Sorry, is this game supposed to be like Diablo?

Hello

Being a loyal diablo player for almost 14 years, I, like many of my fellow diablo players, became disappointed when I witnessed the sacrifizal of the diablo franchise in a selfish ritual for greed and money performed by blizzard south.

Diablo 3, a game that I waited 10 years to get the opportunity to play, turned out to have a series of problems, including wrong itemization, a bad lootsystem, no runewords or ladders, but with a real money auction house added to further expand upon the disappointment.

So I found myself in a circumstance having to look for arpg related alternatives, instead of playing the newest addition to one of my favorite franchises, so my friends told my to check out path of exile (that was a year ago, I have lost that account a long time ago and haven't really felt like playing this game ever since).

So I looked it up on youtube, saw a couple of videos, and thought that well, this game certainly looks like diablo in terms of artstyle and graphics, so I decided to give it a try.

Here are my thoughts about this game and why this game is nothing like Diablo.

1. Lack of creativity in terms of character classes.

Diablo 2 had five characters with the expansion adding 2 additional characters.

The paladin, a hybrid class combining melee abilities with holy magic, the necromancer, a summoning class who raises the living dead, the amazon, an exotic version of a ranged character class, the druid, a hybrid spellcasting/summoning class who uses the forces of nature in battle, just to look at a few examples.

Path of exile have a total of 7 characters to choose between, but most of them are far from as creative as the ones found in Diablo 2.

The duelist looks like a completely ordinary humanoid wielding a sword. It's a man, with a sword. He stabs people with it. The marauder looks like a retarded version of the barbarian in diablo 2. The ranger, again, completely ordinary, wielding a bow to shoot the opponents. Where is the creativity?

2. Lack of talent in terms of background music.

The highly atmospheric background music in Diablo 1 was so good that the composer won several awards for his excellent work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Uelmen

Here is the background music that plays upon entering hell for the first time in Diablo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yul_AGm-7GI

As a matter of fact, the background music kept changing and became more intensifying the closer you came to hell. Speaking of talented background music, do I have to mention the tristram theme?

The background music in path of exile is extremely dull and lacks that touch of genious.

3. Lack of both creativity and talent in terms of storywriting.

The storyline in Diablo culminates in a battle between the high heavens and the burning hells, the sin war, where angels and demons fights on mortal soil in disguise. The soul of Diablo was eventually burried beneath a chapel in tristram, and when leoric, the king of tristram, chose his seat of power inside the old chapel, Diablo attempted to posses him from beneath.

The king went mad from the possesion and his most loyal troops had no choice but to kill him, while Lazarus, the kings archbishop, lost his personal conflict to the dark powers who attempted to claim him as theirs, and ultimately became a servant of Diablo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKrKAawnxhg

Lazarus, under the obedience to his new master, led the townsfolk of tristram into a trap beneath the labyrinth where the butcher murdered them in a brutal fashion inside his slaughterhouse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLhgkhuwnO4

This whole event attracted adventurers to the town of tristram, with rumors of mysteries and great treasure burried beneath the town of tristram, which is where the game begins.

That's nothing short of brilliant, creative, and the pedestal books in Diablo 1 with the tales of the sin war are beyond epic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d5Z1rowA0k

The storywriting in Diablo 1 was so good that it, just like the background music, won several awards as well.

As a player in path of exile you are being introduced to the dull storyline by listening to the dull voices of the characters and what they have to say, and they do so in a very unenthusiastic way with a slight hint of scandinavian accent.

Conclusion: we have looked on the two games and compared them, and it is clear that calling path of exile a worthy successor of Diablo 1 and 2 would be a rude and blatant lie. Diablo 1 and 2 are by far superior in most aspects and totally different games than path of exile. Sure, the graphics and artstyle of path of exile looks a lot like Diablo, but thats about it.

