Diablo II

The Good
New skill-system with new spells/skills. They kind of dumped the old "You are a sorceress, here are your spells" and instead allow you to pick what kind of sorceress you want to be (fire, ice, electric). Same with barbarians, necromancers, etc. Just the fact that they changed the classes was a good improvement.

Much of the game is above-ground. You get out of the dungeon often, and it's kind of nice to be able to roam about a sprawling land.

Interesting things to keep you looking (like sets of armor, socketed weapons and armor). Sometimes this gets annoying trying to figure out which belt works better or which sheild is better, but overall it's good.

The Bad
Graphics. What is this hard-coded 640x480 stuff in the post 20th century? It's technical requirements really were all that was required AND necessary. A better PC won't make the game much better visually. WarCraft 2 looks better on my 21" monitor than Diablo 2.

If you like story line, this is not your game. This is pure hack and slash. Your fingers will go numb after all the clicking.

I question the balance to this game. I felt like all the developers did was boost the HPs of everything towards the end of the game. I didn't see "ingenious" uses of the magic in the game, and sometimes I felt like the AI was cheating (like they all had one set of shared eyeballs). Other times they couldn't figure out how to walk around an obstacle.

The Bottom Line
Overall, it's still a good game, but I prefer the original to this one. It's probably worth the lower price it should be going for nowadays, and all the changes to the game should keep you playing for quite some time. Towards the end of the game you'll be more driven to "Finish the damn thing" than anything else.

I hear the multiplayer on-line is pretty good, too, but I don't have high speed internet, so... .

The Good
It seems that so little people actually take the time to rate these games after they review them here on Mobygames. This makes for some rather inaccurate scores (though at the time of writing it, the 3.9 seems pretty much what I'd give it). With so many reviews written, another review would probably just add to the pile and not be worth much, but due to the lack of people rating the games, I don't feel that would suffice as a good contribution. So, rather than making a lengthy review about this game, I'll just go down the list of things I liked and disliked about this game. It's another person's opinion on the game, but nothing more.

Now, for the good.

I'll start by saying I loved Diablo. I still love Diablo. At the time, before I grew up, it seemed like the greatest game ever made. Imagine...every time you begin a new game, every level of the dungeon is different. You'll never know what kind of weapons you'll find. The combinations seemed endless. You work a little harder with every level you visit, descending deeper and deeper into Diablo's dungeon, getting more powerful and battling more powerful enemies until you meet the big man himself.

Ever since I beat Diablo for the eleventh time, I've wanted a sequel. The ending of the first was odd, and who didn't like the idea that you weren't stuck in a single town?

Well, Diablo II came and a lot of our prayers were answered. This time you were not stuck in one single town, one long ever-deepening dungeon. This time, you faced off against monsters in the forests, the deserts, swamps, dungeons, prisons, abandoned temples...the list goes on. With more monsters than you can shake your staff at and more weapons than you'll know what to do with.

Along with the expanded game world (and oh is it expanded), you get more character classes to choose from, and each one has its own set of advantages, along with unique skills they can get.

Also, you won't have to worry about not being strong enough to fight the next area, because every time you exit the game, the monsters come back.

There's no more foul trickery by saving and loading in order to get an advantage over the enemy. No saving-then-scout-ahead-and-load-back-after-you-get-your-ass-kicked. The only saving you'll do is when you exit. Otherwise, you'll respawn back at a waypoint and will have to go retrieve your corpse. I felt this really added to the thrill of gameplay.

The game remained in 2D, which I particularly liked. I feel that 3D technology hasn't quite evolved enough to take the place over good ol' 2D RPGs. But there's this "perspective" psuedo-3D view style which...well, is odd. Some people, like me, dislike it, but other people -- most people enjoy it, so I'll list it in the "good".

The lighting effects are nice. The bosses can be entertaining and their deaths are usually dramatic and bloody.

Revisiting old friends from Diablo 1 was my favorite part of the game, even if it was sad outcome.

The cinematics rock! Some of the best I've ever seen.

