Diablo 2 - Bestseller Series for Windows
- ESRB Descriptor: Animated Blood Animated Gore Animated Violence
- ESRB Rating: M - (Mature)
- Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment
- Genre: Adventure
- Platform: Windows
- Game Series: Diablo
Available From
Why are these offers here?
Smart Buy!
Lowest price from a Trusted Store
Second Lowest Price
Third Lowest Price
- Overview
-
Reviews
- Compare Prices
User ReviewRead All Reviews »
So far so good...
Pros
Terrific graphics and sound. Different enough from Diablo, but still the same great concept.
Cons
Huge game and seems to bog down at points.
Recommended it?
Yes
If you've read my review on the first Diablo, or even my review on Nox, you'll know that I've been waiting eagerly for this follow up from Blizzard. Well, I just got it this week and immediately dove right in. I wanted to write a quick epinion of it as of now, but I will probably add to this as I get further through the game.
As of now, I am quite pleased with it. At a high level it is very similar to the first one. You get to choose one of five character types to start off with. This is a lot more flexible than the original Diablo which only had 3. The characters have a bit more overlap than the last one, but they also have some very unique aspects, such as the Necromancer who can raise the dead as one of his weapons. One thing I am very thankful they corrected is the home base. In Diablo, nothing aggravated me more than having to wander across this huge home base to sell and buy stuff. It was just a complete waste of time. The base here is very consolidated and you can basically sprint across it without a problem.
In addition, the overall concept is the same. It is played from the sort of looking down on the world perspective, and you move your character about, getting quests, and then trying to complete them. So far, there is a wider range of quests and battle areas than Diablo. In Diablo for the most part you just continued to descend down many levels of a dungeon. This got a little repetitious after a while and I know there was a lot of complaining around this. Blizzard obviously tried to address this by adding a lot of open terrain areas where you travel through and adventure. It makes for a nice change of scenery, but it doesn't change the game play a whole lot.
The graphics are a lot better than the first one. Completely using the 3d technology out there, the characters and monsters are very crisp looking. The battle scenes are very smooth for the most part. However, when there are a lot of characters (it seems worse when the characters use missile weapons to attack) my system has been bogged down which surprised me. I have a 500 mhz with 64 megs of ram which I thought would be enough. When it bogs down it gets fairly jerky and sometimes just stalls for a second or two. So fat this has only happened a couple of times but it is something to watch out for if you have a slower computer. The sound is also very sweet on this. While on the subject, this is a huge program. If you load the entire thing it is a gig and a half which is simply monstrous. You really need to load it all because otherwise you'll wind up CD swapping throughout the game (there are 3 CDs!) which would be highly annoying. But even in its smallest form, it is still 650 megs.
So far the selection of monsters has been very wide. Each one is very unique, and has their own specialized attacks. I have only seen one or two monsters that are direct repeats of the first Diablo, so it is refreshing in that sense. As in Diablo, there is a nice range of ways the monsters attack. Where Diablo II seems to have improved is that the monsters seem to have an actually strategy in how they attack as well. Instead of just charging in at you, or if they had missile weapons, firing from a distance, they seem to have attack plans which makes it a bit tougher. Monsters will retreat for a bit, and then attack once they are in a better position. Another nice feature is that monsters even seem to be connected. There is one in particular that has a leader who is a neuromancer and can raise the dead of those he controls. They seem to attack much more organized if he is alive.
One annoying thing so far, is the way you move and attack with your character. You basically just point and click with the left key and your character moves or attacks there. The problem is with some of the faster monsters, you point to attack and the monster has moved. However, instead of just missing your attack and being able to slide the mouse and attack again, you wind up moving into the spot. This just seems a bit buggy to me and when you compound it over a full sequence, it becomes hard to manage attacking the faster monsters.
I haven't played the multi-player part yet, but I heard Blizzard did a lot to try and cut down on the cheating that was rampant throughout Diablo I. Hopefully these measures will work, because to be honest, the cheating made the multi player part of Diablo useless. People could just get way too powerful and walk around killing your players. It was very frustrating and eventually I just stopped bothering with it.
Overall, I'm already finding myself getting addicted to this as much as I was addicted to the first one. So far they've made enough changes that this is refreshing and different from the first one without taking away the aspects I loved in it. If you are a fan of Diablo or Nox, this is a must buy.
As of now, I am quite pleased with it. At a high level it is very similar to the first one. You get to choose one of five character types to start off with. This is a lot more flexible than the original Diablo which only had 3. The characters have a bit more overlap than the last one, but they also have some very unique aspects, such as the Necromancer who can raise the dead as one of his weapons. One thing I am very thankful they corrected is the home base. In Diablo, nothing aggravated me more than having to wander across this huge home base to sell and buy stuff. It was just a complete waste of time. The base here is very consolidated and you can basically sprint across it without a problem.
In addition, the overall concept is the same. It is played from the sort of looking down on the world perspective, and you move your character about, getting quests, and then trying to complete them. So far, there is a wider range of quests and battle areas than Diablo. In Diablo for the most part you just continued to descend down many levels of a dungeon. This got a little repetitious after a while and I know there was a lot of complaining around this. Blizzard obviously tried to address this by adding a lot of open terrain areas where you travel through and adventure. It makes for a nice change of scenery, but it doesn't change the game play a whole lot.
The graphics are a lot better than the first one. Completely using the 3d technology out there, the characters and monsters are very crisp looking. The battle scenes are very smooth for the most part. However, when there are a lot of characters (it seems worse when the characters use missile weapons to attack) my system has been bogged down which surprised me. I have a 500 mhz with 64 megs of ram which I thought would be enough. When it bogs down it gets fairly jerky and sometimes just stalls for a second or two. So fat this has only happened a couple of times but it is something to watch out for if you have a slower computer. The sound is also very sweet on this. While on the subject, this is a huge program. If you load the entire thing it is a gig and a half which is simply monstrous. You really need to load it all because otherwise you'll wind up CD swapping throughout the game (there are 3 CDs!) which would be highly annoying. But even in its smallest form, it is still 650 megs.
So far the selection of monsters has been very wide. Each one is very unique, and has their own specialized attacks. I have only seen one or two monsters that are direct repeats of the first Diablo, so it is refreshing in that sense. As in Diablo, there is a nice range of ways the monsters attack. Where Diablo II seems to have improved is that the monsters seem to have an actually strategy in how they attack as well. Instead of just charging in at you, or if they had missile weapons, firing from a distance, they seem to have attack plans which makes it a bit tougher. Monsters will retreat for a bit, and then attack once they are in a better position. Another nice feature is that monsters even seem to be connected. There is one in particular that has a leader who is a neuromancer and can raise the dead of those he controls. They seem to attack much more organized if he is alive.
One annoying thing so far, is the way you move and attack with your character. You basically just point and click with the left key and your character moves or attacks there. The problem is with some of the faster monsters, you point to attack and the monster has moved. However, instead of just missing your attack and being able to slide the mouse and attack again, you wind up moving into the spot. This just seems a bit buggy to me and when you compound it over a full sequence, it becomes hard to manage attacking the faster monsters.
I haven't played the multi-player part yet, but I heard Blizzard did a lot to try and cut down on the cheating that was rampant throughout Diablo I. Hopefully these measures will work, because to be honest, the cheating made the multi player part of Diablo useless. People could just get way too powerful and walk around killing your players. It was very frustrating and eventually I just stopped bothering with it.
Overall, I'm already finding myself getting addicted to this as much as I was addicted to the first one. So far they've made enough changes that this is refreshing and different from the first one without taking away the aspects I loved in it. If you are a fan of Diablo or Nox, this is a must buy.
