Diablo 2

Rating:
Summary: Worth every penny!
Review: I have played this game before, but unfortunatly do not own it yet, but I can say that this gameb is nearly unbeatable! The sound is good, the graphics are great, and the actual content is outstanding!

Rating:
Summary: Fun with Diablo
Review: I find the graphics and movement in most computer games jerky, and boring. I love the graphics and smooth motion, and conversations of these characters, although this type of game is not my cup of tea.

Rating:
Summary: Game Of the Year
Review: This a great game.If you liked Diablo 1 you will love Diablo II.Sometimes i get so hooked that i stay up all night.Also you can go on to battle net it may be a bit slow but its still fun. you can test your power agianst many other people. You can choose 5 different characters the amazon,necromancer,sorceres,paliden,and the barbarian. Each character has there own speacial powers.there are 4 acts and many creatures to slay. also threre are thousands of items that willn help you in your quest. I hope this reveiw will help youdecide if you want to get Diablo 2.

Rating:
Summary: Um... wow
Review: What you are getting here is an awesome game, an even more awesome game, and two indispensible strategy guides.

The first game, Diablo, is simply incredible, plunging you into a world of a town under siege by Diablo and his minions. As you seek to destroy diablo, you encounter demons and undead, and you'll run into lava-tossing lords, fire-spewing winged demons called Balrogs, gargoyles, and a menagarie of over 150 monsters and some nasty terrain situations which you'll need to put on your thinking cap to get out of.

Then you play Diablo II, which is a totally different game than its predecessor. The terrain is open, but the seemingly endless variety of monsters and magic (over 150 spells) will keep you coming for more. The five charachter classes are five completely different play styles, and on top of that endless sub-varitions on the charachter styles will keep you transfixed. E.g, The Amazon can be split into many different styles, including the javelin-tossing breed, those who use spears, those who fire as fast as humanly possible, those who specalise in elemental (fire and frost) attacks, etc.

Not to mention the strategy guides, who are to be kept at even the most casual gamer's computer-side, even if the second one is poorly written.

Simply put, this game is "darned" addicting, pun intended. I actually uninstalled it because it transfixed me too much to focus on work. Let the serious student beware!

Simply put, once you enter either game, your gaming life will never be the same. Buy or don't buy accordingly.

Rating:
Summary: A nice multiplayer experience, but no BG2
Review: I'm pretty sure that Diablo 2 fans won't like me for what i'm about to say..... but still read the review all through.

I've played Baldurs Gate, BG2, Planescape Torment, Fallout, Fallout 2, the games from Black Isle... they've all excelled in this CRPG game genre. Finally someone makes a new one, Diablo (which i didn't play) and then Diablo 2, and although Diablo has qualities that e.g. Baldurs Gate 2 doesn't have.. it's still a pretty lousy game (compared to BG2 and Icewind Dale that is)

I do on the other hand like the graphics, they're a bit smoother than the ones in BG2 and the character you play in Diablo is much more handling than the ones in BG2 .... much more versatile. THAT IS that you can fight off some heavy monsters with your mage, thats something a wizard in BG2/Icewind Dale could never hope to achieve. (without magic of course) I also like that the multiplayer feat. is much more versatile and you can join those channels or servers and select from multiple games which to my knowledge is not available in any of the games i'm comparing Diablo 2 with.

Diablo still requires the depth of the black isle games, and although it's nice to get those new features you haven't seen in the Black Isle games, Diablo 2 failes to provide the same gameplay experience, fails to provide me with equal fun as BG2 gave me, of course i realize that people may have different opinions but i'm pretty sure most CRPG/RPG veterans will agree with me on most of this.

