Diablo is able to contain quite a large amount of depth and variety into it's single town, handful of NPCs, and three character classes. You will quickly learn that mashing the mouse button over and over again only works for so long until you will have to learn how to juke enemy attacks and zig-zag to dodge projectiles. No two play throughs of this game are going to be the same, because Diablo randomly generates the quests, items, and enemy spawns at the start of each new game. Replaying the game over and over again is actually encouraged, as you can continue playing with the same character in a new save file, looking to find better loot drops and grind more experience points, which will help you if you want to play the game on a higher difficulty setting. I played through this twice recently, once as a warrior, and then again as a rogue. My warrior play through was done on vanilla Diablo. For the rogue, I played on Hellfire. Hellfire has a mixed reception from some people, but I really liked it. The second area, the crypt, felt a lot more in line with the atmosphere of the original game. The first area is this giant insect nest, which is cool but it feels like it belongs in a different game. The addition of more dungeon levels, more enemies, more items, and another character class were all cool. It's arguable that its sequels, alongside other games in the ARPG genre, have made the original Diablo obselete and irrelevant in the modern age, but I still think that this game is a cool experience. In some ways, the lack of quality-of-life features like loot stashes, highlighted loot, character re-specs, kinda adds to the more hardcore and challenging aspects of this original game. I still find it extremely addicting and satisfying to grow my character in levels, get more and more powerful with each new piece of gear or stat boost that I acquire. A really easy game to just sit down and get lost in for a few hours. Classic, absolutely recommended.
A nice visual novel, this one is based on the short story "Dagon" by HP Lovecraft. I have never read his works, but this was interesting, and I guess that this is my introduction into that universe. The prose and writing style took a little bit for me to get used to and I had to re-read some of the lines. Lovecraft seems to have had a very descriptive and verbose writing style that was a little dense at times for me but it was also really atmospheric and imaginative. As a video game, this is very barebones and just consists on you clicking on either an icon to advance the story, or special hidden icons that will give you more tidbits of information on Lovecraft and his era. The 3D environments look pretty good, and I'm glad that they are rendered graphics rather than a flat artwork and text screen. This is free and should take you less than an hour to complete, maybe more than that if you are looking for all of the hidden bits of information.
I had a lot of fun with this title. The highlights for me personally were the dialogue menu artworks and the descriptive writing. Skald has a very cool Lovecraft-ian story that will keep the player engaged as they continue to unravel its mysteries. I felt that the combat got kind of stale after a while, but that was more towards the end when I was facing combat encounter after combat encounter. Some of the party members also felt a lot more underdeveloped than the others. I played this on normal difficulty with all of the default modifiers. The few instances that I died were when I was either underleveled or fighting a boss, but on the whole this game was not difficult. One complaint that I have is that the game gives you an overabundance of food. Especially if you are holding down the shift key for most of your playthrough and picking up all of the ingredients that are littered on the ground and trying to explore all the nooks and crannies of the gameworld and complete all of the side quests, which is how I like to play RPGs. I ended the game with countless stacks of uncrafted ingredients and cooked meals in my inventory. You can also rest in a variety of places, so you shouldn't die that often while playing on the standard difficulty unless you are deliberately levelling up your character in an unoptimized manner and not managing your resources correctly. The puzzles were also not that challenging, but there was a moment in the final dungeon where there was an obscure door that I could not find for the life of me, and I had to resort to looking it up online. That moment frustrated me. Skald is a very enjoyable experience though, and I recommend it. I'm not quite sure that it leaves a lasting impression on the player, but it does represent that older 1980s style of computer role-playing game quite well, and it also has a really interesting universe inspired by the writings of HP Lovecraft, whose works are actually not often represented in video games.
An extremely primitive and rudimentary RPG from the late 1970s. It has its place in history as one of the earliest computer role playing games, and as the progenitor of the Ultima series, but as a game itself Akalabeth is really not worth more than about twenty minutes of curiously playing around with its systems and mechanics nowadays. You go to the castle, get a quest to kill a specified creature type in one of the dungeons, and then come back for your reward. Which I suppose is the majority of RPGs when you really boil them down to their essence; questing and dungeon raiding and the like. But there is no real interesting narrative, character, or world building here to keep the player interested. Once you complete ten quests for Lord British, the game ends. You can also spend some time grinding and/or exploiting the magic amulet in order to cheese the game and make it ridiculously easy. Watch out and make sure that you keep well stocked on some food too, because you will get a "game over" if you are not careful and run out. It's free on GOG to check out and I suggest doing so, if for only a short period of time before the novelty and curiosity wears off.
