Customer Reviews
Good at it's time, but has some serious problems.
Diablo II and its expansion are of the simple type. You click to move, talk, and attack or pick an item up. Believe it or not it's actually quite fun, and the high degree of customization allowed by the spell trees guarantees that every character will be different. The game has, for it's time, ok graphics and sound. The storyline is... there... It's ok, but don't expect an epic story such as in Blizzards other games like Starcraft or Warcraft. Their are several different character classes to select from, and they are all vastly different, which gives some incentive to try each of the classes. But here's where the good stops and the bad starts. Diablo II has some of the WORST online play I have ever seen. This game suffers from some of the worst lag spikes ever. I have Dell's new XPS system and I can play Battlefield II on maximum settings with virtually no lag at all... I fire up Diablo, and within a hour, I have come across "black walls" where lag is so bad that part of the environment isn't even loaded up, meaning that if the online lags too bad and these "black walls" appear all around you, your screwed, and your only option is to exit the game and come back, and deal with all the respawned monsters. Another case of horrible lag occurred and I found a whole cave of foes that weren't moving or doing anything. I couldn't do anything as well; I couldn't attack them, drink a potion, log off, or even port back to town. After waiting for a minute, the game stopped lagging and I saw myself dead surrounded by a huge horde of monsters. When a game this old lags like this on a brand new very powerful computer, I tend to have issues. Also, another big problem are the PEOPLE online. Blizzard ingenuously made the game to where any player can declare hostility on you whenever they want. So what's to stop that level 99 sorceress from killing you and your other level 15 buddies over and over again until every single bit of your money in your inventory and your "safe" stash has fallen out onto the ground for them to pick up? Nothing. And nearly all of these high levels WILL do this for little or no reason. I finally got to where I only played with people I knew on a pass worded game, simply because I was tired of getting killed over and over by a bored level 99. But it's not just the PK'ers (Player Killers) that ruin the online experience. Constant, page filling adds by people advertising websites to buy items and such fill the chat area, making it very tedious to carry on a conversation, and hackers run amuck everywhere. Whether hacking your corpse after they killed you to make you drop all your gear, or hacking themselves up gear that is impossibly strong, or just stealing your account and destroying all that time spent leveling your characters and getting them powerful gear, hackers also make the online game incredibly unfun. The offline is fun for a while, but it gets tedious and boring after a while. I realize that most of my complaints are to the community, not the game, which s why I rated the game a four out of five. But in terms of fun, this game gets a three. The offline simply is not enjoyable enough to make up for the dismal online experience.
Best RPG Adventure of PC-Gaming History Hands Down
Blizzard is almost like the King Midas of computer gaming. It seems to me that every game they have their hands on, or directly produce is absolute Gold. If you like a never tiring adventure RPG style game then you will like this game. If you want an instant emersion into a world of never ending twists and quests, filled with challenging demons and lords, a free online community of tens of thousands to play against and months of sleepless nights; This is your game. I do no work for Blizzard, Amazon or a magazine. I am just filled with a passionate love for great games, and this is in my top 5 of all time.
Great game for lower end machines
Diablo II is a great game. The expansion pack makes it even more fun. If your like me and haven't kept up with the latest games and hardware you will enjoy this hack and slash adventure. ^M
