Rating: 
Summary: Expands on the Original
Review: I received DII for my birthday and just started playing it. It has some of the same familiar controls as Diablo. Game play is just as easy. What's different? DII gives you 5 character classes to choose from. Each class has it's own "Skill track" to develop unique powers as it increases in level. The game also has a nice variety of indoor and outdoor landscapes for adventuring - not just the dungeons of the first Diablo. That's great. There are also many new monsters to battle. They're ugly and fun. Characters can also carry gloves, a belt and boots in addition to the helmet, armor, weapons, amulet and rings. That's more magic stuff for you to enjoy. What keeps this from being a 5 star game for me is the Save feature. When you save a game, and go back, you begin back at camp. You are not placed back to the spot where you saved. That's kind of annoying. Also, if you're killed, you lose all your equipment (the stuff that's on your body) and gold. When you re-start, you can go back to the spot where you were killed and retrieve your stuff (minus the gold). These are minor inconveniences worth mentioning, but they won't keep me from continuing on my adventure. I'm going to forge ahead to destroy Diablo and save the world.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Addictive
Review: This game is the best game I have ever played. Once you start you can't stop. Sure after a while it gets old but it is fun while it lasts. If you stop and start again you get back into the swing of things so don't worry if something else comes along while you are half way through killing Diablo. The new characters are of a wider variety than the first game. I would recommend this game to anyone who wnats to play a long addictive role-playing game.
Rating:
Summary: Bigger, badder, and better than the original!
Review: There is enough action to keep you busy for several weeks! Several days if you play day and night :) Cinematic cut scenes are almost photorealistic, the story is actually part of the game. The game graphics and background give it a certain realism. Levels are more detailed and way bigger than the original, let's just say that it's three to four times bigger than Diablo 1. The music is awesome, especially in Jehrin's castle on Act III. If you've played Diablo 1, you'll appreciate the cameo Tristam quest; Let's just say that "it ain't what it used to be". The best features of Diablo 2 are the ability to run (amount of running time is limited by your character's "stamina"), and the ability to travel between several pre-defined "waypoints". Together they save a large amount of time wasted going over areas already cleared. The diversity of levels, characters, non-player characters, and items are Diablo 2's second best features. Different weapons/armor produce different graphics, and certain attributes can change the color of the weapons/armor. While all characters lose the ability to cast any spell, each has special capabilities called skills to which you can improve on. You have to fight your way through villages, temples, forests, jungles, dungeons, sewers, deserts, limbo, and Hell itself. You're up against mages, zombies, skeletons, shamans who ressurect their minions, corpse spitters, bugs which lay eggs that hatch to become more pests, cat people, goatmen, mummies that ressurect their minions, beetles, ghosts, walking tree-like creatures, and many more. Enemy boss characters have special abilities, and are actually challenging. A 3-D accelerated graphics card is great for the lighting effects (you get colored lighting with 3D acceleration, otherwise you just get white lighting), but the perspective mode is not very impressive. Perspective mode scales down graphics at a distance, scales up the objects towards you, and everything in the middle is drawn at normal size. Instead of achieving a 3-D effect, it looks like a weird lens has been placed over your monitor. If you like the original, you'll love Diablo 2, so stop reading and hit the order button!
Rating: 
Summary: Good short-term fun but quickly bores
Review: If you're looking for mindless, repetitive annihalation of baddies then you'll love this game. Total action with not much of a story. I equate Diablo II with a game I would rent for my Sony Playstation just to blow some time. It's fun for about 10 minutes after a long day at work and you need to release some stress, but after killing the same monsters over and over and not being able to save your progress it quickly becomes boring and frustrating. After playing epic roleplaying games like BG, Torment and IWD, Diablo II is just not in the same league assuming the aforementioned games are Diablo's competitors. If I'm going to throw down (money) for a game I want to have a gaming experience that includes more than just clicking my left mouse button.
Rating: 
Summary: The Best Role-Playing/Action Hybrid out there
Review: First the good news. Diablo II is an incredibly well-made game as are all of Blizzard's products. It expands what made the original Diablo so good (randomly generated maps and magic items plus lots of intense combat) and provides an addictive, fun game that lots of people can and do enjoy. Blizzard even expanded the original 3 classes to give the game even more replayability; now you can choose from the dual-weapon wielding barbarian, the archer/spell-slinger amazon, the sorceress (who obviously is the best magic-user in the game), the paladin (a spell-using warrior) and, my personal favorite, the necromancer who can raise armies of undead to kill his foes. Each one of them can choose from a class-specific skill tree when they level up which means that individuals from each class will be highly customizable as well. In other words, every character you meet on Battle.net will be slightly different which makes for a very enjoyable, and tense, gaming experience (especially if you want to frag them). Unfortunately, it also has some rather big flaws. First, Battle.net is so lagged that this game is virtually unplayable in multiplayer. This is a shame, because the customizable skill trees would make multiplayer gaming a much more enjoyable experiene than Diablo I. Unfortunately, I can never get into an active game (I use the Eastern Realm server--maybe it's different out West) to try it out. Secondly, the graphics are nothing to write home about. They're good, but not great. However I didn't mind that so much because the levels were extremely interesting without all the bells-and-whistles that other games seem obligated to cram in. Lastly, and this is my primary problem with it, is that Diablo II doesn't have any depth to it. I understand that it's designed to appeal to a wider audience than say Baldur's Gate II, but I get sick of killing endless waves of screaming minions after awhile. It simply get's boring and the new goodies and powers you get don't make up for it--at least in my opinion. So it boils down to this: if you want a game with dialog and a more complex story--get Baldur's Gate II; if you want a simpler, pure action game with some character variety--get Diablo II but don't count on being able to play it multiplayer unless you've got a cable modem and/or Blizzard finally fixes their server problems.
