Diablo 2 may be more fondly remembered, but the first Diablo is unmatched in terms of atmosphere, and kickstarted an entire genre of games that's going strong to this day.
So is everyone going to ignore the fact that, in order to even get past the beginning, only one type of build will work? If you aren't a melee or unarmed combat specialist, expect to die repeatedly in the beginning segment even on the easiest difficulty. It doesn't matter how much choice and depth there is in the rest of the game if you can't even get past the beginning without using a very specific skillset. The combat is boring and uninvolved, and a much bigger part of the game than it should be. Sure, the dialogue is good. Sure, there are a lot of choices (in theory) about what to do and what kind of character to play. But in practice, it's really not an RPG because if you aren't a melee combatant, you're going to have a terrible time in the first part, because all of the gun type stats are pretty significantly lowered compared to the melee stats (especially unarmed), and you start out with a cruddy little spear that, if you didn't choose melee combat as one of your tag skills, has an average chance of about 20% to hit. I can't honestly recommend this as a true RPG because of that. If you like luck based combat that never favors you, and you like using melee characters, I guess this is an okay choice. But if you want a genuine RPG, either look for a save editor, or a different game.
What else can I say about this game that hasn't been said? It's a classic.
Overall, it's pretty mediocre. When it's fun, it's really fun. But there's too much running around trying to figure out what you're supposed to do next for a quest, only to find out that because you didn't kill somebody earlier (because your persuade was too high), you aren't able to complete a quest the 'good way'. The latter only happened to me in a quest once, but there is still too much wandering around clueless. Also, the intro on this game takes WAY too long. For starters, the tutorial was the most boring tutorial I've ever played (because it is essentially nothing but the running around I've described so much already). I have to admit, I didn't complete it. After that, there's the intro, which isn't quite so boring, thankfully, but it drags on. In my first playthrough, I think I must have taken a total of 6 hours just to get off that forsaken ship. Overall, I do consider this a fun game, but ONLY if you have plenty of time and patience to spare for it, and can tolerate the occasional quest oversight by the developers. Otherwise, you'll be turned off by long periods of doing nothing.
