Can someone please tell me why Diablo 2 is considered such a great game? I remember it as a simple, repetitive game with no discernible plot or story. The intro video was pretty epic, I still remember that. But the game was so meh.
I'm pretty sure that it's held in such high regard because of its multiplayer. Blizzard did with Diablo II much of what they would later do with World of Warcraft, which is create a perfect, polished, highly addictive multiplayer experience. If you could play WoW in single player, it would seem simple and repetitive and have no discernible plot or story, as well, but none of that matters when you're playing in a community with others, since no encounter is the same and you create their own stories.
I've always been more partial to the original Diablo because I played both games for the single player, not the multiplayer, and the original was fresh and had a clearer story. It was repetitive, but it was 1996, when
most games were repetitive and there hadn't been anything (certainly not RPGs) like it. By 2000, though, RPGs had made a big comeback with critically acclaimed ones like Fallout 1 & 2, Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment, which had non-repetitive gameplay and deep stories. Diablo II looked awfully simple and shallow in comparison, but was totally saved by its multiplayer, which all of the other RPGs didn't have.
I think I've tried to play Deus Ex three times and never managed to finish it.
It's the same for me. For some reason, it's just never grabbed me. It's strange because it's seemingly so similar to System Shock 2, which is one of my favorite games ever. Perhaps it's just because the story and setting are harder to understand. SS2 is simple: you wake up from cryo sleep on a space ship that's now infested with alien life forms and slowly learn what happened. Deus Ex is much more confusingly complex, with anti-terrorism, government conspiracies, global plague, urban decay, aliens, the illuminati and more all thrown into the blender. One of these days, I need to make a commitment to play through it.