However for the ingenuity and well balanced gameplay aswell as nice graphics especially in the cutscenes i give the game 3 stars

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't beat the original...
Review: Diablo 2 sounded like a great improvement on the original Diablo. The characters are a lot more individual, with each change of armour or weapon making you look different. That is something that Diablo and Hellfire could definetly have done with. But- there are a lot of things Diablo 2 could have done without. First, you can's save your game. This is supposed to make it more exciting. It just makes it boring as the monsters continously come back to life. Goodbye to the satisfaction of clearing out a level. There is also a lot more equipment to get in Diablo 2, a you find a lot more stuff on creatures. it's a lot more complicated to get started with, and not half as addictive as Diablo and Hellfire. Simply, the original was better. They should have carried the main core of the game into Diablo 2, with new levels. It's so much more exciting when you know already what a brillant AC is etc. I'm still playing Diablo and Hellfire. I'm a long way away from giving them up for Diablo 2.

Rating:
Summary: Tedious
Review: Playing Diablo II is like reading a tedious novel with a magically cursed bookmark.

When Blizzard tackled the computer role-playing game genre with their original Diablo, they focused on combat and perfected it to a degree of high art. Diablo's combat was fun and challenging. They haven't really changed the formula for Diablo II, and that's part of what makes the game so tedious. For a sequel, you'd expect more: more story, more options to completing quests, more ... role-playing! Instead, it's all combat, all over again. Moreover, the combat in Diablo II isn't as challenging as it was before. The baddies aren't as bad.

Exploring the new character classes is interesting, and there are definitely different strategies you need to employ to be an effective fighter with the barbarian over the sorceress, for example. The skill system gives you greater options for carnage. But all of the skills and all of the the character attributes contribute nothing except your ability to fight fight fight. And the new quests, which are either kill X or retrieve Y, involve having to wade through thousands of minions on your way to X or Y. It's dull.

Though the game is overall tedious, Blizzard has done some things well that other game houses would do well to emulate. The cinematic scenes between acts are top-notch: the computerized special effects and facial expressions are some of the best I've seen. And in most computer role-playing games, moving from one area to another involves staring at a "Loading..." screen for excrutiatingly long times. In Diablo II, there's zero---ZERO---delay! (The only "Loading" messages are between major map areas, and those are quite brief.) Good job, Blizzard! Unfortunately, the in-play graphics haven't really improved much over the original. Sure, the amazon's butt cheeks show up pretty well, but it's a fairly low resolution game.

So, what did I mean by a "cursed bookmark"?

Imagine if each time you put down a novel and picked it up later, your bookmark moved back by 50 to a 100 pages ... that's the Diablo II experience.

You see, there's a bug in saving games. When you resume your saved game, you don't appear where you were. You start out back in the town. All of the items left around aren't where they were, either. And all of the baddies you killed ... they're back! The tedium of having to kill them on your way to finishing a quest is doubled because you have to do it all over again, every time you save your game.

There's an old adage in software engineering that says if you document your bugs, they become features. How saving games works in Dialbo II is indeed documented in the manual. But this "feature" is a lamentable excuse for what so many other games---including the original Diablo---got right.

Maybe Diablo III will be better.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Game
Review: Diablo 2 is a great improvement on the original Diablo. There is a great depth to the game that much improves on the original storyline of Diablo. There are now four fully populated cities with at least six characters in each who you can trade with and get advice from. Each of the cities has their own problem that you have to solve. You solve the problems by completing the quests given to you by the characters. There is an almost unlimited supply of weapons and armor you get. There are unique and magical items that you can only find once in the game. There is a slight improvement in graphics from the original Diablo. There a five video clips in the game- one before each act and one at the end- which are pretty good but take up allot of hard drive space. A full install of the game will take a little over 1.5 gigs of hard drive.

Rating:
Summary: Most addictive and great on Battle.net
Review: Ok, so it does lag a lot if you have 56k. But otherwise, it's great multipyaer action! The interface is easy to use and the game itself is one hell of a ride.

Rating:
Summary: Boring as crap
Review: One thing that bothers me about this game is it gets really boring, really fast. It takes relatively no time to finish the game, and within a few days you've already played through all 5 classes. I tried playing multiplayer with my roomate, and it still is boring really fast, not to mention how laggy it was. I was personally astounded at the price it was listed for at home, 60 bucks. That's way more than I wanna pay for a game, especially one that loses my interest so quickly.

If you're borrowing this game, then I would suggest playing it until you get bored with it, otherwise, don't waste the money.