Well Diablo II is out, and my son and I anxiously awaited the arrival of our game.

Everyday, my son would greet me when I came home with "Is it here yet?"
And I would have to say, No. Everyday he became sadder. Well, it came today, and I installed it right away.

First of all, full install takes 1550mb. If you don't have that much space, you need to find it or buy a larger hard drive. If you want to install just the game version, without Battle.net, and with switching disks, it takes 650MB. Although this seems like, (and in reality, is) a lot of space to take up for a game, there are reasons for it.

You also have to have at LEAST 32MB of Ram. I would highly suggest that you have 64 or more. (I have 256MB)

Install went very quickly, taking only about 20 minutes. For this large of a game, that wasn't bad. Once installed, it has to check to see if your video and audio cards are okay. This also went quickly.

Now, on to playing the game. First, the Good Points:

When you start, you are in the Rogue's camp. You walk around and find your bearings, and get your first quest. This takes about 5 minutes. (I would HIGHLY suggest turning the automap feature on).

Then you go venturing about the land. There are LOTS of monsters, and the graphics are great!! I really enjoyed the graphics of this game, as it enhances the game play. You have different monsters to kill, and unlike the first Diablo, they have a bar upon which their name is written that tells you how injured they are and how much more you have to hit them in order to kill them. This is a definite plus, because you can really tell which monsters to avoid until you become a higher level.

Next, the places are easy to find and enter. You don't seem to have a lot of searching to do to find the shrines and what not, they are sprinkled pretty thickly over the landscape, and if you have mapping on, they appear on your map as you get close to them.

There is lots of loot lying around, and the monsters seem to have a lot of things that they carry, so it becomes easy to pick things up.

The soundtrack is awesome, and the music really plays into the game well.

There is a secret stash that you can use in the Rogue's camp to store anything that you want to keep, but don't want to carry with you, and it's very nice to have.

You can advance up through the levels very quickly, and they have a new skill tree so that each time you advance, you can either acquire a new skill or add to an old one.

You quickly learn the game, and it is easy to do if you have played Diablo before.

There are Waypoints scattered around, kind of like portals, which you can use to go back and forth to different places.

My son says that when you die, you go back to the camp and you keep most of everything that you had, except for the equipped stuff, which you have to go back and pick up.

Now, the BAD points.

Unlike Diablo, you have a VERY limited inventory. You will find yourself using your stash quickly, as you fill yourself up time and time again. You have to keep returning to the camp in order to sell your stuff, or put it in your stash, and I left a LARGE amount of things lying around because I didn't want to return at that particular time, so couldn't pick anything else up.

It seems fairly easy to play, but it's not that hard of a challenge. I choose to play the Paladin, and although I have played for about 3 hours, I have yet to die. In fact, I have been able to take my player to Level 10 without having a lot of problems with being injured. This may seem like a good thing to some of you out there, but if a game seems too easy, it becomes boring quickly.

Even the quests are easy to do, as I have done 3 already. This may be a good thing, but I would like more of a challenge.

There doesn't seem to be a quick save option, or I haven't found it. When you save and return to game, it automatically takes you back to the camp, which is a hassle if you are far away at the time. You have to make your way back to where you were in order to continue the fight.

Conclusion:

All in all, not a bad game. It's not up to the hype that was out there, but nothing really is. I expected a much harder game, and was somewhat disappointed by how easy this really is.

Maybe as I get to harder levels, it will get more difficult, but somehow I don't think so.

Is it worth the money? Yes. The game is fun, and addicting, just easier than Diablo.