"Blizzard Made A Perfect Gem!"

WARNING! REVIEW CONTAINS POTENTIAL SPOILERS!

Upon looking at my old review of this game which I used to feel so proud of, I noticed one huge thing: it sucked. So, I've decided to throw that out and totally re-write it now, since I have learned how to explain my reviews more clearly. Er...on to the review!

Diablo was an awesome game from Blizzard Entertainment. At the time it was a revolutionary new piece of history for the PC Rpg library. It had good graphics, decent sound, great gameplay, alot of customizability, and it was just damn addictive. The biggest thing was its ''item hunting'' which was where you took your character through randomly generated dungeons on the internet in order to gain experience and learn new spells, or to find special weapons. People literally spent days on Diablo going through dungeons hoping to get a certain sword or a special axe with a +4 to strength or something along those lines. It was a great game. It had its flaws, but very few and none were actually its fault (the main flaw was the game hacking).

Diablo II is the direct sequel to the original. It follows the story of the first. In the first your objective was to go through the dungeons in a small village and find weapons and special items to go through new dungeons. It ended with you getting a bloodstone and going down into hell in order to find Diablo, the god of destruction, and sealing him within the Blood stone.

First off, as I do in every review, I'll start with the game's graphics. The grapihcs are unique to say the least. They follow the same idea that was in the original Diablo. The view is isometric, so while the game isn't really 3d, they used the isometric view so they could do hand-drawn graphics. I must say the quality of them blew me away. I mean, at the time I was used to Starcraft's hand-drawn but very small and often pixilated characters. These were very smooth, very large, and very very stylish. Personally, I was cheering Blizzard on at this. I always prefer stylish hand-drawn graphics over technically advanced character models. All the places are very well done, especially Act II. Blizzard does an excellent job of giving it a very Arabic feel, which I fell in love with. Also, the FMVs have taken a huge leap from those in Starcraft. Blizzard has made them look 10 times as good and 100 times as stylish. I'm serious, these are the best FMVs in a PC game ever and one of the best in a videogame period! Graphics definitely deserve a perfect score on this category. This has absolutely nothing to do with graphics but I'd just like to point out that the Necromancer looks like Sephiroth from FFVII. Cool....

Now, on to the story. I'm amazed that blizzard took a PC Rpg of all things and made a good story. I mean, lets face it, until Diablo and still after it most RPGs were just Dungeons and Dragons on the computer. After Diablo it became Dungeons and Dragons with Diablo's randomly generated dungeons. But Diablo II managed to incorporate a very good story into it, which is impressive. The story continues where Diablo left off. If you guys remember in Diablo, you captured Diablo but that still left his two other siblings alive. Now, the main purpose starts out where you want to kill them. However, the ''wanderer'' who captured Diablo in the first game (who I should say was definitely a Warrior since he has a sword), hs started to act strange. He has become more violent, and has gone mad. Apparently the bloodstone where Diablo was kept has been driving him to insanity. Throughout the game you are constantly looking for the wanderer to find out what happened. When you finally get there Diablo bursts from the Wanderer, back and ready to fight again. The guardian of Earth asks you to go stop him. Note: I'm leaving out alot of the story such as who the angel is and the whole side-plot about the war between heaven and hell but those things you can find by actually playing the game.

If you will look to the center of this review, you will see the gameplay section. This section explains what the review thought of the game's core and how much he liked actually playing the game, or the fun factor. Lets proceed, shall we?

The gameplay took the basis of Diablo and evolved it. One of the problems of the original was that here simply wasn't enough customizability. I mean, yeah you could choose from the Warrior, Magician, or the Rogue, but what was the point? All of them could be taught the same spells, and the Warrior could eventually become as powerful magic-wise as the Magician, so who really cares what class you took? Diablo II fixed that. Now there are several totally unique and different classes. On one side you have the Paladin, who is your main ''leader'' character. He is the good fighter who can use magic, and who specializes in protection spells. Many people use him to lead groups because his auras and healing spells effect everyone in the party. On another side you have the Sorceress, who specializes in telekinetic spells and wands to fight with to make fireballs and stuff. Many people use her as a ranged fighter. On the side for pure combat you have the Barbarian, who is a huge thug capable of carrying up to 2 swords simultaneously! People who just want to beat the crap outta monsters go for this class. Finally, we have the highly anticipated Necromancer. He can be used for 2 main purposes: You can use him as your status effect changer, where you can use him to poison people or use elemental moves, or you can use him as your summoner. Unfortunately, he's much cooler than just a summoner but that's what most people use him for. He has the ability to rise corpses from the dead as skeleton warriors to assist you in battle, and can also raise golems. As his skills improve they become more powerful golems and magic using skeletons. With him you mainly collect wands, which can add skill points to your moves when equipped. Even though it's fairly stupid too, I built my Necromancer up high enough so that he could start using some really good two-handed swords.

