Diablo II: Lord of Destruction

"From Hell's Heart I Click At Thee"

(This review will cover both the original Diablo II game and the Lord of Destruction expansion pack.)

Diablo II is an insidious little game, no doubt about it. It completely fails to 'wow' you at first, and you soon find yourself complaining about the middling graphics and the endless mouse-clicking. But after a week you find that the game has seeped into your bloodstream, and you'll be playing until the wee hours, looking for a better shield or trying to get that next precious skill point. Diablo II may not be perfect, but it packs a serious addictive quality that few other games can match. Blizzard seems to have found the digital equivalent of opium, and they gave the Lord of Terror a generous dose of it for his big sequel.

The gameplay is ludicrously simple stuff. You move, attack, and shop with the mouse - which is about 99% of the game right there. You can use the keyboard for quickie shortcuts, but you'll do most of your gaming simply by clicking the mouse. A lot. In fact, the endless clicking may wear out your hand, so don't overdo it. Some of the spellcasting classes may need the function keys to juggle different skills, but the more melee-intensive heros can often get by with a few combat skills and a whole lot of left mouse button-pounding. This sort of relatively mindless fun may or may not appeal to you, but more casual gamers will definitely appreciate it.

Diablo II is what the kids call an action-RPG hybrid: character-building goodness with a whole lot of hacking and bashing. Let's be frank: the whole game is a giant monster mash, and your only real quest is to make yourself better at mashing monsters. So you kill tons of enemies to get experience and better equipment... which makes it easier to kill MORE enemies. And so on, and so forth. What makes this gameplay so addictive is the enormous amount of equipment and gear you can find (or even make!), and the very well-implemented 'skill tree' system you use to develop your character's powers.

The skill trees are, in fact, the heart and soul of the game. Each of the seven classes has their own individual set of three skill trees, with each tree having ten different skills apiece. You'll get a skill point at every level (or for completing certain quests), and you use the point to either purchase a new skill, or power up one you've already chosen. Most skills require you to be a certain level before taking them, of course, and the 'tree' system forces you to choose every selection on a branch if you want the high-end skill at the end. This can affect your choices a bit, as you may end up passing on a high-end skill if you have no interest in the two or three prerequisite skills that lead up to it. Skill points are a limited and precious resource, and putting a lot of them into relatively useless skills will really hurt your character down the road. In fact, if you want your hero to thrive (or simply survive) in the game's higher difficulty levels, you'll have to carefully plan out how you're going to spend your skill points.

The seven character classes are quite varied, and hardcore players will enjoy trying them all out at least once. The barbarian, sorceress, and amazon seem to be the upgraded versions of the original heros in the first Diablo, and exotic newcomers like the assassin or necromancer fill in the 'darker' side of adventuring. The druid - with a nifty mix of magic and lycanthropic hand-to-hand talent - is an intriguing choice as well, and the aura-laden paladin is ideal for multiplayer action with a group of allies. Diablo II diehards will gladly tell you that some classes are far more powerful than others, but with solid play and smart skill selection, you can take anyone to the top. Playing in a LAN environment with a bunch of good friends is terrific fun, especially if everyone chooses a different character class. It's like Dungeons and Dragons, without all of that pesky reading and talking.

Believe it or not, Diablo II has some sort of story amidst all of the monster-slaying. I won't regurgitate it here, but big bad Diablo and his two brothers are running amok, and you need to stop them. The conversational dialogue in the game is middling stuff, but as usual, Blizzard went bananas with the between-act cinema scenes. Each one is terrific, with amazing visual flair and quality voice-acting. Nobody puts together a cinema scene quite like the boys at Blizzard.

As you might expect, the game's five acts tend to vary in quality. Act 5 - from the expansion set - is terrific, featuring entertaining quests and a fun charge into a vicious siege. Acts 2 and 4 are solid as well. Act 1 starts out fine, but sags at the end during a final dungeon that is far too long. And poor Act 3 is quite aggravating and tedious, and is one of the few experiences that prompts the phrase: "I can't wait to finish this crap, so I can go down into hell." Still, the game is pretty solid overall, even if the quests/story are merely the backdrop for the non-stop hackfest.

If you want to take a character to the peak of Diablo-dom, you'll play through the game three times in all - once per difficulty setting. The story or quests don't change at all, but the enemies get considerably harder, and the items you can find get a whole lot better. However, be forewarned - the game gets downright brutal on the Hell difficulty setting. Some heros that coasted through Normal and Nightmare will get completely stomped at Hell, and unfortunately, there might not be much you can do to change that. There's no way to get back misspent skill points, after all. If you're planning on getting attached to your hero, be very careful at how you upgrade him/her.

Of course, you don't have to go it alone, and you'll have a heck of a lot more fun if you don't. Battle.net runs 24/7 if you want to take your chances on-line, and for the most part, the other people on there are regular gamers who want to have cooperative fun. But hackers, player-killers, and plain-old punks can make Battlenetting a risky proposition. It seems that the majority of Web gamers are illiterate and socially maladjusted, and the Diablo II community is no exception. I far prefer to multiplay in a LAN setting with my good friends, and if you can swing such an arrangement, I highly recommend it. Of course, if you want the game's rarest and most potent equipment, you'll probably have to go to Battle.net at some point and try to trade for it. Just be sure to bring a translator with you, to help you decipher phrases like "u wan sum sojs noob lol."

Alas, despite your best efforts, your hero might die. Thankfully, it's not the worst thing in the world - you'll just have to fetch your corpse to get your stuff back. If you've got big stones, though, you can be truly brave and play in Hardcore mode. If your hero dies in Hardcore, he or she is dead for good. Begging Blizzard to resurrect him or her won't even work - he or she is truly gone. Taking a character to the upper levels in Hardcore is a sign of true skill, and will probably become your main goal after a long Diablo addiction. I've never felt the pain of seeing a level 73 character die forever from a few moments of carelessness, but I imagine it's no picnic, so make sure you know what you're getting into.

People have been ragging on Diablo II's graphics since the day it came out, and yeah, they're nothing to shout about. But hey, there are a lot of little touches that make up for the general averageness of the visuals. Your hero's image will change with new equipment, for example, and I love the way the angel warriors are drawn and animated. The backgrounds tend to be pretty bland, sure, and the enemy types repeat ad nauseum with minor color changes. But hey, there are still a ton of creature types overall. You just hack through so many that the game can't keep up. The musical package is pretty underwhelming, although the town music in Act 5 is surprisingly subdued and even beautiful. Sound effects are great, though, with tons of entertaining screams, slashes, and magical explosions.

What sets Diablo 2 apart, though, is plain old addictiveness. Is it the action figure mentality of powering up your hero? The hope of landing a unique uber-weapon? Getting your guy to the next level? Who knows. Whatever it is, you'll find yourself coming back time and time again, even though you're basically just clicking your mouse and pummeling a bunch of faceless little critters. The game has a lot more lasting appeal in a multiplayer environment, but even in single player, there's some solid fun to be had. Once again, Blizzard has made a great game with a terrific expansion pack, and if you somehow haven't tried it yet, what are you waiting for?

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/10/04