"Sugoi! Diabro 2 iz amazing!"

I don't know of any one other PC game, which had as much hype surrounding it, as did Diablo 2. When the game was announced in 1998 the same 2 screens that the developers released were posted on every single website so many times it just became tiring to stare at them.

Along with the screens came the previews and the tales of the revolutionary gameplay: night and day cycles, mercenaries, merchants that moved, and many more things that never made it into the final version.

Of delayed and not as visually spectacular as many games were in 2000, Diablo 2 was released to a game hungry audience in August. It beat every sale record for a game it it's first weekend, ever. It sold 1 million units so fast it was hard to find it in-store. Gamers scrambled on ebay, or got their pre-order slips and assaulted Best Buy, EBGame, Gamestop stores in order to get their copies. And why shouldn't they? Diablo 2 is the untouched LEADER in action-RPGs. Many have tried to imitate it and they have all failed. Many more will try and they will share the same fate because the amount of work and dedication put into this game is downright amazing.

Graphics: 7/10

These graphics were really pretty... when the first screens were released, circa 1998. Two years later, the graphics were still good, but they weren't stellar.

The resolution was the biggest offender. The resolution in Diablo 2 was stuck at an abysmal 640x480 that made the game look horrible on big monitors, which had become the rage at that time. Blocky, sprity characters fought on-screen with a lot of finesse and zeal, but they were held back by the abysmally low resolution, which would have earned this game many-a-critic even if it were released on any of the dozen previous release dates it skipped.

On the other hand, the rest of the effects were downright awesome. A perspective view for those with D3D video cards was available and it made the lighting absolutely amazing for that time. Flame arrows glowed with a red light, which trailed behind and under them as they sped to their target, firewalls glowed red, The Evil Den had an evil glow to it, etc. Even though everything was probably glowing red, it was still, non-the less, an amazing effect to look at.

The death animations, which were pretty much a tradition in Diablo games, were amazing as well. Every creature had a different death animation and it was spectacular to watch every single time. Some creatures burned alive, others fell down, blood-a-bursting, shamans exploded and threw their staff up in the air, which in turn, broke into a million pieces, Fallen left out a cry and a pool of blood, etc. I could just imagine the kind of work and the amount of programming required for all of these animations to work so well must've been insane.

Cities and dungeons look amazing for the most part... emphasis on part. You can clearly see in what order the producers made this game, for, the later parts of the game are all increasingly better looking than the one's preceding them. The first act is virtually just a bunch of plains strung together and with walls around them, while the second act is 10-15 times as visually complex.

Whatever Diablo 2 lost in level design, it made up in both monster design and character features. Diablo 2 featured an unheard of number of individual monster designs. A little over 70 individual monsters were present in Diablo 2 with over 300 different types of monsters if you also included the color and name changes. The kind of care that went into those monsters doesn't seize to amaze to this day. From death animations, to overall animations, to design, to equipment, these monsters look as great now as they did almost 5 years ago.

Characters were also visually upgraded. You could, in the earlier days of battle.net, actually tell the equipment of a character just by looking at what their paper-doll was wearing on the main game screen. This too, as you would imagine, was an unheard of level of detail. At this time, the only thing that the most visually stunning RPG could tell you is that a character had a helmet and armor. That's how much information you could get from looking at their in-game paper-doll.

Sound: 8/10

The music and sound effects featured in Diablo 2 were well above average and well above 95% of RPGs.

Perhaps what I find most intriguing about D2's sound effects are the voice-overs. For ONCE in an RPG we don't get the same idiotic assortment of horrendously acted British accents that accompany every fantasyland character that we come to meet in an action RPG. Characters in Diablo 2 spoke like real people, had a plethora of different accents, and gave their lines a decent attempt before getting thrown to the curve.

The sound effects are pretty decent, but not on par with the music and the voice acting. The clashing of the swords, the lacerations of the flesh, and the "Whoosh!" of magic spells are all very convincing, but they don't stand out from the crowd too much.

The music is pretty decent featuring fast paced, slow paced, and apocalypse-paced tunes that will suit all ages and preferences. That too doesn't stand too much above the norm however.

Gameplay: 9/10

Let's get something straight from the start: The gameplay in D2 is simple... very simple. Yet, this is by far the most complex action RPG ever made. How can such a paradox be true? Through the genius of the programmers, that's how!

