mythor's Full Review: Diablo 2 - Bestseller Series for Windows
Probably one of the more anticipated titles of late, Diablo 2 was virtually a hit before it ever hit store shelves around the world. The simplicity of gameplay, coupled with the intriguing storyline, and fluent combat and spellcasting system combined to make the original Diablo a favorite of many gamers, and set a new standard for role playing games that has been much imitated since.
While many reviewers have criticised the simplified method of battle, in many peoples eyes, this is one of it's strongest points.
The Storyline
The original Diablo had you taking on the role of a Rogue (think of a thief with a longbow), Sorceror (think prancing around with a glorified stick in your hands raining fiery death upon your opponents) or a Fighter (think chasing hapless goblins with a sword twice their size and turning them into goblin-mince). Your mission (if you choose to accept it) is to venture forth into the nearby dungeon, from which numerous nasties have been emerging to harrass the poor folk of Tristram. Once there, you have to work your way downwards, to find out who, or what, is at the center of all these disturbances.
Of course, given the title, it's a safe bet the bad guy is called, "Diablo".
Being the big heroic person you are, (you are big and heroic, right?) you of course manage to fight your way to the lowest dungeon and defeat Diablo... Except, of course, being virtually a god, defeating him isn't quite as simple as bashing him over the head with a big ole sword.
No, you don't get to really defeat Diablo. Instead, you have to encase his soul within a "Soulstone", and then you do the heroic thing and jam the stone into your forehead (ouch!) to keep Diablo under control for the rest of your life. What fun!
Of course, this is Diablo 2, so you just know somethings gone wrong!
Without giving too much away, Diablo has started to overcome the valiant hero from the original game, and he's set about trying to find his brothers. Yup, not only is Diablo one evil dude, he's got brothers. And he's the youngest.
Needless to say, if he releases his brothers, that would be a "bad thing".
So you, being the valiant heroic person you are (you are va... nevermind), decide to take up arms and fight the forces of darkness once more.
Not as the original hero though... This time you get to start over, with a new type of character, and a whole range of new skills and spells. And this time you're going to finish it............. You hope!
Gameplay
As I mentioned before, the gameplay in Diablo 1 & 2 has been criticised as being too simplistic, and too much a case of "click this, click that, click click click click click click click click click click click - cheer as you beat another monster". And to a certain extent, this is a fair criticism. Diablo is definitely not one of your more cerebral games. It is in part reliant upon a lot of frantic clicking.
But while the first game may not have involved a lot of strategy to it, the second game introduces a whole world of new possibilities!
If you go into the game expecting that quick-clicking is all that you'll need, you will get thoroughly beaten by the in-game nasties. These guys are quite a bit smarter than the original Diablo's minions, and they have many more tricks up their sleeves this time too.
Everything from the simple zombies, which shamble up to you moaning "braaaiiinnnssss", to fireball flinging skeletons and overgrown scarab beetles, which give you a nasty electrical shock when you thwack them with your trusty sword. And they're just in the first 'half' of the game!
Most of the gameplay does revolve around you doing a lot of clicking, but unlike in the original game, it's not all clicking to directly attack things. This time around, you've got at your disposal quite a lot of skills and spells, some of which are your typical "hurl flaming death at your enemy" type spells, as well as some more 'interesting' spells, such as one which will allow you to make enemy corpses explode, damaging any nearby, living, enemies. There's also one which will allow you, and anyone you're friendly with (in multiplayer for example) to be continuously healed whilst wandering the map. Another skill allows you to run along leaving a wall of flame burning behind you, burning any enemies stupid enough to wander through it.
And that's just a couple of the skills!
Unfortunately, you don't get access to all of these for one character. There's five different characters to choose from, and depending on which one you choose, you get different options for potential skills and spells to use in the game.
The character classes are:
- Necromancer: Specialising in magic generally referred to as 'The Black Arts', the Necromancer loves summoning undead minions to do his bidding... And usually his bidding is to kill anyone daring to threaten his wellbeing! He is also capable of casting various 'curses' upon his enemies, weakening them, turning them blind or other nasty effects. The Necromancer is a favorite among both newcomers and old veterans, for his ease when starting out, and his power in the later stages of the game, when more skills open up to him.
- Amazon: A warrior class, the amazon is an exceptionally strong woman, gifted in the use of both bow and javelin. Somewhat more difficult to use when starting out, due to her reliance upon thrown or shot weapons, the amazon can prove to be a powerful character, if you can work out the intricacies of her skill system.
- Paladin: A holy warrior, who's mission is to rid the world of all evil. Diablo seems as good a place as any to start, and with the paladins helpful auras, such as the aforementioned 'healing' aura, and his fanaticism when attacking foes using his 'Zeal' skill, you can't help but have pity for poor old Diablo!
- Barbarian: An absolute hulk of a man, the Barbarian is capable of making even the most staunch of opponents flee in sheer terror, using one of his war cries. In a pinch, he can even wield two weapons, one in each hand, and inflict massive amounts of damage on anyone who dares to stand against him. Barbarians are one of the most played characters, and with the massive amounts of direct damage the Barbarian can deal, it's not hard to see why!
