In Diablo circles — I don’t mean circles of hell, I mean in the community around Blizzard’s dark fantasy action RPGs — there is a cool game to like, and it’s Diablo 2. There’s no real debate about this. The 2000 game is Diablo at its moodiest and most unforgiving. Yet it’s still impressive in its scale, has unbeatable longevity, and plays pretty well today, especially in the Resurrected remaster.
You can try for purist points and stump for the first Diablo, but it’s very much a first draft, and nobody really thinks it’s a superior game. Diablo 4 is far too current and too popular to be cool to like; the done thing is to complain about whatever the latest balance changes or endgame tweaks are instead.
And then there’s Diablo 3. Reputationally, this game sits in a weird limbo. It was pilloried before launch for its more colorful, less grungy art style, and pilloried at launch for terrible network issues, a real-money auction house, and tuning that felt off. Eventually, Blizzard rescued it with the superb Reaper of Souls expansion in 2014 and excellent console ports. But the stink of those early days remains, while the game is perhaps not yet old enough — or its sequel is too new — for a full reclamation movement to gather momentum.
But, quietly, people still play it. And they are having a great time. I have always loved Diablo 3 — even at launch, when it had many problems. It’s available right now on Xbox Game Pass, and I would recommend it over any other Diablo game, even Diablo 4, to a new player.
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