In Diablo 2 you play one of 5 different classes. And when I say different, I MEAN different, more on that later. Anyway, moving on, the 5 classes you can pick from are the Amazon, the Necromancer, the Sorceress, the Barbarian and the Paladin. Most of these characters are as cliched as they sound. The Barbarian is big, strong, and dumb while the Amazon is swift, svelte and good with a bow. The only "original" class featured in Diablo 2 is the Necromancer, which is a sort of dark mage that can summon all kinds of skeletons or demons to fight for him. He can also use some rather nasty spells that invoke all kinds of creepy stuff. The spell “Teeth”, for example, invokes 4 or more little energy balls that eat away at your enemies.

What really makes the classes special though is that they all have a unique skill tree. That means 3 tabs, with up to 10 skills each, all featuring UNIQUE skills. Simply put, this has not been achieved in any RPG in existence... now or ever. This kind of depth allows for infinite customization and, while some skills are better than others, if you really wanted to, you could create at least 10 different versions of the same character. That's insane.

The skills themselves are varied enough, ranging from your average fireball to some amazingly cinematic skills. Diablo 2 also replaces Diablo's "everyone can have it"-routine, since with 3 unique tabs for each character there are no 2 skills that are the same for 2 different characters in this game. Skills are a joy to look at and some are truly both horrific and powerful and they might just make your skin crawl as you watch them coming at you in PvP mode. Fair is fair though, and there is a problem with the skills: balance. Some skills are absolutely decimating, while others squeal by without making much noise. Guided arrows, Froze Orbs, Whirlwinds, are all hundreds of times more powerful than other skills that are at the same level.

Upon gaining a level, you will receive one skill point and 5 stat points to distribute as you like. There are no Stat Caps like in the original Diablo so you could, technically, create a sorceress that is better at hitting with the staff than she is at using it's spell. Skills can be upgraded to a maximum of 20, exponentially increasing that skills power. You also gain a set amount of HP/MP per turn, which can be used to keep yourself alive longer. Finally, there is a maximum level cap of 99 which means skill distribution is ESSENTIAL.

And here the problems rear their ugly heads, distributing skill or stat points wrongly can kill a character. I made this mistake with a sorceress and, by level 88, I realized she was totally useless. Due to this, many don't want to stray too far away from the beaten path of certain skills: for PvP I choose this and this and for PvE I choose that, that and that. This is a shame since it complicates the game for newbies and it also makes many options totally useless since if you want to survive you wont really find much use for them.

The Diablo series, however, has always had one category in which it outshines all other RPGs: items. Diablo 2 has tons of items and this is the game that gives a rat's ass about them. Blizzard went to insane lengths to keep item "duplication", creation of hacked items, and general item illegalities to a minimum on battle.net. Hell, in fact, they went so far that they even banned half-a-million users from their servers for what are, mostly, item offences. Yeah, items in Diablo 2 are that important.

Items are split in 5 different groups: normal, magic, rare, set and unique, in order of importance. Normal items are just the basic item, like a long sword, with no special abilities or extra features. Magical items have a few more perks than the normal items, but are nothing compared to the rares. Rare items can have as many as 10 enhancing features, everything from "Enhanced Damage (more damage)" to "Life leech (life stealing)". Set items are the new addition to Diablo lore and they're items that are part of a set (like Death's Hand set) which, if collected, grant extra Set bonuses. Finally, unique items are the most powerful individual items in the game. They have out of this world features and are just amazingly hard to come by. These are the truly precious items in Diablo 2.

Item obsession runs deep within Diablo 2 players, and that's for a very good reason. Nearly 80% of the time, what items you carry will be much more important than how skilled you are at playing Diablo 2. Items offer mostly everything that a character in Diablo 2 has: health, mana, strength, skill, etc. Items are so important that even their placement on a hero's body is essential. Place items in a bad order and the stat's won't add up to give you enough to wear that amazing shield or armor you have. Diablo 2 perfected items and created a whole mania about them. To this day, accounts for Diablo 2 and it's expansion go, with a certain regularity, for $60+ on ebay.

Along with the new items Diablo 2 brought to the gaming community, there were also gems. Gems could be set in a piece of armor or a weapon to give them extra power, as long as that piece of armor had a socket or more. Gems ranged from Ruby's which gave either fire damage, fire resistance or life, depending on where you put them to sapphires which gave the exact opposite: ice damage, ice resistance and mana. Gems became increasingly important throughout the life of Diablo 2, especially online. Gems could also be used to craft new items or to help repair old ones.

Yet another addition to the items category was the Horadric Cube. This magical piece of jewelry that you found at some point during the game allowed you to transmute or craft new items from preexisting ones. The Horadric Cube was not exactly the bane of innovation, people were crafting items in MMORPGs way before this, but for Action RPGs, this was it right here. Recipes for the cube popped up like mushrooms after a storm, mostly fake, but a few were real and people love to experiment with it. Soon, the cube became an essential part of Diablo 2 and, even more so, of it's future expansion pack.

