Summary
Baal is finished....
The Good
I loved Diablo II. And I think Lord of Destruction (LoD) is a good expansion.
First off, I love the new Mini-Map option. Blizzard must have take a page out of the Nox playbook, and made a bright mini-map that get tucked in the corner. I found it much easier to navigate with that on the screen.
The graphics got a facelift as well, now displaying in 800x600. But to honest, I didn't see any difference.
The new charms, jewels are runes are a great touch.
Charms sit in your inventory and give you bonus to your stats/resistances/attack rating etc. I like the fact that you have a ton of them and they are cumulative as well. The runes are nice to have as well. Outfitting a helm with a couple of Ort runes will increase your Lightning resistance by 60%, and that comes in handy when your up against the many Lightning enhanced enemies.
And I like the fact the size of the stash has doubled, and the amount of gold you can stash has increased dramatically. I've got a bunch of gems sitting in there waiting to be transmuted in the Horadric Cube. Speaking of the Cube, there are more recipes to be found as well.
The Bad
It was short. I expected at least 6 hours of gameplay (on normal mode), but I finished it in about 4. The 6 quests you got through are decent, but I was expecting that since this was the 5th act, it would be more difficult than Act 4. I sailed thorugh Act 5, and I though Baal was fairly easy to beat. I had a more difficult time beating Diablo than I had Baal.
The Bottom Line
Asides of the fact that it's short and a bit easy (on Normal difficulty), it's a great expansion. Lots of new stuff to try, lots of bad guys to kill, and some nice gameplay.
Bottom Line: Buy it for the extras not the Fifth Act. You'll have more fun finding out what the Charms and other things do than defeat Baal. :)
