Diablo II: Lord of Destruction

"At its current state, it may be a let-down."

You may have read my first review on this expansion pack for Diablo II. I'll admit that I may have made it too early, and did not know the game well-enough.

Blizzard has been known for the quality and the depth of their games. So far every game that they have released is quite a classic. With games such as Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft, and Diablo II, Blizzard deserves their good reputation. Unfortunately, this expansion pack is very different.

Most PC gamers have heard of Diablo II, the sequel to Blizzard's first thriller, millions of copies of Diablo II were sold, and still are among the top sellers today. With this expansion pack, Blizzard did what they did with Brood War (expansion for Starcraft), they added little, but changed the true element of the game. In this case, it may have been in a bad way.

Diablo II adds new exceptional uniques (I will go more this later), new monsters, two new classes, and a new act. Sounds like little, but actually this changes the game very much, in some ways balance issues, in other ways the depth.

Graphics (7.5/10): Blizzard was never known for graphics in-game. However, with the expansion pack, 800x600 resolution is now supported. Although the graphics engine for Diablo II is quite horrid, in terms of running smoothly, if you computer can handle 800x600 with Diablo II, combined with Glide mode, Diablo II will have nice graphics. Most of the new uniques are just the old model of the item tinted in a different color - same with the sets. Some have new looks, and actually look pretty nice, but not many. The new monsters, overall, look nicer than the old ones, as they have more detail and are rendered smoothly. The two new classes aren't very special in terms of graphics, except some of the druid's skills look nice, such as the Armageddon spell, as meteors fly down around the druid to crush the enemies around him. Some of the enemy spell effects look nice, especially those from Baal. One of his attacks is a giant spout of flame, and as the flame is burning your poor character, you can see some kind of a letter inside the flame. Nice detail. Act 5 looks very good, from the frozen caves, to the outside battlefield. There are ditches from war and frozen rivers, and MANY details such as dead trees, broken fences, corpses of barbarians... and so on. Unfortunately, this creates some problems with class balances, which will be explained later.

Sound (7/10): Nothing special, in-game. The voices are good and match the characters. The npc's voices are also very nice, you can hear emotion as they are talking about their fallen warriors. A new (but as usual, rarely used) ''numpad saying'' (such as ''Die'' from Diablo II) has been added, ''Retreat''. Most people don't even know about this added effect, but it's there. Combat sounds are ok, most from Diablo II, even most of the Druid and Assassin (new classes) effects are borrowed from the original. Monsters only make noise as they attack, get hit, die, and see you. Again, nothing special.

Music (7.5/10): Diablo II had horrible music. Seriously, I cannot imagine myself even thinking about wanting to listen to the music. Diablo II: Lord of Destruction features new, orchestrated music that sounds much better than Diablo II. No more quiet, 5 instrument noises are heard from the background. Now you hear moody, orchestrated music that greatly fits the game. From the confident, yet desperate song heard in the Barbarian city, to the war-like music in the battlefield, nice music can be heard. However there are only about three or four new songs, and they get repetitive after a while.

Gameplay (5/10): This is where Diablo II: Lord of Destruction really falls apart. First of all, there are huge balance issues that can tear this game apart. Act 5, with its ditches and detail, makes life quite easy for the sorceress, and especially for the amazon. The npc barbarians fighting out there have nearly infinate life, which means a tank will take the damage for you, and keep monsters away. The ditches make it so the monsters can't even reach you, so you can destroy them any way you choose. In hell, most monsters are immune to something, which is supposably a balance against sorceresses. However, with some spells reaching absurd damages later, the sorceress can specialize in all three branches and still destroy mostly everything. Why aren't elemental druids able to do this? Their spells are all show, no damage. Elemental druids, who sound like an able class (summon wolves, hide behind and deal mucho damage) actually deal almost no damage with their spells. Such druids, and assassins specializing in traps, are mainly novelty. There are physical immune monsters, making the melee classes have the hack at the same thing for ages. Although barbarians have elemental attack, Berserk, their defense drops the zero which using it, meaning you have to be VERY careful doing this. That can be hard when you have 15 more of those physical immunes chasing you. All monsters are 50% physical immune in the last difficulty, making barbarians and paladins struggle for life while in this difficulty (hell). Why not amazons?

That's where another balance issue comes in. Uniques and some sets are absurdly powerful. Long ago, rares were the norm of Diablo II. Everybody was different, wearing different colors of equipment, everything. With everybody using the same (extremely powerful) and quite common uniques, everybody looks the same. Also, unique amazon bows deal as much or more damage than the unique swords and axes, making amazons truly the most powerful class, by quite a margin. Rare items are left freely on the floor, only uniques are useful now. Also, there are two areas (Cow level, Bloody Foothills) that give extreme amounts of experience. Most games on battle.net (Blizzard's free online gaming servers) are ''Cow runs'' or ''Bloody runs'', which is a bunch of people partying to clear out a single zone, then quitting. Blizzard tried to enhance grouping up to take on most areas, but the only form of comradeship in here is to gain experience from other's kills. One last issue is Blizzard's failure to accomplish many of their promises, such as Guild Halls and Arenas. Most duel games take place on the first area, Blood moor, and guilds are just a group of people who expect free items every week. Pathetic.

Presentation (8/10): You are greeted with a new, and nice looking background. When you go into act 5, you really get that feel of being a newbie again, with everything looking so different and nice. Diablo II: LoD actually looks great when you first play it, until you realize that it is all about the same routines.

Replay (8/10): Diablo II: LoD is very addicting at first - the game has new promises and great horizons. Not much to say here.

Overall (5.8/10, not an average): Diablo II: LoD adds very much to the game, just like Brood War. However, these additions do nothing to add fun to the game. LoD should be for hard core fans of Diablo II only.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 07/02/01, Updated 01/05/02