Off the topic of the classes, I'll go into the new features of Diablo II. The newest and arguably coolest thing is the weapon imbuing. In Diablo you had many randomly generated weapons with random names like ''High Elf's Sword of Trashing'' or ''The Demon's Axe of Darkness''. Corny names, but good weapons kinda stuff. Well, Diablo II still keeps that which players are happy about, but now you can customize your weapons. Weapons now have slots in them, where you can put certain gems. Gems are little items you randomly find, which can be put in weapons. Putting them in will result in the weapon having elemental damage added to it. There are also different kinds of gems. There are different types like sapphires, rubies, emeralds, which will change what kind of elemental it will do, and there are different kinds of gems. There is a chipped gem which is the weakest, a slightly less chipped gem, which is second weakest, a regular gem which is smack in the middle, a precious gem which is stronger, and a perfect gem which is the strongest.

Another new feature of Diablo II is the weapon combining. There is a box where you can combine items! Basically, you can put in pieces of a sword, and then tell it to mix and it'll give you a sword. More often it is used to combine gems or to combine rings into more powerful gems/rings. It's a very interesting feature which alot of people used. The system is not quite as complex as the one in say Vagrant Story, but it does come close, and still enhances the experience quite a bit.

Gameplay itself, like I said above, is an upgrade from the original Diablo. You chose a class and are sent to fight monsters. First you fight them, then they drop gold and you can use the gold to buy weapons. More often you'll find your weapons by killing strong monsters or killing bosses. This is taken from Diablo's randomly generated dungeons. Because when you play on B.net you never are playing the same game the dungeons are always different. You can use your character on Battle Net so if you were stuck in a game someone can help you, or if you just wanted to play with friends. Basically the game is going into a dungeon, killing everything you can inside, grabbing the good weapons, going back to town, selling the stuff you don't need, trading with friends, repeat. Also as you kill more enemies you gain more experience. The experience can make you level up, which will let you increase your stats and upgrade your spells on the spell tree. The spell tree is another new feature where you have a grid similar to Final Fantasy X's. You learn new spells on certain parts of the tree, which will allow you to learn more new spells and put points into them to make them stronger. It's very well done and extremely addictive.

There is an infinite amount of Replay Value you can have to this game. Because there is an infinite number of weapons you can find and randomly generated dungeons and enemies there's no way you can truly have done everything. The game is incredibly addictive and even now with better games out you can still go back and find thousands of people on Battle Net ready to play with each other. It's just that fun. The process I described above is probably what makes it so fun. You'd think it would get tedious just going to dungeons over and over item hunting for a special sword or for perfect gems but somehow it doesn't. Blizzard must've sold their soul to Satan because this game just will not get old no matter how much I play it. I only stopped because I was afraid of getting re-addicted. Going into dungeons with your friends, trying out your new spell, finding a good new sword and then trading with your friend since he needs that sword to complete his set and become uber powerful is an indescribable experience.

Arguably the only flaw in the game is its control. Some people complain that the game gets boring because all you do is click the mouse over and over. And, to be fair, that is what you do. To attack, you have to just click on the enemy over and over. However, most people can look past that. I admit it is a flaw I wish they could've fixed from the original, but I seriously do not mind. I'm not going to be one of those fanboys, which says it's not a problem because I realise that it is. Most people won't wanna spend 20 hours clicking on stuff to make it do something. Putt-Putt can do that. But, the rest of the features outweigh that small flaw.

Finally we have sound and music. I have to say I love the sounds. I mean, this sounds incredibly evil, but I love the sound it makes when the monsters die. The ''ugh!'' sound is hilarious. Also, the voice acting, like in Starcraft, is superb. Music is also great. Like the original Diablo the music really fits the mood with this kinda peaceful Celtic music. It's tunes aren't really catchy, but at least they're not bad.

So, overall you have the best PC Rpg ever made. It has excellent graphics, some of the best FMVs ever to grace a videogame, very addictive gameplay, probably one of the best games to play with your friends, near absolute customizability of your character, and just plain polish. Blizzard has done an awesome job with this game, as they did with its expansion. It's no Starcraft, but it sure as hell kicks the crap outta Dungeon Siege.

Graphics: 10/10
Story: 9.5/10
Gameplay: 10/10
Replay Value: 10/10
Control: 9.3/10

Overall 9.8

Blizzard made a near perfect gem. I told you you should've put more than 3 gems in the imbuer!