Probably the most anticipated game of all time. I remember saying that about Ultima IX, though both these games can, in fairness, claim that title. Fans waited a decade for U9, while not exactly the wait for Star Wars: Episode I, certainly the longest wait in Computer Gaming. U9, though, died a quiet death after its release late last year.

D2, on the other hand, went Gold on pre-orders alone, with record breaking sales surpassing a million copies two weeks after release.

The graphics are sweet if you have 3dfx, not much better than the first Diablo if you don’t. A good soundtrack works well to help set the theme – horror against the backdrop of a fantasy world. The premise, basically, is that Diablo, possessing the body of the hero who defeated him in the original game, is seeking to free his two brothers, Mephisto and Baal. And together they shall rule the universe etc. etc..

Not particularly engaging, but, after all, D2 is “hack n’slash monty haul”, to use traditional RPG parlance. You basically beat stuff, find stuff, get more powerful, and then beat up more powerful stuff. Pretty brainless.

The brainlessness is also D2’s strength, the cycle of building your character up to kill more stuff to build your character up is close to endless. And with five character classes to choose from, you can start all over. Also, having completed the game, you have the option to play the game from the beginning, at a higher difficulty level, essentially allowing you to play for the next three years until D3 comes out. A further option if you have completed the game is the ability to create “Hardcore” characters. As the name implies, this option is truly for the dedicated – once a hardcore character dies, she cannot be resurrected, unlike normal characters.

D1 vs. D2

None of the old classes are carried through, but the new classes offer options that are pretty close to the old ones, the change of name aside.

Instead of the four levels of spells, each character has a skill tree, allowing you to decide exactly how to build up the strengths of your character. You gain a new skill point to allocate whenever you raise a level, and some quests give you a skill point or two.

The basic magic items still follow the same prefix-item-of-suffix format, with mostly the same names. Unique items have become rarer. New items include “Rare” items, which can have five enchantments; “Socketed” items, which you can stick gems into to give the item specific enchantments; “Enhanced” items, which are slightly more powerful than their normal counterparts; and “Exceptional” items, which can only be found at the Nightmare or Hell difficulty levels and are extremely more powerful than their mundane varieties.

Other nice new features include poison, allies, and getting a title when you complete the game at each difficulty level – “Sir So-And-So” or “Queen Angel”.

Character development is more engaging due to the skill trees, but the gameplay is essentially similar – kill, kill, drink a potion and kill some more.

Gameplay

Single-player gameplay is mostly smooth, occasionally slowing down while the game reads the CD-ROM or while there are too many monsters on screen at once. This sometimes gets you killed, but being able to pause the game usually helps. The game does perform best in single-player mode, though playing alone removes half the fun of the game and you are likely to get bored with it that much sooner.

My one experience with multi-player over a LAN was rather a disappointment, what with sudden lags and “teleporting” monsters. We gave up after fifteen minutes with the suspicion that the original Diablo may perform better over an Intranet.

battle.net, Blizzard’s servers, which promises “secured”, un-hackable, characters is a nightmare. The wait to create a game is ridiculous, you can get kicked out of the queue without warning, characters are unsaved, and the servers unexpectedly goes down. If you have the patience to play on battle.net, however, you can find some financial compensation for your time. The highest ranked character on one of the US “Realms” went on sale on ebay for over two hundred dollars two weeks after the game’s release. Expect Diablo II to receive a category on ebay alongside Ultima Online and Everquest.

All in all, Diablo II is a well-crafted game, and deserves its accolades. Re-playability is high, and it’s a great way to kill a few hours.