As a stand alone game, I wouldn't play path of exile. I find the combat system slow and boring and visuals anything but impressive. I know this may sound harsh to a lot of the fans, but I was one of the few who voiced my opinion during the Diablo 3 beta test, and the broad majority disagreed with me when I said that Diablo 3 was going to be a major disappointment.

But if we look at Diablo 3 now, we can clearly see that so many people are disappointed about the game. People will eventually realize that path of exile is never going to be the replacement of Diablo 1 and 2 that we all wanted.

I love diablo 2, and its the best ARPG ever.

with that said, I'm surprised you spend so much time writing the comparison on story and character development/story.

neither diablo series nor poe nor any other arpg series struck me as anything beyond 'mediocre' in those departments.

if I want story and character development, Id play arcanum, planescape: torment, vampire the masquerade: bloodlines, grim fandango, the longest journey, full throttle, gabriel knight, etc, etc. diablo and its clones (including poe) would literally be the last on my list, along with arcades and serious sam-like games.

Classes in Diablo don't work like this game so I don't think your criticism there is very well founded.

Your other arguments are over the story telling music, are those the things that really made the Diablo games for you? Not me.

Hi,

From what you say appealed to you Diablo 1 and 2, Torchlight II might be the game for you.

It has Matt Uelmen himself doing the music (although I do like the music we have), and the classes are quite different to the ones in the Diablo series, including an Engineer who uses bots and a gun wielding Outlander.

You also don't seem to have created a Path of Exile character, you might want to give it a go, or have a look at the class forums to see what kind of characters players do build.

"

Qarl a écrit :

Hi,

From what you say appealed to you Diablo 1 and 2, Torchlight II might be the game for you.

It has Matt Uelmen himself doing the music (although I do like the music we have), and the classes are quite different to the ones in the Diablo series, including an Engineer who uses bots and a gun wielding Outlander.

You also don't seem to have created a Path of Exile character, you might want to give it a go, or have a look at the class forums to see what kind of characters players do build.

your act 2 music is also a masterpiece <3

I fall in love with it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoSc7yUSlYk

"

CharanJaydemyr a écrit :

There is only one Matt Uelmen. Only an idiot would expect an indie game to have a soundtrack at his level.

Surely only if one would be an idiot for expecting an indie game to be designed as well as, say...Path of Exile. Not to diminish Uelman at all, but great creative talent of all kinds can and does exist outside the claws of the world's various publishing houses.

"

The storyline in Diablo culminates in a battle between the high heavens and the burning hells, the sin war, where angels and demons fights on mortal soil in disguise. The soul of Diablo was eventually burried beneath a chapel in tristram, and when leoric, the king of tristram, chose his seat of power inside the old chapel, Diablo attempted to posses him from beneath.

To be honest I never fully read the story of D2 or PoE. The part I read wasn't interesting and was more like an alibiy story. I am more the PnP RPG player and they have far better stories.

D1 had a short story and it was fine. D2 and PoE tried to create a big story but it's just not interesting.
Especially the way it is presented is awful.


In regular RPGs you are part of the story you write it in different ways.
You work days for certain goal and it has consequences.
Not knowing what's going on will lead to the worst possible endings in some RPGs.


Same goes for music I prefer epic battle music over themed music. I just voice and music over time in Hack'n Slash games.

"

CharanJaydemyr a écrit :

Lol what? You claim to have been in the minority in saying D3 was going to be a major disappointment during the beta. That's hilarious.

Not really a minority, as I think it seems a lot of people saw them as destined to slide down a steep hill straight into the bottom of an outhouse back when they lost the original team, closed down blizzard north and merged with the evil called activision. I saw a lot of people claiming it was going to be crap as soon as it was announced that they were working on it, well before a beta existed.


We saw they were going to turn into a crapware shoveling, IP trolling, cash cow milking monstrosity crapping out stuff we'll hate... but we're buying it anyway because we hate ourselves and the game industry as a whole...


I think that explains EA and the CoD series also...

COD > D3 > d1 >d2