Stamina plays a part in this game, which is good.

The Bad
Now for the bad.

Despite being in 2D, the graphics weren't that good. The water looked goofy in most areas, the monsters were often times indistinguishable and the running animation wasn't that good.

The game is repetetive. Of course, it's unfair to say that, because the gameplay hasn't changed at all since Diablo 1. But there was a huge difference between the two. In Diablo 1, you cleared out a dungeon and went down further. Clear out a dungeon, go down further. Diablo 1 wasn't an RPG - it was an arcade game with RPG elements. Diablo 2 isn't the same. Diablo 2 involves lots of "go allllll the way over here, killing everything in the way, kill this thing, then go allllllll the way over here, then allllllll the way over here, then come back and then you progress". It gets extremely old, extremely quick. I found myself forcing myself through many areas just so that I could hurry up and kill whatever it was I was sent to kill and go back to progress the story a bit.

In Diablo 1, you were an errand boy. If Cain or that blacksmith guy wanted you to do a task, you'd do it, because it was on your way and you'd get a reward and it was for the good of the town. But in Diablo 2, you're everybody's errand boy because they always want you to prove your worth. "Sure, I'll help you, if you go and do these things for me," they might as well say. And you have to do a number of errands for every town you go along on your way. Not for the good of the town, not to fight evil, but just to get people to tell you something.

While I thought that, when you leave the game the monsters respawn was a neat idea, it's really only a neat idea if you're enjoying the game. For me, I couldn't play for more than twenty minutes before I'd get bored and leave. And whenever I'd come back, sure enough I'd have to hack my way through an army of bad guys. And what was an aggrivating cycle, is that, I would hack through a bunch of enemies to reach a point, then leave. When I came back, I'd have to hack through the army again, then get bored. The cycle went on, making my progress in the game verrrrry slow. But at least I was uber powerful by the time I got anywhere. Heh.

Since monsters can't follow you out of dungeons, they became pretty easy. Fight the monster, leave the dungeon, recharge, go back in, etc.

The weapon characteristics aren't nearly as interesting as they were in Diablo. In Diablo, sometimes you'd get a weapon WAY ahead of your level. It rocked, but it was rare. Maybe it's just as rare in Diablo 2, but I can't remember ever getting a weapon that wasn't just appropriate for my level unless I bought it myself.

Dungeon plunging is boring, since you'll never find anything worth keeping.

To summarize, Diablo II just was very boring and repetetive. If anything unique in the game came along (that is, something other than the massive hordes of enemies you'd spend an hour slaughtering before reaching somewhere), it came along far too late to keep me interested. The graphics were hardly an improvement over Diablo 1, and...well, frankly, it completely lost the feel of the classic original.

The Bottom Line
It has some good stuff in it. Big fans of the original should pick it up just to extend the story. The cinematics are probably the best feature of the game.

Otherwise...disappointing, repetetive, aggrivating, slow, boring.

The Good
Every now and then, you like to relax you brain with a "stupid" game. Kill everything, collect gold, get better equipment... that kind of stuff. Diablo II provides such a gameplay.
Graphics are not stunning, but more than decent
Sound effects and music are as spooky as they should
The pre-rendered movies are cool
The environment is random... which adds replayability (but only in the unlikely event you want to actually go through the game again)

The Bad
Diablo II is long, and that's good, but every part of the game is the same with different graphics. The gameplay is just too repetitive to entertain you until it ends. I gave up just before reaching the middle of the game.
Some character classes suck when they should be great. Take the necromancer : it sounds cool : command an army of squeletons and golems. Yeah, but either your "army" is too weak and will be of absolutely no use, or it is strong enough and then the game is just about walking and watching your squeletons kill the enemies, which is such a dull experience.
The environment is random, which means... that no-one puts any design in them. So some parts of the game will end up being too easy, while others will be frustratingly impossible to venture through.


The Bottom Line
Diablo II sounds fun, and at first, it is great fun.
But it fails to be an entertaining experience in the long run because of its repetitive gameplay and lack of balance.