DIABLO II RESURRECTED Review: Nostalgia Served From Hell

PC Review Code Provided by Vicarious Visions

As someone who grew up with Diablo II as their main game, to the point that it was the only reason I started playing on a computer instead of my Nintendo 64 and PlayStation, I was ecstatic to hear they were remaking the game. Vicarious Visions had truly struck gold with this title, despite the Diablo series as a whole not being amazing. Just as the future of the Diablo series seemed to continue to tank, following the disappointing release of Diablo III, they give us Diablo II Resurrected. Since it has come out, I have yet to stop playing the game every chance I get and I can’t wait to sink hundreds of hours more into it!

Story

Literally, nothing was changed about the story from the original. They upgraded the cutscenes, leaving the option to watch the original versions of these cutscenes, and left the rest alone.

Marius is met by a cloaked figure who enters his prison cell. Believed to be Archangel Tyrael, Marius begins to divulge into the story of the Wanderer that he traveled with. From there he tells the story of how Diablo was resurrected from the soulstone he was trapped within. Following this tale, the cloaked figure demands that Marius hand over the final remaining soulstone in existence, which he wore around his neck. Glad to be rid of it, he hands it over to who he believed was Tyrael. This is when he learns that he has been deceived and that he was in fact talking to demon lord Baal, who now has the stone he needs to rise back to power!

Gameplay

For the most part, the game plays just as it did back in the original games' prime days. There have been a few upgrades and changes made, along with the added ability to play with a controller.

Giving players a top-down view so they can see their immediate surrounding area, players will have to use both might and magic to fight against a vast world of enemies. Depending on which class they choose to go with, the use of a melee weapon verse being dependent upon skills will be the difference in how they proceed.

There will be quests to do along the way, each having its own rewards and levels of importance. There are only a handful of quests that absolutely have to be done, but there are six quests in each Act, aside from Act four. Once they have completed all five Act’s, they will earn the title “Slayer” and be able to start the process over again on the Nightmare difficulty. Once they complete Nightmare, they unlock the Hell difficulty. These new difficulties do bring the same enemies and quests, but they can find better items, gain more experience from defeated enemies, and obtain rewards from each quest again. 

As they level up, they will get to upgrade their stats to improve their character as they believe would be best and they will get a skill point to use in the skill tree. Some skills are locked until you have prior ones in the tree or have reached a specific level, but even from the first skill point, it will matter what players pick.

Many skills can have an effect on other skills within the same category. When playing the Druid, for example, if you were to put skills into the Summoning category then it is better to focus on the wolves than the sages. Points put into summoning wolves give a bonus effect when you can start summoning dire wolves and then both of those skills give a bonus effect when you can start summoning a grizzly bear. Sage’s, however, do not have any bonus effects for each skill point. It is best to look at the skill tree for your character before you start filling skill slots and plan out what your end goal is going to be for that particular character.

The bright side to the stats and skill tree aspect of the game is that they added the option to reset this once per difficulty. I highly suggest waiting until characters are roughly level 35 minimal before hitting the reset. By the time a player reaches that level, they should have a fair idea of their class and skills giving them a better chance to optimize the route their skill points should be placed.

Other than stats and skills, a character is also greatly affected by the gear they have. Just as the game was back in the day, both maps and drops are completely randomized. Finding items is just as easy as finding the correct route in a new load up; it’s a luck-based guessing game. While you would think this could be annoying, it is a key element of the game. Plus, to really reach max levels, you will end up needing to do boss and cow level runs - meaning joining games made specifically to quickly find and kill a specific boss or clear the secret cow level before resetting and doing it over again. Having randomized drops gives a second purpose to these runs because you can also be looking for new gear.

I’ll end this with a quick guide for the gear and what players should be looking for in drops:

Gray gear is basic, blue has a magical upgrade, gold is a special item, green is a set-piece item, and brown is a legendary item. Brown and green pieces are great to collect and are useful when it comes to trading with other players. Gold items are best to compare to your current gear and sell if not worth switching to use. Back to focusing on set pieces, they may sometimes seem pretty weak or useless as a standalone item, but when you have multiple set pieces together or preferably the whole set, then there are sweet add-on bonuses that make the set really worthwhile.

Also, collect gems, skulls, and runes. These are socket items that can be put into gear to add a special effect to them. Using the Horadric Cube (obtained in Act II), you can start fusing them together to upgrade into a Perfect gem or skull. Every three gems collected can be upgraded to the next value level. This means three chipped emeralds make a flawed emerald, three flawed emeralds make an emerald, three emeralds make a flawless emerald, and three flawless emeralds make a perfect emerald. There are a lot more intricate combinations that can be found with the cube, so don’t hesitate to test or look up a detailed guide.

Visuals and Audio

Both aspects of this game have been upgraded in these aspects. But even better, you can switch back to the classic audio and visual style at the push of a button and at any moment in the game, even when zoomed in. So, whether you like the new visuals and audio or prefer the classic version, that is available to you.

I will say that I have been playing the game with the new graphics and in 99% of the game, the visual choice is so much better. There are little details in the original graphics that I have caught that I think were better, but I am still more prone to use the new graphics now.

Replayability

Of course this game is replayable! There are multiple classes to choose from, randomized gear to find, three different difficulty levels to climb through, and so much more. Sure, this game is very close to how the original version was, but even 20 years ago, Diablo II has always been one of the more replayable games in existence!

What Could Be Better

Now, this might be a bit nit-picky, but there are a few things that could have been changed for the better. For instance, if my belt is empty and I buy from a vendor, it will fill the belt first. But if my belt is empty and I use the quick pull from my chest option on a potion I had in there, it goes to my inventory - which also doesn’t have a quick pull button to move the potion to my belt. This means unless I am getting them off the ground or buying them, I have to manually drag potions over to fill my belt back up. This could easily have been made as simple as possible by making the belt the main priority for potions, regardless of where they are being pulled from.

The on-and-off server issues have been a bit of a nuisance and I hope they can get it cleared up completely soon. There are silly issues happening every day to many users and sometimes the entire lobby room shuts down all games for a few minutes. It’s an annoying interruption that really shouldn’t be happening, especially considering they didn’t even implement crossplay.

Conclusion

Diablo II Resurrected is a dream come true! All I’ve wanted for years now was a decent Diablo-based game that I can sink hours into and get the same rewarding feeling that the original gave me. Bringing this game back and reviving it with such great visuals and mostly clean gameplay is literally everything I could ask for. Sure, the servers are problematic right now, but once they clean that up the game will be pretty much flawless. I absolutely love the game and hope to see it stay active for years to come!