Back in the days of the new millennium, I spent a lot of time divided between two games: EverQuest, and Diablo II. When I wasn’t smashing skeletons and scorpions in Kunark’s Field of Bone, I was digging my way through the maggot caves looking for the Staff of Kings, one of the two pieces of the Horadric staff. I’d love to tell people how I was an avid isometric RPG fanboy who’d been playing them for years prior to this, but it wasn’t until one day when EverQuest’s servers were down for maintenance that a friend of mine turned me onto Diablo II (Later Diablo II: Resurrected).
Wistfully, I watched Baron Von Cartman whirlwind his way through hordes of enemy demons, and I felt myself wanting to do exactly that same thing for myself since it looked like so much fun. Prior to this, I was only ever interested in console RPG games with mostly turn-based combat. While he had also previously introduced me to click-to-move PC games such as Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and the original Diablo itself, none of them grabbed my interest the way Diablo II did. Because of this, I knew I had to play Diablo II: Resurrected.
Why Diablo II was Different
While Diablo had you diving down into a seemingly never-ending dungeon, Diablo II having new open-world over lands was really the biggest game-changer to Blizzard’s beloved dungeon crawler. Traveling through the rainy plains, the dank jails, the rigid sands of the desert, through that horrible awful swamp in Act III, and finally getting face to face with Diablo in Hell at the climax of Act IV is an adventure that was quite like no other back in 2000.
About a year later, Diablo II received a bit of a facelift and acquired the expansion Lord of Destruction which added the Assassin and Druid classes. Additionally, a new act to conquer a new demon overlord called Baal, more powerful than Diablo himself was added to the game. A few years later came Diablo III, which is a similar style dungeon crawler, but more like World of Warcraft than its predecessor ever was with the pre-determined skills earned automatically as you leveled up. This change turned many fans off and they just kept playing Diablo II: Lord of Destruction on the Battle.net servers even 20 years later. After years of clamoring for an update, Diablo II now re-appears in its final form: Remastered for a whole new generation. Welcome, Diablo II: Resurrected.
Jumping In
Upon loading up Diablo II: Resurrected, you’ll notice the old familiar Blizzard Entertainment loading screen, complete with the blue light breaking its way out of the word. All of the cutscenes were beautifully reanimated to look more modern. In fact, at a quick glance, you’ll barely even realize that this game is 20 years old. If you really want to see a mind trick, toggle the graphics back to classic mode and see just how much of an improvement the remastered graphics actually are. Hard to believe those fuzzy pixelated messes were once the pinnacle of impressive modeling.
One minor issue I have with Diablo II: Resurrected is the censorship changes that took place in order to make it more marketable in China. The Amazon now features a more masculine jawline and her gear now covers her ass instead of strutting around in a thong. I don’t have a problem with covering up her behind, but why’d they have to make her look more manly? I thought her character model was mostly fine originally, the same as I did for every other character as well. They also covered up the nude statues, removed the concubines, and covered up Blood Raven and Andariel to be less provocative. None of this stuff bothers me as I don’t care that much about nudity, but removing all of the pentagrams aside from the loading symbol just seems kind of silly.
Gameplay
Otherwise, the gameplay is almost exactly as you’d expect or remember it. You’re still gonna be playing inventory Tetris with your loot, but thankfully they kept the automatic Gold pick up from Diablo III in here which is nice, but I wish they had kept the dodge rolls or at least made you prioritize attacking instead of trying to pick up loot that you’re standing on mid-fight while you’re getting your teeth kicked in by an elite. The new spell effects look tremendous and really show just how possible it is to keep Diablo II looking timeless. While some effects look silly just as they did when the game was originally released, other effects like fire and lightning look terrific.
Negative Aspects
The biggest downside to Diablo II: Resurrected is the persistent online lag. Hardcore is mostly unplayable on the consoles unless you’re willing to eat a potion anytime you’re missing any health. I lost count of how many Paladins that I RIP-ed due to going from 40% hp to dead in one seemingly brutal swing due to lag causing me to actually have taken like four hits in the same amount of time. I had a considerably better time playing my hardcore characters offline, so I hope to see a change in latency online soon.
Right now, playing online is mostly a private affair as there aren’t a lot of people playing on consoles (most likely because of the lag issues) but hopefully, once the consoles get seasonal ladders, the multiplayer experience will drastically pick up. As I said, for now, it’s basically just grouping with any other friends who are playing or dropping your PSN/XBL tags on the Diablo II Subreddit and finding a game that way.
A Positive Overall Experience
Mediocre online experience aside, Diablo II: Resurrected seemingly accomplishes what it set out to do. It’s a terrific way to introduce one of the best video games ever made to a whole new generation of audiences. The music, the locations, the builds, the memories, they all came flooding back as I put more and more time into this game. It reminded me a lot of when times were simpler in life, for good or for bad, sitting on my friend’s floor plugging away trying to see if I could lag his computer out by summoning more skeleton minions than his computer could handle. Diablo II: Resurrected may not quite be exactly like the original, but it’s so damn close you’ll hardly notice the difference. It’s like a getting warm hug from an old friend you haven’t seen in a long long time.
Diablo II: Resurrected is available on Battle.net, PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch; it was played on the PlayStation 5. A copy of Diablo II: Resurrected was provided to us for review by Blizzard.
