Diablo II: Lord of Destruction

"A great game online, but not without its exceptions..."

Once again, Blizzard has released an expansion pack for its award-winning game, Diablo II. Since this is merely an expansion pack, it has the same style of gameplay. (click, click, type, etc.) Yes, its a very addicting game on battle.net, but on single player, it just doesn't cut it. It gets very boring playing by yourself and eventually you'll just want to edit your characters with an editor for fun...online though, that is a completely different story.

Gameplay: 8/10

This game is hard to put down the first few weeks of playing it. When you have just started this game, it is pretty exciting to check out what Blizzard has in store for us, a whole new act and a lot, of new items. Its thrilling the first time beating baal, but after a month or two into this game, you'll find yourself making a bunch of new characters because you may get bored of your first one. It is also time consuming to level if you haven't gotten through the 'Hell' difficulty of the game and running the secret cow level (like in the original Diablo). Some characters require more experience to make or else you will just end up with a character that will die every twenty seconds or can't kill anything in the 'hell' or even 'nightmare' difficulty. The monsters are up to 2 times harder in nightmare and 3 to 4 times harder in hell.

Graphics: 8/10

Although not extremely detailed, Diablo II has outstanding graphics for an action RPG. Some characters may have jagged looking designs, plain looks, and the item that your character is holding (character graphics, not item graphics) looks the same as many other items. There are only about 6 different item graphics, so its not exactly very detailed, except for the altering colors.

Storyline: 4/10

Since this is a hack&slash type game, the storyline isn't all that exciting. It's just defeating a series of evil bosses and the three prime evils, Mephisto, Diablo and Baal. Mephisto is the eldest of the three, and Baal is the last of the prime evils. He may look a bit scary to you at first, but he is quite easy after you get used to it. A below average storyline, but at least its not very hard to understand.

Replay value: 9/10

If you play multi-player on Battle.net, it has a much higher replay value than on single player. You get to meet some online friends like many other multi-player games, where they could help you go questing or even give you some items to start off with. You may meet up with thieves or people who offend you, but don't other online games have that too?

Overall: 8/10

Yes, Diablo II is good, but not flawless. There are problems with cheaters and hackers online, graphic bugs and bugged skills, but overall, this game can keep you entertained for hours and hours. I recommend you buy this game unless if you aren't much of a person who isn't exactly thrilled by the hack&slash style of gameplay.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/25/02, Updated 07/25/02