Diablo II is one of the greatest hack-and-slash RPGs ever created, but it does have its flaws
The bad: Playing offline doesn’t feel right; graphics are dated; quests aren’t very interesting; not enough sound; way to much lag.
These days Blizzard is best know as the company the created the ridiculously popular World of Warcraft and the much anticipated expansion The Burning Crusades. Nevertheless, this isn’t the first time that Blizzard has had success with an action RPG. Back in 1996 Blizzard released Diablo, a hack-and-slash RPG that won over fans and critics alike. With the success of Diablo, many awaited some kind of sequel and in 2000, the wait was over with Diablo II hitting stores.
The story of Diablo II takes place shortly after Diablo I ends. The hero that had defeated Diablo in the first game has been taken over by the Lord of Hell himself and he’s off on a journey to free his brothers so that he can bring the world into darkness once again. It’s your duty to keep after the trail of destruction and depression, so that you can kill Diablo before he frees his brothers.
If you’re one of the many people that played the original Diablo, Diablo II will be very familiar to you. Diablo II doesn’t in any sense of the word revolutionise what hack-and-slash RPG should be, but what it does do is expand and improve on many of the features that Diablo I was so famous for and add a few things along the way as well.
Before you go off and save the world from the doom of Diablo, you’ll have to pick a character for the journey. There are five characters to choose from and at least one will satisfy your playing style. The five characters are The Amazon, The Paladin, The Sorceress, The Barbarian and The Necromancer. Unfortunately, there is no character customization what so ever in the game, it would have been a good idea for Blizzard to at least include a male and female version of each character. When you first start playing every character will more or else feel the same, the Barbarian will be slower and the Amazon will feel faster, but the way you play the character will be the same all around.
This is true for about the first four levels of your character, but as you move forward in the story and level your character up, you’ll find that each has their strengths and weakness. For example, the Sorceress will die quickly if she’s ambushed, but her high magic points allow her to use her magic skills to take out the enemy from far away. Slowly you’ll find that every character is unique in it’s own way from the type of skills each character has, to what attributes are increased each level, to the strategy you should use to beat the enemy both with a team online and on your own offline.
Two different things determine your characters’ strengths and weaknesses: attributes and the Skill Tree. Attributes are separated into four different categories that affect the character in some way. Strength increases damage; Dexterity increase chance of hitting an enemy and decreases the chance of an enemy hitting you; Vitality increases health and stamina and lastly Energy increases magic points (mana). Every character starts with a set number of allocated points in each category respective to the way the character should be played. Furthermore, for every level that a character gains more points are added to certain categories, which category is dependent on their class. When a character levels up he/she also receives five attribute points that the player can allocate as they please.
During every level increase, a character also receives one skill point that the player can choice to add into the Skill Tree. The Skill Tree is divided into three categories with ten skills in each. Every skill in a particular category has a common theme represented by the name of the category. The skills are separated into six rows that determine what level a character must be to use a particular skill. Every six levels more rows open up until level thirty, then all the rows are available. Furthermore the skills are connected, meaning that some skills will require you to allocate skill points into past skills for you to use newer ones. On the other hand, past skills often increase the power of newer skills, so there is a balance in the system. Although the Skill Tree may seem confusing once it’s in front of you, it’s far less intimidating. Diablo II does a great job in explaining what each skill does and showing what kind of power it holds, of course to really understand the skill the best way is to try it out for yourself.
The entire game is separated into four Acts; each act takes place in a different city/town with its own look and feel. You’ll always be a few steps behind Diablo and through the process of quests, you’ll hope for a chance to minimize that gap. Each Act has six Quests except for the fourth one which has only three. The Quests aren’t particularly interesting, they all require you to gets past tons of enemies, then kill a special monster in some way and maybe take an item from a special room, but it’s the rewards that make the Quests so worthwhile. Extra skill points and Attributes are so hard to get later in the game that when a Quest offers some free, it’s hard to turn them down. It still would have been a nice addition if Diablo II added some variety to the gameplay. Hacking and slashing past hordes of enemies is fun, but it does get boring from time to time.
Even though the task of killing the Lord of Hell is a monumental one, Blizzard was kind enough to aid you in a number of ways. The weapon and armour variety in Diablo II is simply fantastic. The game provides a number of weapon classes such as swords, axes, maces, pole arms, throwing weapons, bows and so on and so forth. A massive prefix and suffix system that adds random abilities to many of the weapons and armour you’ll find on the field adds value to items that might normally be useless. There are also special set items that work together with each other to become stronger. Lastly, a fussing system is introduced half way through the game allowing you to combine different items to create a completely different item. The possibilities of the item system is impressive and it provide a great deal of replay value all on its own, you’ll often find yourself spending hours just trying to figure out which items to keep, which to improve and which to sell.
Blizzard is definitely a company that listens to its audience and with that said some improvements have been made to the other shell gameplay. A stamina meter has been added for much faster moment, which the original Diablo lacked. The world that you travel in is much larger and walking the whole way would have been ridicules. A stash system allows players to store items into a box that only they can use. For those that played the original Diablo the stash maybe a disappointment, since now items on the ground are deleted when a player leaves, but the stash system works much better online and also provide some strategy since not all items can be kept. Lastly, for those that don’t want to play with others, but still want to receive help, Hirelings have been added into both online and offline modes. There are three different hirelings available and it will be up to the player to decide which is best for them.
It seems that for Blizzard to build this massive game, they had to sacrifice graphics, which in one word is disappointing. The world has a low quality look to it, but there is variety in the game, which in some way saves the day. There are plenty of different world that you’ll travel through; jungles, sewers, deserts are just some of the places that you’ll visit. There isn’t much variety in the world themselves, you’ll often see the same trees repeatedly, but as soon as you get bored of a world, the next one seems to pop up. It also helps that almost all the maps you play through are generated when you enter a game, meaning that you won’t see the same map very often. The look of your character and the characters around him/her is low quality as well, but once again, there is variety in the look of the weapons and armour that you wear, so it all does balance out a little. There doesn’t seem to be much in terms of animations, but some of the more powerful skills look amazing especially when three or more are used at the same time. The inexcusable thing with Diablo II is the lag online, which is horrendous. It’s expected to have some lag since the online is free, but the lag is just so bad sometimes you’ll want through things. There will be times when you can’t enter games because there’s too much lag, get kicked out because of lag or die because of lag.
The sound in the game can be explained in quality over quantity. You won’t find much variety in terms of sound in the game, but that stuff that is present is top of the line. Many monster sound alike, in life and death and your character doesn’t have much to say either, but having all the dialogue in the game spoken gives it a few points in the sound department.
Overall, the game features plenty of things to do even after you beat the game once. Five playable characters that all have a unique gameplay to them, three difficulty settings, a hardcore mode that makes your characters death permanent, an online and offline mode, tons of items to find and lastly a Blizzard team that continues to update the game with patches that improve gameplay and sometimes even add new quests.
Although the online and offline modes are exactly the same the online mode is a much more entertaining and fulfilling experience then the offline mode is. There are a number of reasons for this, one being that it’s just for fun to play with others, but the major reason is the Diablo is most fun on normal (nightmare) mode and hard (Hell) mode and at the same time it’s incredibly difficult during those times. Really, the decision comes down to three Questions. Do I like the idea of hacking and slashing through tons and tons of enemies? Do I want to play online? Do I have a good enough internet connection to be able to play online? If you can answer “yes” to all three questions then by all means, buy Diablo II, you’ll love it, but if you can’t then Diablo II will not fulfill your expectations and will leave you wanting more.