Diablo II

The Good
There were a number of things to like about this game.

• The number of items and skills was vast. With the random nature of the items, there were a seemingly endless number of ways to equip your character.

• The different classes. Unlike the first Diablo, each class was quite different from the other classes. As well, Blizzard put enough time into this game to allow each class to have a wide range of different ways to develop.

• The music and sound, overall, were of very high quality.
  
  The Bad
  Now to the bad part. In any game, after enough playing (say, a week or two of playing off and on), the merit of the game ultimately comes down to the basic gameplay elements. Does the gameplay intrigue you, and make you want to keep playing? In Diablo II, I found the answer was a definite no.

As even the game's champions say, the game is essentially clicking. With the vast range of skills, nearly all players eventually focus down on, at most, two or three skills that they use repeatedly. So, the combat becomes "Skill 1 Skill 1 Skill 1 Skill 2 Skill 3 Skill 1 Skill 1 Skill 3, etc, etc, etc....." This really did not keep me interested for long.

The other part of the gamplay, the "roleplaying", is where you decide how to best outfit your character. This kept me amused for a while, but eventually becomes tedious. After one gets a character to a fairly high level, there tend to be only one or two particular weapons or pieces of armor that one is looking for.

So, after a while, the game simply becomes, "Go out into this area, kill hundreds of little critters with repeated clicking, and hope you get the item you are looking for". Well, quite frankly, this did not sustain my interest.

The Bottom Line
As everyone says, it's a hack-and-slash game. So whether you like it or not comes down to what other hack-and-slash games you have played. Personally, I enjoyed the first Diablo; but that was before I started playing NetHack.

For those of you who don't know it, nethack is a hack-and-slash game with ASCII graphics. But it has such depth of gameplay that it keeps you interested. Unfortunately, three weeks after I started playing NetHack, I got Diablo II. Now, even though Diablo II was far better than the original Diablo, because I had played NetHack, and knew how good hack-and-slash gameplay could be, Diablo II was deathly boring by comparison.

So, if you played games like Nethack, ADOM, or Angband, don't bother with Diablo or Diablo II. If you haven't played these games, you'll probably enjoy Diablo II - until you see how good games like Nethack are.

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
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.