Last night I played Diablo 2. Again. I cannot quit this game. I don't think I even ever want to. There are plenty of thrills to be had in this game and for the past 20 years that has definitely been my experience. Not so long ago I finally managed to clear Hell. Patriarch dbtonez at your service.

Every time I play I am reminded how I first got into it. The exact year is lost to me but I do remember that my older cousin was the PC gamer back then. I was a console kid. Long story short, I walked downstairs to the basement to see my older cousin playing Diablo 2. Put simply, I was in awe. It might have been the rad box art, all the pixelated pools of blood, or the coolest thing of all that enamored me so: a Werewolf. I was told you could also turn into a Werebear.

And I have been a Druid main ever since.

Unbeknownst to me, my other cousin (PC Gamer's younger brother) had convinced our grandparents to buy this game for me on my birthday. My mother would never!

But what was a console kid to do when gifted a PC game? Well, he runs it on mother's laptop of course!

All I knew how to do back then was run Tristram and Tombs ad nauseam.

Now, I know how to craft. Sort of. I know how to make Runewords. Sort of. I know breakpoints. Sort of. I know, I know, I know...

But what I don't know is why hasn't Diablo 4 captured that same magic for me?

Why do I have more fun opening chests in Lower Kurast for hours than I do farming Helltides for minutes?

Well, here are some of my biggest gripes:

• Resource Generation
  What a god-awful mechanic. Let me quaff my potions in peace. Fuck, I hate it so much.


• Itemization
  Diablo 2 is nothing more than a slot simulator. Kill shit, get loot, repeat. All ARPGs are. I would rather farm for grail items in Diablo 2 than deal with the metric fuckton of useless junk in Diablo 4. Think *depth* not *breadth*.


• Build Diversity
  The problem with a game as old as Diablo 2 is that it's been figured out. Diablo 4, on the other hand, makes me feel like I must play some think tank build Blizzard wants me to play. There has never been anything to figure out and it doesn't feel like there will be.

I'm not so naive to think that my continued desire to play Diablo 2 isn't due to nostalgia. Nostalgia is a helluva drug.

But so is Diablo 2. Scratches a part of my brain that other games (even in the same series) just do not.

That's all I had. Here's to 20 more years!
-db