Items and skills were the most important parts of Diablo 2. The rest of the gameplay, while very good, was never able to come up to the kind of excellence that the skill tree and the items offered.

Diablo 2 had a simple story, with a simple gameplay. You were a hero, and your job was to defeat Diablo, the Lord of Terror. Through the game you fought Diablo's minions, his brothers, and all other kinds of demons, some, better designed than others.

The quests found in this game are not really that compelling. There are only 6 quests per act, not all of which are required to move on, and the rewards you receive from completing these quests are extremely poor. More so, a lot of the time, completing the Act will complete 2 or 3 out of the 6 quests, which leaves optional quests to a bare minimum. This was much better done in Diablo where you had not only a few random quests every time you played, but you also had better rewards and more optional quests.

Monster design is mostly successful in Diablo 2. Some monsters are a failed attempt at humor that just end up becoming annoying, but most of them are really just these terrifying demonic fiends that stop at nothing to try to stop you on your tracks. What's also very important to know is that PvEing in Diablo 2 isn't so hard unless you reach Hell difficulty. 90% of monsters had no immunities until you reached Hell difficulty and that allowed certain character classes to dominate others.

Diablo 2 features 3 types of monsters: normal, unique, and super-unique. Normal monsters are just your regular, every-day, grunt that attempts to kill you and is suppose to fail MISERABLY, unless he's in numbers. Unqiues have a little more power by themselves and also carry a posse of imbeciles with them... mostly cannon fodder though. Super-uniques on the other hand, are really the tough kids on the block, ready to kick your ass even without help... but they get it anyway. Monsters in Diablo 2 can feature a number of attributes, much like items, that can grant them anything from enhanced damage to revive.

But at least it was fun to fight where you did. The environments of Diablo 2 are dark and leave much to the imagination... but in a good way! You start the battle with Him in a abandoned monastery filled with ghastly torture chambers and even ghastlier monsters, you continue into a jungle filled with monsters of all kinds and creepy, blood-stained temples, and, finally, you reach hell. The actual design of the fighting arenas is amazing. They are packed with gory detail and leave you wanting more, not less, like most dungeons in RPGs do.

Diablo 2 has a lot of replayability to boot. It's just a lot of fun to go through the game a few times with different characters in the eternal search for items or to just see what new difficulty levels hold. Finally, there is the ultra-hardcore, Hardcore mode in which a character that dies stays dead and looses all of his/her items.

A few problems do arise however... the most important of which is character balance. Before a lot of patches and D2: LoD, the Necromancer was useless. It was nearly impossible for this guy to go through the whole single player campaign in Diablo 2 alone. However, the unbalances did not stop there. Sorceresses were way to powerful, paladins were nearly as bad as Necromancers, Barbarians were virtually useless against Sorceresses' in PvP, etc. These problems were all solved later on with patches and the arrival of the expansion pack, but others just arose later.

Another big complaint about Diablo 2 is that the actual GAMEPLAY is not too much fun. You have to click every single time you expect your character to hit, which many people find quite annoying. I think that's just like trying to find problems where there are none. Clicking on a mouse button a hundred times certainly isn't a work out, so stop making such a big deal out of it.

Multiplayer: 10/10

Diablo 2 is the uncontested champion of free online RPGs. Battle.net and Blizzard have put together one helluva' experience.

Perhaps what Diablo 2 does right in it's online component is that it focuses on the players' involvement with the game rather than on the actual game itself. Online play in Diablo 2 is like a fully featured MMORPG. Party controls, trade windows, hostility alarms, PvP/E separation, etc. This kind of care and perfection hasn't gone into any SINGLE one of Blizzard's excellent crop of online games with the exception of Diablo 2.

The community, while filled with 13-year-olds and overly obsessed kids is huge and a blast to play with most of the time.

There are plenty of games to choose from, ranging from free for all PvP to organized "Magic Find Runs" where players band together in the search for better items.

The online component is split into a multitude of channels and activity-specific chat rooms that allow everything from trade, to personal clan channels.

Overall: 9/10

Diablo 2 is the standard bearer for the whole ARPG industry and no matter how badly beaten you were online, calling this game a "Borefest", "Clicking game" or any other half-assed insult won't change the facts: Diablo 2 is good of an action RPG as there will ever be.

If you don't own this yet, go out and buy it now. There is still a community brimming with activity and filled with players from all continents and walks of life.

Go out and get this game, it's well worth it.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 12/27/04