- Sorceress: Definitely not the character for someone who loves to get in the thick of the battle, the sorceress is much more suited to standing back and flinging massive fireballs, ice storms and lightning bolts at her foes. A powerful character, if played well...
Obviously, you don't get all the skills available to you from the beginning, as this would make the opening sections of the game laughably simple.
Instead, as you progress through the game, killing more and more enemies, you acquire what are known as 'experience points'. For the old hands at RolePlayingGames, you'll know that XP's let you advance through the game, and serve as a method of tracking when you're allowed access to the more powerful skills available to your character.
Each time you go 'up a level', which occurs after you pass a set number of experience points, you get to choose another skill you'd like to study. You can either choose to learn a new skill available to your character, or you can hone your expertise at a skill you already possess. The key to the game is working out which skills will be useful to you, and thus which skills you want to be piling all available points into. Often what seems like a great spell at the beginning of the game, rapidly becomes a major waste of your time at later levels. Which causes you to rethink your strategy, and possibly start over.
Ordinarily, this would be majorly frustrating, after the amount of time you'd spent on your character. Most games are set in stone, and having to start over would have you repeat the exact same dungeons, with the exact same monster locations, etc. Diablo 2 breaks this mold by having the vast majority of the game environment being randomly generated! This means that each time you start the game, be it with the same type of character, or one of the other characters, you'll get a mostly unique experience. Definitely a bonus when it comes to long term enjoyability.
Overall, the gameplay is very entertaining, but also very hard at times, and it can become a little frustrating when you get to a point in the game where you just can't make any more progress because of your bad choices when it comes to which skills you've chosen to train in.
Tip: If you choose to play as the Necromancer, don't put too many points into Skeletons!! You'll be regretting it in a major way by the time you get to Act 2 of the game.
Graphics
Another major criticism of Diablo 2 is its use of the 640x480 resolution for the game, which is, by most standards, a pretty low resolution these days. While the game may look a lot better if it utilised a higher resolution, I personally don't feel that it detracts from the game at all. Most of the graphics are crisp and clear, and the special effects for the spells are quite well done, even on a normal 2D graphics card. If you have a 3D accelerated card, then it's really quite pretty!
Something which is also overlooked a lot of the time is the rather cool weather and time of day effects. If you just stand still on the one screen, eventually you'll see the light start to fade out, till eventually you're left standing in the middle of a circle of light, outside of which it's virtually pitch black. Stand there even longer, and it will start to lighten again.
Stand around some more, it will start to rain!
If you're lucky, while it's raining you may even see some flashes of lightning, and hear the ominous thunder cracking out of your speakers. Very spiffy!
The cinematics between the various Acts in the game are truly outstanding. They've all been done using computer generated characters, and the detail in the faces of the characters leaves everything else for dead. The first cinematic you see in the game is virtually worth the price of the game alone! The second one builds on the firsts brilliance as well, so it's not just a once off thing. I just hope this encourages other companies to lift their games as well.
Sound
The sound effects and voice acting in Diablo 2 is also above par. While there are games out there that have better effects, and a few that have better voice acting, Diablo 2's sound is certainly right up there among the best.
Of particular note is the voice of the character called "Deckard Cain". Veterans of the original Diablo will remember him as "Cain The Elder". If you click on him to hear him speak, then close your eyes, you would swear it's Sean Connery!
Most of the other voice acting is done adequately well, although a lot of it is your standard, "Yes?" "How can I help you?" "Do you want fries with that?" style of boring drivel. But most games where you need to revisit the same characters over and over have this problem, so it can be forgiven.
Multiplayer
Practically every game that is released these days has an option for multiplayer, and Diablo 2 is no different. While most other games focus on killing your fellow players, Diablo 2 tries to get you to work with other players to defeat Diablo and his minions. To make this actually interesting, the creatures strengths are all multiplied by however many players are in the game. If there's eight players, the monsters will be eight times as strong. Scary stuff!
Of course, there are still people who prefer killing their fellow humans, and you can still do that if you wish - although there's now a specific button you have to click to declare that you want to kill people. Without clicking that button, you cannot do any harm to your fellow players, directly or indirectly (via 'misguided' spells for instance). This has somewhat eliminated the player killing frenzy that dominated a lot of games in the old Diablo.
Blizzard has also instituted a 'secure' form of Multiplayer games, whereby all your character data is stored safely on their server, to prevent people from tampering with their game data, and giving their characters an unfair advantage.
Unfortunately, due to the immense popularity of Diablo online, the Blizzard servers are often overloaded, which slows down the game for everyone, making it a lot more frustrating and difficult to play the game. If you just have some patience though, you can usually find a good time to play, and then you'll be fine!
With the many different character classes, their various complementary skills, and the increasing difficulty of monsters, multiplayer is a lot more interesting this time around, and definitely a lot more of a challenge!
Overall
In all, Diablo 2 is among the best of the games that have been released this year, both from a single player and multiplayer point of view. It manages to balance out the various characters, so that they're all suitable for different styles of gameplay, while not falling into the trap of leaving any characters being 'unplayable' due to too many restrictions.
If you're looking for a game that isn't going to tax your brain power too hard, or tax your computer too hard either, then Diablo 2 is definitely the game for you!
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