Techtite Game Reviews ---

Well, what can you say about the most anticipated game of the summer? No joke; to some avid gamers, this is more anticipated than any summer movie. Now that it's out, you can certainly see why: Diablo's former 2D world is 3D accelerated, and its single player story is at least four times larger! To make things even better, there are additional tweaks as well (regardless of a few additional gripes).

For one thing, the most important attribute of any action game --enemy AI-- is very impressive. Hordes of monsters don't merely attack one by one, and often attack all at once. This can be annoying when the swarm is being led by a "mini boss" character that needs extra effort to defeat. However, it can be fun to return to an area you were defeated, with a tougher weapon, and swat the army like flies. There's even Technicolor FX after defeating the bigger bosses (free a dungeon of its villainous master, and rays of light shine through the roof; cool!).

It's weaponry (and skills) where D2 shines. "Socketed" weapons and armor have holes for magic jewels you find along the way, allowing you to make your own magic items from scratch! A three-socketed sword can be enhanced with fire damage, lighting damage, and mana drain all at once, as long as you have the appropriate gems. If you only have one gem, just put it in the sword, and save the remaining sockets for later. Sure, you can only use a gem once; put it in a sword/helm/shield, and it's there to stay. Don't worry; you'll find more!

As for skills, the game offers a "skill tree." This is different for each character class, and branches out (quite literally) depending on your own skill choices in the game. Whenever your character goes up a level, they get 5 points to add to basic stats, and they get one additional point, for learning a new skill. Possible skills for an Amazon, for example, range from improving your javelin throw, making magic arrows, or even a few "passive" skills (better skills at dodging an attack, for example). There are way too many skills to learn in any one game, making replay value even better; it's inevitable that gamers will want to replay the game enough to get as many skills as they want to try out, leading to different game strategies and different possibilities each time you play.

It isn't being anti-diabloan, so to speak, to admit that the game series still has its flaws. For one, there's still one, single, stupid, solitary save game. On the one hand, you can create multiple characters, and keep those characters separately in the opening main menu. On the other hand, each character has only one save game...in a single-player story that's four times larger than the first game! To make matters worse, the saved game keeps no track of what enemies you defeated. This can be annoying, if you went halfway through the insufferably endless "marsh" of Act III, and have to start from scratch. This is even more disturbing, when this means you have to fight hundreds of the worst game characters of the game, all over again: tiny, annoying savages that resemble Ewoks with rabies. Sure, there are "warp points" that allow you to go to major game maps right away, though with revived enemies, this is a very small comfort. You'll have to defeat the enemies near the warp gate, no matter what.

As for the plotline, I'm getting a little tired of so many stories of the "firey red demon who must be defeated before Earth is doomed." Sure, it's amusing that Diablo now has two best buddies, each with a gem stuck in their head (no wonder they're so annoyed). It's also intriguing when you meet up with an archangel ally (shown here). However, originality is minimal within this story, as sad as it is to say. For that matter, the order of areas explored --Forest, Desert, Jungle, Shadowy Darkness-- seems slightly ripped off from Sierra's Quest for Glory saga. Add to that one of the stupidest open endings in open ending history (no joke; Doom's infamous bunny-on-a-stick ending was less "open"), and you wonder why so few Doom-storyline clones have happy endings. After all, if doomsday can't be averted, why am I playing the game at all???

This is far and away from saying that the game doesn't deserve a Deep Impact rating; it does. There's more weapons, skills, randomized dungeons, and areas to explore, to make the game last for quite some time on your hard drive. However, you have no idea how hard it was to not give a lower rating. If there is to be a Diablo 3 (and, after that so called "epilogue," there'd better be), there is room for a few more game engine tweaks. Until then, I suggest anyone who hasn't done so already (including Diablo 2's game designers) go out and buy last year's Diablo contender, Darkstone. That game had a far more intriguing storyline, a better ending, and more engrossing mini-quests. It also had a 360 degree camera, allowing you to change the view at any time, and even zoom in on the action; a feature that Diablo 2 sorely lacks. Such tweaks would make Diablo 3 much, much better...though it's a shame Diablo 2 didn't have those qualities already.

	Final Rating : Deep Impact. Just barely made it to this high rating; it has its share of flaws. However, it's more than worth the price, and has replay value galore! Action/RPG gamers will love it.
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Diablo II

A Techtite Review