Post by Draxas on Oct 16, 2005 21:42:08 GMT -5
Welcome back readers. This week's column is also a bit of a confession. "What have you been wasting all your time on, Draxas?" you ask (I'm certain of this). Well, to my detriment, I'm ashamed to admit that it's:
Diablo 2 & Lord of Destruction for PC
Yes, the bug has bitten me again, and I'm back to playing this ridiculous dungeon crawler. And I can't stop. It's like a disease.
Actually, it has a lot to do with the fact that one of my friends picked it up also at the exact same time by coincidence, so we play online together. If the rest of you lot play on Battle.net by any chance (and aren't too ashamed to admit it), send me a whisper (the name's the same as the one here, for once) and we'll go questing or something.
Back to the review, anyway. But seriously, who HASN'T played this game by now? But for completion's sake:
Diablo 2 is the follow up to the game that essentially popularized the graphical dungeon crawl. It's pretty much exactly what you would expect from the genre. You spend 99% of your time running around and slaying hordes of monsters, mainly to gain experience and loot treasures from the corpses. It's levelling for levelling's sake in the purest sense; the 1% of the time you spend pretending to engage in RP elements with NPCs hardly qualifies (and your goals are never mysterious in the least), and if you try to RP with other players online, they're likely to just tell you to "stfu [CENSORED], i gonna trist run" or somesuch. So if mindlessly slaying the hordes doesn't appeal to you, then there isn't anything here for you.
However, if you know what to expect from the genre, then there's a lot to like in the package. With the LoD expansion installed, a quick trip to Battle.net will patch your game up to v1.11, which became a whole new animal after v1.10 was released. Most of the worst bugs have been fixed from earlier versions, and loads of new features have been implemented. This gives the system a remarkable amount of depth, while still allowing for a vast amount of diversity among characters; there is no "Ubercharacter" that is clearly the best, unlike many other entries in the genre.
There is also no character that can do everything. Each of the 7 classes has skills unique to itself. And while there are certain pieces of equipment that can grant you the abilities of another class, it's no substitute for knowing those skills naturally; v1.10 introduced skill synergies among skill trees, which allow certain skills to become more powerful when you allocate points to different skills that synergize with it. It may seem complex when I describe it, but it's very simple in practice.
The item system also has a great deal of depth to it, with equipment existing in various grades, hundreds of different enhancements that can be present in varying quantities, unique items that have abilities that can't be found elsewhere, socketed items that can be fitted with gems, jewels, or runes to enhance their abilites or totally alter them altogether. On top of that, there are mixing recipies for an item you get early in the game called the Horadric Cube; these can drastically alter the attributes of an item, or change it into something else entirely, depending on the recipe used... The list goes on, and the depth is impressive for what amounts to little more than a mindless hack & slash romp.
Of course, it takes a lot to get the game to truly end. Even once you've defeated the final boss, there are bonus missions that are unlocked that you can go back for. Once all of those are complete, you can move on to the next of the three difficulty levels, and do it all again. As if that wasn't enough, there were new secret missions and bosses added in v1.10 and 1.11... So if you haven't played in a while, there is new stuff to see, which is pretty remarkable considering that the expansion was released in 2001 and Blizzard has continued to release patches every so often that actually add new features to the game to this day.
Don't own the game? It should be easy enough to find now. I got the Diablo 2 battlechest (with Diablo 2, Lord of Destruction, and the original Diablo) as a gift for someone a few years back, and it was only $20 then. I'm fairly certain the price hasn't gone anywhere since then, but it may be a little more difficult to find. Still, your local Electronics Boutique or Gamestop (or maybe even Target, I think I saw a copy in the one near me just recently) is bound to have at least one. I wouldn't reccommend renting this one, though; the CD key system means that you're almost certainly going to be restricted to single player... And most places don't rent PC games anyway. Considering that it's free to play on Battle.net, you'd be missing out.
Diablo 2 & Lord of Destruction for PC
Yes, the bug has bitten me again, and I'm back to playing this ridiculous dungeon crawler. And I can't stop. It's like a disease.
Actually, it has a lot to do with the fact that one of my friends picked it up also at the exact same time by coincidence, so we play online together. If the rest of you lot play on Battle.net by any chance (and aren't too ashamed to admit it), send me a whisper (the name's the same as the one here, for once) and we'll go questing or something.
Back to the review, anyway. But seriously, who HASN'T played this game by now? But for completion's sake:
Diablo 2 is the follow up to the game that essentially popularized the graphical dungeon crawl. It's pretty much exactly what you would expect from the genre. You spend 99% of your time running around and slaying hordes of monsters, mainly to gain experience and loot treasures from the corpses. It's levelling for levelling's sake in the purest sense; the 1% of the time you spend pretending to engage in RP elements with NPCs hardly qualifies (and your goals are never mysterious in the least), and if you try to RP with other players online, they're likely to just tell you to "stfu [CENSORED], i gonna trist run" or somesuch. So if mindlessly slaying the hordes doesn't appeal to you, then there isn't anything here for you.
However, if you know what to expect from the genre, then there's a lot to like in the package. With the LoD expansion installed, a quick trip to Battle.net will patch your game up to v1.11, which became a whole new animal after v1.10 was released. Most of the worst bugs have been fixed from earlier versions, and loads of new features have been implemented. This gives the system a remarkable amount of depth, while still allowing for a vast amount of diversity among characters; there is no "Ubercharacter" that is clearly the best, unlike many other entries in the genre.
There is also no character that can do everything. Each of the 7 classes has skills unique to itself. And while there are certain pieces of equipment that can grant you the abilities of another class, it's no substitute for knowing those skills naturally; v1.10 introduced skill synergies among skill trees, which allow certain skills to become more powerful when you allocate points to different skills that synergize with it. It may seem complex when I describe it, but it's very simple in practice.
The item system also has a great deal of depth to it, with equipment existing in various grades, hundreds of different enhancements that can be present in varying quantities, unique items that have abilities that can't be found elsewhere, socketed items that can be fitted with gems, jewels, or runes to enhance their abilites or totally alter them altogether. On top of that, there are mixing recipies for an item you get early in the game called the Horadric Cube; these can drastically alter the attributes of an item, or change it into something else entirely, depending on the recipe used... The list goes on, and the depth is impressive for what amounts to little more than a mindless hack & slash romp.
Of course, it takes a lot to get the game to truly end. Even once you've defeated the final boss, there are bonus missions that are unlocked that you can go back for. Once all of those are complete, you can move on to the next of the three difficulty levels, and do it all again. As if that wasn't enough, there were new secret missions and bosses added in v1.10 and 1.11... So if you haven't played in a while, there is new stuff to see, which is pretty remarkable considering that the expansion was released in 2001 and Blizzard has continued to release patches every so often that actually add new features to the game to this day.
Don't own the game? It should be easy enough to find now. I got the Diablo 2 battlechest (with Diablo 2, Lord of Destruction, and the original Diablo) as a gift for someone a few years back, and it was only $20 then. I'm fairly certain the price hasn't gone anywhere since then, but it may be a little more difficult to find. Still, your local Electronics Boutique or Gamestop (or maybe even Target, I think I saw a copy in the one near me just recently) is bound to have at least one. I wouldn't reccommend renting this one, though; the CD key system means that you're almost certainly going to be restricted to single player... And most places don't rent PC games anyway. Considering that it's free to play on Battle.net, you'd be missing out.