Rating:
Summary: Not a true RPG, but a great successor to "Gauntlet"
Review: OK, let's get this out of the way right up front: Neither "Diablo" game is an RPG. Interacting with the NPC characters doesn't make a speck of difference beyond being given direction on the quests, although most of the time, you'll get the benefits of having talked to them even if you complete the quest without guidance. (Unlike the original "Diablo," these are the same every time.) Instead, "Diablo II" is a pure videogame in the "Gauntlet" tradition: Shoot (or stab) opponents, getting points for your trouble and hit powerups along the way. That they all have the gloss of a fantasy RPG crossed with "Doom" is immaterial. Having said that, so what? "Diablo II" is a hoot and a half. The interface is so close to intuitive that only a few instructions are worth mentioning (hold the Alt key down to find treasure on the screen, and hit Caps Lock to make your character run), as the rest falls under "click on it to interact with it in the appropriate way." The action is fast and furious and keeps up with the growth of characters nicely, assuming players invest their skill points wisely (figure out what one of two skills your character will specialize in early on, and devote points to it and its prerequisites and complementary skills almost exclusively) and get lucky. Played on a local area network (like the one my wife and I share in our home), the game is a hoot, with cooperative play making for a richer game, with a variety of possible strategies making even the hardest areas for certain character types possible, especially if complimentary character choices are made (melee attacker working with a missile attacker, for instance). The game also has vast amounts of replay, as each character type has a variety of ways to play it (my wife has an arrow-specialist Amazon, a javelin-specialist Amazon and a startlingly effective sword-specialist Amazon) and five classes to try, each of them very different form one another. My only gripe is that not enough change exists in the game when replaying it. There's only so many times I can slog through the jungles of Kurast, fighting blowdart-firing fetishes before I start wishing that Blizzard would put out more CDs of expansion areas. One is on the way in 2001, which will add a fifth act to the game and two new classes (Assassin and Druid). But I would be satisfied with a disk letting one play in the dungeons of Tristram or just new areas with a less demonic bent. I can't be the only person who'd like to send his Necromancer into a dungeon hunting dragons ... A true classic and my favorite videogame of all time. Not necessarily appropriate for young children, but a game with surprisingly broad appeal otherwise.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Game...Poor Support
Review: Diablo II is an excellent game, but only if you want to play offline (single player). I play on the East Realm (on BattleNet) and have 5 characters above level 30 (one of each class). Lag has been a serious problem since I bought the game last summer when it was first released. Back then, Blizzard support said that the overwhelming sales of the game caught them by surprise and they would eliminate the lag by adding more servers. Well, 6 months have passed now and the lag just gets worse and worse every day. It is now so bad that I have found the game to be completely unplayable. Now Blizzard is advertising the game on TV so even more people will be logging onto the already overcrowded, lagged-out servers. It's a shame that all the effort that went into creating such a great game is ruined by the poor support for online players. Playing single-player is not an option for me since I've discovered how much fun it is to team up with friends.
Rating:
Summary: The best game I have ever played!!
Review: This game is great. 5 different characters (with 2 more coming in the expansion pack), huge acts to explore, and great graphics. I spent hours and hours playing. The only thing that I didn't like was the fact that when you save your game you start back in the town and all of the monsters are back. That has its good points and its bad points. Good: the monsters are back so you can kill them again and get exp. Bad: if you are in a really difficult level then you can't just stop, save your game and start there when you decide to play again. for instance, when i was in act 4 going to diablo, there was no way i was going to save my game and have to kill all of those monsters again, it was hard enough to get from place to place in there. This game is deffinately worth the buy. It will provide hours and hours of gameplay.
Rating:
Summary: Blizzard does it again...
Review: Seems like every game Blizzard puts out turns to gold. This is no exception. Visually, this game is great to look at. The game play and control are much better than the first one. There are also 5 character classes to choose from and with 4 acts to play, this game is way bigger than the first. The on-line game is a little choppy and laggy at times, but well worth checking out. I loved the first Diablo, then your gonna lust for this game as you get deeper and deeper into the world known as Diablo 2. The next time you look up at the clock, you may not believe what your seeing. Somehow, you lost a couple of days playing. This game is that engrossing. Buy this game and you won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: caution: this game is very attictive
Review: amazing is what i would say best describes it. i have the first one and the land in diablo II is 4x the size of diablo I and just as fun to explore. Blizzard improved on the cast having a lot more balance to each unique chacter with each having unique skills (spells) i give it five stars its amazing. the only drawbacks are that it is more complicated to get on battle.net and you will lose a lot of sleep! buy it! if you want more info on it e-mail me at jwp13@cs.com
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