Diablo II

The Good
Let me start with the game's greatest single point: It's easy to play. Okay? Got that. The simple "click on an enemy to attack" style of play (for most classes) will ensure that this game is easy to pick up and go with...

From the opening introduction cinematics to wandering into dungeons to gaining new skills and fighting a swarm of zombies... the atmosphere of this game is heavy and hangs in the air throughout the game. Most levels are beautifully designed, which is all the more impressive when you realize that they're randomly generated when you begin them. The characters in each of the towns are fairly unique and have both serious and humorous dialog.

There's a lot of unique items to be found. Collector gamers should have a lot of fun here, especially when updating to the latest version makes even more unique and Set (as in "part of a set..") items available.

The Bad
My main complain about this game is that it's long and for your efforts... well, I did not feel it reached a satisfying conclusion. I don't like to put spoilers in a review, but let me just say that the final act of the game was disappointing to me in every way (to be fair, I think I did feel that same way regarding the final levels of the first Diablo title).

There's a LOT of story in the cinematics and the dialog with characters but unfortunately, that's the only place it is... and it seems much too short. Speaking of dialog, characters seem to have different things to say "right when you're assigned a quest" and "later on when you're working on your quest"... that means that if you happen to miss talking to a character, you can end up never hearing one of their pieces of dialog.

Your character updates their image when they put on different types of armor/helmet/shield... but there are really only a couple of graphics for each type. For a game with so many hard-coded items and many randomly generating ones... it seems a disappointment that so many of them look the same.

This game is hack n slash. That's all it is. If you're like me, sometime during the Third Act you'll realize "hey, that's all there is" and might start playing less. During the final level you won't even have much of a storyline to contend with... just a long, slow Boss Crawl to the final showdown...

The most disturbing moment of the game is Tristam IMO... if only because I knew some of the characters from Diablo1.

The Bottom Line
The cutscenes are pretty. The cutting down enemies is fun... until it gets repetitive.

Simple Hack N Slash. Play by yourself or team up over LAN/Internet to have a proper adventuring party. Cut down monsters. Collect and sell items... and... that's it.

The cutscenes are fantastic, but don't depend on them because each lasts only a short while and frequently what you just saw did not apply to the game.

The Good
Although the graphics are somewhat dated, you quickly forget the slight blockiness of your Barbarian when you dive into a horde of monsters. Diablo 2 is at its heart a character building game, and the skill system allows you to really experiment with different playing styles, even when only playing one class. For example, the Amazon can be played as a jabbing melee goddess or a mistress of missile weapon mayhem. The classes are well balanced, especially after you patch the game up to v1.06.

Although the graphics aren't the best, the cinematics, voice acting, and sound effect are awesome, especially in several sections of Act 2.

This is one of the few games that I have that I can come back to in six months and still enjoy, whether playing single or multiplayer.

The Bad
The one problem with the skill system is that it rewards you for specializing in high level skills at the expense of developing low level skills. Some classes even have a few throw away skills that are only useful as a means to get to the better skills. For example, the Necromancer's Skeleton Warriors never get very powerful, and so it is useless to build this skill up at all since the golems, revived creatures, and skeleton mages are so much better. If I really wanted to be a master of a skeleton warrior army, I should be able to do it and survive at high levels.

Another thing I don't like is that you are penalized too much when you fight monsters that are 10-20 levels higher than you are. In an attempt to balance the multiplayer game so that a high level character couldn't join a party of low level characters, kill everything for them, and have them advance quickly, you are penalized in xp per kill if you are way above OR BELOW the level of the monster. So if you manage, like I did, to finish the game at Nightmare difficulty when you are level 38 or so, there is no way you can survive or even gain any xp in Hell difficulty until you gain 15-20 levels! The game just slows down too much after level 30 or so.

The Bottom Line
A great hack and slash game no matter how you play it. Despite what Nethack fans may tell you, this is not just "Rogue with nice graphics and sound". It is a different, more entertaining, and much less frustrating and obtuse gaming experience than its text-based predecessors.

The Good
High replayability, with five different classes, three difficulty levels and a roleplaying like character advancement (including experiance points and randomally generated items, making you always look for a better combination). Excellent sound and music, with wonderful special effects and a special background tone for each area. Powerful multiplayer option, allowing you to play through the Internet with secured characters and no cheats, with up to eight players in the same game, sharing experiance, gold and quests. Amazing movies, from the assembly lines of Blizzard, which add a new element to the game, and are a pleasure to behold again and again.

The Bad
The core of the game is the multiplay option through Battle.Net, and unless you have a fast connection to the Internet (ADSL and Cables spring into mind) your connection will be very laggy, and playing through the Internet will be almost impossible.

The Bottom Line
Of course it's just hack and slash, but it's an excellent hack and slash. Blizzard did marvelous work of their sequel, and deserve full credit for their job.