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Comment by slfnflctd | Hacker News Reader

Still some of the best (pseudo-) random dungeon generation I've ever played. That functionality alone probably accounts for over 90% of the time I spent replaying it.

It's strange to me that so few games in the genre seem to do this as well, over 25 years later. Hades is supposed to be good, but for some reason it doesn't look like something I'd enjoy. Maybe I'll pick it up on sale at some point and find out.

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Have you tried Diablo 3 yet? After the real money auction house fiasco, Blizzard did a 360 and completely turned the game around and continued to grow it over the years. It is an excellent game now.

Path of Exile is another really good one, more like D2, whereas D3 was more streamlined (plays very well, but less customization).

Both do random dungeon generation.

In a different genre, but Deep Rock Galactic has super cool underground cave systems procedurally generated... it's just an excellent game throughout: https://www.ghostship.dk/blog/procedural-level-generation

What made me dislike Diablo 3, is that for me it fails to deliver the atmosphere that really made Diablo 1 and 2 a game worth experiencing.

Diablo 3 is too colorful and looks like it has been heavily influenced by games like World of Warcraft (in a bad way).

Definitely. And it's not just the atmosphere, the gameplay is borrowed from WoW too (in a good way, IMO, but YMMV).

Path of Exile might be more up your alley. It's more D2-like both in atmosphere and depth -- it's more about traversing giant skill trees to slowly customize your character, than D3's "choose a few unique skills and learn to use them together well" model.

Funny, my one main gripe about PoE (and also D2) are the superdark graphics. I miss the WoW art style, personally... guess it's not for everyone :)

I dont know. Neither Diablo 3 nor PoE are really good comparisons for me to Diablo 2 as it stands today.

At least in the most important aspect for me. Itemization.

Diablo 3 is a game that I play every few seasons for a week after ladder reset and then stop because I have a BiS item set (if you ignore Ancient/Primal Items, which just arent fun for me, as its just "same item, just minimally better").

PoE on the other hand just goes into the completely opposite direction and you need to basically be a full-time twitch streamer to do everything in game (or be one of the 0.01% of the playerbase that has the game fully figured out including crafting/trading)

Not to mention that in PoE I can never actually relax when I play endgame. I love Diablo 2 for being able to farm some items after work and not have to on edge everywhere.

I tried playing PoE on my Steam Deck last league and I just stopped after a while because I would die all the time because I didnt see some random mob that would one-shot me on the small screen.

Part of that missing atmosphere was that in D1 (and to a lesser extent D2), you were a weak human and death was around every corner. You might walk into a room and near-instantly die. You spent a lot of time running for your life.

Contrast that to D3, where I literally beat the game the first time without using a single health potion. You were a super-hero who could punch a skeleton and send the pieces flying at level 1. And while I can certainly see the allure of such experiences (hell, I enjoy them too in other games), it was not what I wanted from a Diablo experience.

This is accurate.

>Part of that missing atmosphere was that in D1 (and to a lesser extent D2), you were a weak human and death was around every corner. You might walk into a room and near-instantly die. You spent a lot of time running for your life.

LOL. Thank You this really did made me laugh out loud. I think that is a very accurate description of D1.

Diablo II is still more fun to play than Diablo III (in my opinion). The community behind Diablo II is just 100x more passionate and loyal. The rune word system in Diablo II is still being expanded which makes the game re-playable every season.

Agreed, D2 is/was the pinnacle of and set the benchmark for two-dimension dungeon-crawler RPGs. It's still an enjoyable game even 20+ years later. It's probably a good thing there's no Web/Android/iOS version because I'd be hooked, and don't have time for that anymore!

I grew up playing an inordinate amount of Warcraft I, II, III, and StarCraft in the 90s with my siblings. The quirky character voices and scripts were downright amazing and AFAIK remain unparalleled to this day.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=scweL0LVrcM

Check out this song... https://youtu.be/nqdWDpyPt8I

Just.. no. Thanks anyway.

Agreed - D2 has not been paralleled to this to day.

Your reflection sounds eerily similar to the one D2 dev who said the same thing after he (accidently) stayed up all night (sound familar?) on a Friday evening "testing" the latest change they implemented in the engine architecture unti he noticed day-light was peaking into his office window...

There seems to be a secret sauce in D2 that is impossible to replicate.

Pointing out the obvious that doing a 360 would change absolutely nothing since you'd end up facing the same direction you started with.

Did you mean: 180?

Wrong. You would get all the dizziness that wouldn't be there otherwise.

…turn 360 degrees and walk away.

Hades is excellent but the procedural generation is not one of its main selling points, IMO. For me it’s the story (elevated mainly by incredible characters) and the combat. The procedural generation is simply a means to funnel you to combat scenarios in randomized orders, but it’s less like diablo where entire levels are created but just a series of interconnected handcrafted rooms that are randomly connected. There is no real exploration, each room basically funnels you to the next by giving you a choice of upgrade and a different door for each. The main gameplay loop is basically - enter room, kill everything, get upgrade, go to next room, restart when you die. So if you’re looking for a diablo-clone, hades is not it - I would recommend Grim Dawn (but this doesn’t have procedural generation lol). Hades is still excellent but it’s Roguelite through and through, and one of the best ones at that.

The dungeon and item generation randomization is great. The real time isometric view, gameplay, and atmosphere, while groundbreaking, would not have been enough to get me to replay more than a handful of times. Without the randomization, the game would have had to have many more expansions.

I have played Diablo for far too many hours to count. On the other hand, Baldur's Gate is a game I replay about once every 5 years due to the atmosphere being so good.

One thing I loved about this game was the vast amount of fan pages dedicated to it in the early years when I was learning how to play. I have spent some time compiling links to those sites, that are still hosted or archived, at my website https://mgpat-gm.github.io/links.html. If you want a trip down memory lane, click away.

Here’s an old fan site for other games of the era, though in Spanish: http://islanegra.clandlan.net/ (The look is what’s fun)

I loved growing up with the internet where sites like that were dime a dozen.

Hope you came across Dead Cells.

Incredible game with an amazing value for almost infinite-replayability

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