolbox, where a traditional skill tree system otherwise lock you into a build. The use of ability slots and ability modifiers encourage a more experimental approach to class building.
I look forward to using my Diablo 2 favourite-the Necromancer-in next year's pack, but after hundreds of hours spent wearing skull pauldrons in D2, I enjoyed the violent excess of the Witch Doctor's exploding frogs. The rethought classes, skills and progression systems take a smart step away from Diablo 2.
The varied elevation of the keep gives you great views of the assault below-it's one of the most spectacular sections of the series. I have lost count of the times I have cleared the battlements of Bastion's Keep, fought through the battlefield below, to obliterate the siegebreaker beast. Putting the long-dead auction house aside, there's a very decent, occasionally exceptional Diablo game here. Combat, loot, hordes of enemies, big boss monsters-these are all key tenants of a Diablo game. You might argue that the enthusiasm for Diablo 2's items markets suggested that players would see the auction house as a feature. It also gave Blizzard a cut of every transaction. The auction house attempted to legitimise the black markets that sprang up around Diablo 2 and created incentives for players to farm and sell high-level items in the endgame. Second sin, the big one: in some respects, Diablo 3 didn't seem to understand why people like Diablo.
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