Yeah, but for all it's loot treadmill and twitch gameplay, D2 has a plot that starts and finishes in Normal. Beating that and stopping is pretty much sufficient amount of Game. You get to see all the skills, you get to do all the plot, see all the areas, kill all the enemies see all the gear (Exceptional and Elite stuff just looking the same as normal stuff). Technically, beating Normal will do the vasy majority of players (Like the ones that weren't on B.Net anyway >_> Probably due to having played on B.Net during Diablo 1 for some). That and levelling pre-expansion was horrible as well. I remember the one time I played through Nightmare and Hell on a Bowazon (when ranged weapons were still bugged to be capped in the damage output the weapons were able to have, so Bowazons were apparently bad ideas) I think I got all of 4 or 5 levels after finishing normal? It was pretty pathetic experience for just retreading the same content and spending a bit longer to kill Diablo than it used to. Expansion improved things a bit there and made going on to higher difficulties less painful and stupid and the exp curve less retarded (by making Act 5 the only place worth doing anything...).
Honestly there was some pretty big flaws in Diablo 2 every step of the way. It really is a fun game in spite of everything wrong with it, but that is how Blizzard works really.
Huh. Leveling pre-expansion was slow, sure, but you could basically advance through the game constantly and keep going. I very rarely felt the need to grind, though admittedly I also would thoroughly clean out the various hives of villainy I found. Also, D2 plot hype?! Sure, the cutscenes were really pretty, but I have no problem saying it was mostly for gameplay, and thus found being able to continue the game but harder appreciated.
And Bowazons? I dunno, I remember people saying they weren't bad, and I actually played one - my main experience with D2 was with a Sorceress who get to Act 3 Nightmare, and a Bowazon who got to Act 3 Hell. Basically there were Multiple Arrow Bowazons and Strafe Bowazons, at least from 1.03-1.06 or so; Strafe was better against randoms, Multiple Shot was better against uniques (get a tight grouping and shoot them with like 10 arrows at once at high levels of MS). Amazons made Hell tolerable for me; the bosses do tend to have moves that can OHKO you and otherwise make like suck, but they're suckers for attacking Valkyries, who start having, oh, 1000+ HP or so on Hell and later. This is pretty much how I dealt with late Nightmare and Hell; summon Valkyrie, do damage with the Ice-Elemental Arrow for single-targets or high-level Strafe for mobs, let everyone get distracted by the Valk. Helped keep my sanity, since I was bad at using hotkeys and used the cycle buttons instead. Only needed three options for right click to cycle through: Strafe, Valkyrie, & Slow Missiles, while left click would be a freezing arrow. Then concentrate on dodging everything. Worked out pretty well. I just hate Act III, and was not going to suffer through it AGAIN.
Sorceress would have been annoying in Hell, due to the elemental immunities they started handing out, everything OHKOing her, no distraction Valkyrie, etc.
I don't know if they changed him later, but I enjoyed the Duriel fight, if that's being criticized as unfun. It was good to have at least one brutally hard fight in the game. Him and Andariel were definitely my favorite bosses in the game.
By the time 1.10 came out, I'd lost interest, as there's only so much fun you can have with as simple a game as D2.
(Fun thought experiment: Diablo in the DL. Destroys bosses who stand still, even some Godlike ones! Hates the evasive. Probably loses to Lyn, in fact, as I'd give Diablo's base chance of hit as being in the realm of 30% or so which is going to be a sure miss against her.)
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On the PC note, finding Heroes of Might & Magic V kinda disappointing. AI seems rather braindead; maybe I need to crank the difficulty higher? The system has some cool tweaks, I'll grant. But the worst thing - what happened to the little mini-fictions when you visit a location? Come on, I want the experience of being an adventuring hero with little vignettes about stealing gems from dancing fairies in a mushroom glade or whatever. You visit a Fountain of Fortune in Heroes V, and a little Luck icon rises up next to your hero. Very smooth, very efficient. And soulless.
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Since I see some chatter about Persona 4 as well... random, but after (incorrectly) believing myself spoiled on who The Killer was, went off to YouTube a month or so ago and spoiled the hell out of the game for myself, watching most of the scenes of importance that people uploaded. Despite fully expecting to be doing this out of masochism and/or snark... the game seems shockingly
good. Completely and utterly shocking, as Persona 3 is pretty much the anti-SnowFire game, and I'd looked at a few scenes from it as well and thought most of them failed tremendously. But yeah, basically likable characters help a lot. Social Links and such a strongly player-identified main character are still not my style at all, so I wouldn't have played the game anyway, but certainly impressed. And I always like a good murder mystery; seems like this one was well-done.
