Diablo 2 PC Game Review!

Rated Mature 17+
Animated Blood
Animated Violence
Gore

Mr. Beard's Review
Diablo 2
PC Game


The way I am doing these reviews is either people Suggest a game, or I find a random game to play. I play the game for an hour and give my initial opinion. Sometimes however I do play a game a little longer. It all just depends on my mood when I'm ready to write the next post. Every time I play a game and give it my personal rating. I rate the game on 5 different personal points.
Game Play
Graphics
Music
Story
Replay Value
I'll get to each one separately and explain why I feel it gets a full star or not. Now I can get into great detail with everything about this game, but this is just a quick review of the game. If you would like to know more just let me know in the comments below. Plus I will also be posting links to some other great resources.

Wow, I could not find any way to revert this game from Lords of destruction without uninstalling everything. So that is what I had to do. I first started playing the Diablo series with Lords of Destruction because a very good friend bought it for me so we could all play. So I never played the original and jumped right into Lords of Destruction. So why not get this review started!

Game Play

This is your typical RPG Dungeon Crawling game. This is a very big expansive game with many different areas to explore on many different levels of difficulty. For me, the biggest part is the search for the best equipment. There are five different classes to choose from. There is the Amazon, Necromancer, Barbarian, Sorceress, and Paladin. Each class has its own advantages and disadvantages. For my initial run through I chose the Necromancer simply because I was not familiar with it and only ever played a different class in Lords of Destruction. There is a stats system and skill system as you level up. You can choose the different areas you wish to improve. It works the same way with the skills as well. Each time you save and exit the game and come back all monsters are renewed. So it does make it fairly easy to farm certain bosses for that perfect piece of equipment. In all for everything this game has to offer, I gave it a full star!

Graphics

These graphics for their time are pretty good and with big improvements from the first Diablo game. They made it easier to find loot and item drops. The navigation and area graphics are an improvement as well. I have not tested the small graphical glitches I found in the first one with item drops and walls, but I am sure they have fixed that by the time this one came around. This is a realistic style 3D top-down view approach to this game. It does make it a bit easier to navigate around the maps and dungeons easier than other dungeon crawlers. For this, I gave the game a full star.

Music

This music to me has a very dark sinister gothic feel to me. It does ad a good feel to this dark style of game which is a plus that a lot of other games just seem to miss. In all, I do like the music and the feel it gives to the game so I gave it a full star.

Story

I have to be honest, the story never really attracted me to the series. For me, it was more about the exploration and the equipment hunting more than anything. I do know that a great evil demon is being resurrected and it is your job to stop him and the demons trying to overthrow the world. Here is what I found for the story from the wiki to give you all a better idea of what is going on.

Diablo II takes place after the end of the previous game, Diablo, in the world of Sanctuary. In Diablo, an unnamed warrior defeated Diablo and attempted to contain the Lord of Terror's essence within his own body. Since then, the hero has become corrupted by the demon's spirit, causing demons to enter the world around him and wreak havoc.
A band of adventurers who pass through the Rogue Encampment hear these stories of destruction and attempt to find out the cause of the evil, starting with this corrupted "Dark Wanderer." As the story develops, the truth behind this corruption is revealed: the soulstones were originally intended to imprison the Prime Evils after they were banished to the mortal realm by the Lesser Evils. With the corruption of Diablo's soulstone, the demon is able to control the Dark Wanderer and is attempting to free his two brothers Mephisto, and Baal. Baal, united with the mage Tal-Rasha, is imprisoned in a tomb near Lut Gholein. Mephisto is imprisoned in the eastern temple city of Kurast.
As the story progresses, cut scenes show the Dark Wanderer's journey as a drifter named Marius follows him. The player realizes that the Dark Wanderer's mission is to reunite with the other prime evils, Baal and Mephisto. The story is divided up into four acts:
Act I - The adventurers rescue Cain, who is imprisoned in Tristram, and then begin following the Dark Wanderer. The Dark Wanderer has one of the lesser evils, Andariel, corrupt the Sisters of the Sightless Eye (Rogues) and takes over their Monastery. The adventurers overcome Andariel and then follow the Wanderer east. 

Act II - While the adventurers search the eastern desert for Tal-Rasha's tomb, the Dark Wanderer gets there first. Marius is tricked into removing Baal's soulstone from Tal-Rasha and the Archangel Tyrael charges Marius with taking the soulstone to Hell to destroy it. The Dark Wanderer and Baal join with Mephisto, open a portal to Hell, and the Dark Wanderer sheds his human form and becomes the demon Diablo.

Act III - The adventurers find the seat of the Zakarum religion at the Temple of Kurast, where the portal to Hell is located. They defeat Mephisto, who was left guarding the entrance and take his soulstone.
Act IV - The adventurers slay Diablo in Hell and destroy the soulstones of Mephisto and Diablo on the Hellforge, preventing their return.
In the epilogue, Marius, speaking in a prison cell, indicates he was too weak to enter Hell, and that he fears the stone's effects on him. He gives the soulstone to his visitor. The visitor reveals himself to be Baal, the last surviving Prime Evil now in possession of his own soulstone. He then kills Marius and sets the prison cell on fire.
The story continues in the expansion Diablo II: Lord of Destruction where Baal attempts to corrupt the mythical Worldstone on Mount Arreat. Upon returning to the Pandemonium Fortress after defeating Diablo, Tyrael opens a portal to send the adventurers to Arreat.
- Diablo II Wiki

That seems to be sufficient enough to give you a good idea about what is going on in this game so far. For me, the story just was not enough to keep me interested in it. So many games deal with big demons and the devil being summoned by a secret group that it just seems too overdone to me. There just is not enough originality to it for me and I gave this half a star.

Replay Value

There is a huge amount of replay value within this game. Even though they have stopped updating it and adding more too it there is always that chance of finding new and better equipment. Plus there are still a lot of people who play this on Battle.net. In all honesty, though I do have Lords of Destruction and once I am done with this review I will be reinstalling that and playing that version. For the simple fact that it still has a huge following that plays this, I will give it a full star.

I do really enjoy this game, and I will continue my adventures to find that perfect and ultimate set of equipment. The fact that GOG has now been able to acquire the original Diablo and repackage it for everyone to play again, it is bringing the series some popularity again. I do hope you all enjoyed this review and have yourselves and adventuresome day!
Official Diablo 2 Site!

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