dmarusz's Full Review: Diablo 2 - Bestseller Series for Windows
With the original Diablo being such a success, Blizzard has both advantages and a heavy burden on their shoulders with Diablo II. I really enjoyed the first Diablo. It took me a while to buy the second but it was always on my "games to get" list.
I had talked to a few people who had already purchased it to get a feel for the game. In our discussions, I almost always blurted out that really the only thing that Blizzard had to do was make it exactly the same as the first and it was bound to score well with everyone. A lot of people say the engine is a little out of date but I can still play the original Diablo and enjoy it. The graphics are, even to this day, not too shabby. And the story is a good support to the entire project. Well, as for the people who I talked to who already played it, they said it was almost the same ... but they said it in such a way that they almost sounded slightly disappointed. I chalked it up to the fact that people wanted the latest coding and graphics engine which I've never let over weigh the other strengths of a game. So, I said how bad could it be? Were all the changes for the worse? Has it really become outdated? Well no ... and yes.
The crux of the game was still there. The game play was as easy as the first, and the graphics were enlarged enough to take advantage of better graphics. They weren't too large either as to make you feel that you can't see 5 feet in front of you. I really enjoyed the colors and textures they went with in order to define each area that your new hero visits. In fact my wife, who doesn't play games that often and is usually turned off by them because they look too fake, commented on how great it looked. It was about as realistic as you can make a real time game nowadays. Not too many straight lines, not too overdone.
The game expands on the first one in that you visit different towns as opposed to staying in one. This gives a nice visual change as well as a feel of different priorities and non-stagnant people interaction. However, it does not disrespect the old plot either. In fact it makes references to the first game the original players will enjoy and also retells the needed points so that new players won't feel left out.
I think that my favorite new addition was the idea of socketed items. With, say, a socketed sword, you could put one of different gems to improve your sword in different ways. You could get more hit points or do more damage or have higher immunities depending on which type and how nice a gem you place in your item.
You have a similar heroes to chose from much like the first game except their differences are more exaggerated. So, in another words, if you play one of the magic characters, you'll need to hack and slash less than in the first game. I liked this a lot since this increases the ability for replay fun. There are also more quests than the first, and you don't have to complete one to go to the next. It's very flexible that way.
The weakness to the new quests is that they are not different depending on what game you play. That was what I liked about the first Diablo. Each time you played a game, you didn't know which quests that were going to get. This, coupled with the fact that the game was too long and too repetitive for my tastes, took away the plus that the unique heroes gave towards replay-ability and changed it to a minus. In fact, on my computer, you see that I have played with every type of hero given but only one that has made past the first two quests.
The length does bug me by itself. I think that the wonderful thing that the first Diablo does is make you want to start all over again when you finish it the first time. I think I played the original Diablo five times. Here, I feel that I've played Diablo 10 times within the first go around.
The other major diversion from the first Diablo is that you can't play for 15 minutes. That was another thing that was great about the original. You could have a tough day and go downstairs and beat up some monsters for a little bit before going to bed. In Diablo II, if you play for 15 minutes you get nowhere in the game. You can't save whenever you want. Instead, they have this brainy idea that you have to save and exit. So, let's say you are about to take on a supreme monster at the end of a quest. You've fought through about ten grids to get to him and you want to save. Well, you do and you exit. However, when you log back in, you are now back in the city you started from and you have to travel those ten grids back to the monster. In fact, in the mean time, all of the demons, etc. have regenerated on those ten grids and you have to fight them all over again. Fun? No.
Don't get me started with the new idea of regenerating monsters. I like to kill them and then be done with them. In Diablo II, even the beings that you need to kill to complete your quest regenerate. I think I killed Blood Raven (an early quest obstacle) five times just to get to the other side of the grid. All these regenerating monsters also put too much money in your wallet. One of the intriguing parts of the original Diablo was money management. You could only afford so much good stuff. So watch your pennies and don't buy haphazardly. In Diablo II, don't worry about it. You can get the biggest and the best shortly into the game.
As you can see, there is a lot to address with the new Diablo. Good? Yes. Bad? Yes. However, in being so true to the original, I found that the add-ons made it overall less enjoyable. Now, is it to the effect that they've put out a bad product? No, definitely not. In my opinion, the original Diablo was one of the best games ever made. So, to detract a little from it gives you a still very complete and well done game. However, it is okay to feel a little let down.
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