More generally, I liked Persona 4 thematically a lot, and certainly far more than other SMT games. Persona 2 played with the consensual reality deal, but not much (go to Rumor monger, buy new reality. Whatever.), and that's generally a thing that it's easy to get annoyingly sanctimonious about as if it really exists, when it blatantly doesn't (anyone else who's read White Wolf's Mage has seen an advanced form of this). Persona 3, at least from watching some of the final scenes, seems aggressively stupid in its idea of humanity. Persona 4, however? The whole "Reach out to The Truth" thing and the murder mystery strikes my biases for an objective reality with actual truth far more rather than a "woo truth is whatever we say it is go us."
So Persona 4 says that humanity is indifferent between truth and illusion... but a few people with courage can redeem everyone. Which is reality, pretty much! Just replace super-powered high school students with enterprising reporters. This is my kind of cynicism crossed with hope. And then make it "real" of course in evil fogs of death that need to be beaten up because it's a video game. Persona 3 claims that humanity desires death?! WTF?! If there's one base hunger humans have, it's to survive, so claiming humanity strongly desires Death directly is just dumb. And what stops Death from awakening is not anything that translates well to the real world, but the main character being an incredible Gary Stu who's just more powerful than Death is. Right. Also said Death is annoying with the "Why do you face me when you know you will perish?" nonsense. These are superpowered high shcool kids who just knocked over a ton of monsters, stop acting like this is true, game.-----
Also, the Virgin Megastore in Union Square is closing. Big huge sales of 30-40% off and all... in retrospect, probably should have got a fancy headset for 25 bucks, but they're all sold out now. Anyway. Picked up some DS adventure games, as the genre translates to the DS really well. First off was Broken Sword, which I see was re-released now... I remember a moderately positive review from PC Gamer circa 1997 or so, so yay for extremely delayed playing of it. I'm sure it'll have Holy Blood, Holy Grail nonsense, but it's potentially cool nonsense, so whatever.
I also got "Lux Pain," because it had a cool box and it's also an adventure game. The back of the box made it sound like the X-Files crossed with Phoenix Wright or the like; people are committing mysterious crimes, some strange virus, you need to investigate. Cool! Except then I look it up on the Internet after I get home, and it turns out Our Hero needs to infiltrate a Japanese high school to investigate said crimes. And it's mostly about using the stylus to pull evil worms out of them. And the translation is incoherent. .... you win some, you lose some, I guess. I just hope that this game's script is FUNNY bad not fail bad.
Lastly, because I know from experience that the price isn't likely to drop at EB anytime soon, and this was a unique opportunity to get it for only 25 bucks including tax or so... I got... one of
those games. You know. And actually decided to play it before the adventure games, due to being easier to drop randomly. As expected, everyone in this world is batshit crazy, challenging even small children to combat, telling themselves that their creatures
like being magically enslaved. No more. This world needs a new kind of order... the young master ULTRA's order. He'll dominate all the critters himself, and rule with an iron fist. Restore discipline and sanity to the grass-overridden, decaying roads upon which any simple traveler is likely to be assaulted by ravenous beasts. With the help of his trusty sidekick, LOKI, of course. Whose wisdom is certainly trustworthy, and is not secretly plotting to betray the young master. Which... I may be glad I named him that rather than IGOR or JEEVES? Since rather than being the color commentary for my journey a la Joey from YGO:TAS that I expected, he's kinda run off on his own. Is he actually going to turn out to be a rival after all? That would be funny if so. Driven mad with jealous at my superior skills, he can go be the villain's stooge.
Anyway, I've got my penguin, first to be a long line of many slaves to my will, I'm sure. And a bird, and some lesser beasts, and more importantly a fishing rod. Now to kind myself some karp... I hear its power level is unbelievable.
While on the topic: Belated congratulations, Captain K. Surprised, though, that it seems the tournament was single-elimination?! That seems really random. Just do Swiss pairings; everybody can play as long as they like, and you're allowed one loss before you get mathematically eliminated. Suppose I'm used to Magic: The Gathering tournaments, where Swiss really helps keep the randomness under control. It only "adds" two extra rounds IIRC to determine the winner anyway. (i.e. a 128 person tourney takes 7 rounds single-elimination, or 6 rounds Swiss + 3 round top 8.)
And off topic, since I have a small penguin ruthlessly destroying my enemies... apparently the story that "Fairy Penguins" were renamed "
Little Penguins" as a result of lobbying from the gay community is just an urban legend. The biologists just liked the name "Little Penguin" better.
