Diablo II

Requires no explanation. Hello, Diablo. You're always welcome on my hard drive.

I'm just not a huge fan of the Diablo style games. They're great to kill a bit of time, but I always find them overly tedious after only a few hours. I'll put it down and not really be interested in picking it up again for days, or sometimes weeks, later. Not such a fantastic combination in a video game. Still, there is a lot going on in this game, and it has insane replay value just on the merit of trying new character combinations out.

Atmosphere was great, but the gameplay wasn't terribly exciting.

Oh my god it's 5am and I haven't talked to a person in weeks.

Limited a bit due to its age, but a great atmosphere and the remaster does really good work on the graphics.

A grindy hell that has led to more than one marital dissolution.

The actual gameplay still consists almost exclusively of killing monsters to gain treasure and experience points. Since your character constantly gains more and more formidable abilities and weaponry, that relatively simple style of play proves to be just as addictive as it was in the original Diablo and in other games that have since exploited the same formula. It's difficult to extract yourself from a game that always keeps you on the verge of being rewarded for another achievement.

/completed

Greatly expands the scope and complexity of the original but loses the tight dungeon crawling gameplay loop in the process. Way too many boring caves and forests in contrast to the Satanic theme of the original. Still eminently playable (the expansion being the best part) but for me a bloated step down from part 1.

This game was one of my first online gaming experiences. It was fun to grind online with my pals.

The atmosphere is great, and the cutscenes seemed spectacular when I was a kid. But the gameplay has absolutely no substance to it.

A much larger and more varied array of character types and abilities to choose from was definitely the sensible direction to take things for this series, since character building's where most of the fun and strategy lies. The more varied environments are also nice. Still, actually playing gets boring and repetitive pretty fast. And since this has more atmosphere than plot, I don't know if you're really missing much by bailing early after trying out a few characters, to be honest.

very great game

*click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click*

I remember nothing. Click, click, stab, stab, blood ... of my dearest God, where did all this blood come from? Why am I alone?

One of the games I pumped the most hours in. The first Diablo was kind of a revelation to me and this one expanded on it so much it blew my mind. I'm not much of a PC gamer but this one is amazing.

A hollow game carried almost entirely by atmosphere. Repetitive, repetitive, repetitive.

Exceptionally good fun.

I have a lot of nostalgia for this game but playing it today can be kind of a chore if you're going through it the first time. The gameplay can be pretty redundant depending on your class, and you'll have to spend a good many hours going through the game the first time before you can start cutting to the real meat of the game in nightmare mode, and even then that requires a lot of grinding to get through. Has really cool lore and atmosphere, and can be addicting, but it's a bit overrated.

Infinitely addictive and playable, however, it lacks any worthwhile storytelling or heart.

Oh my GOD! It's still the best action RPG out there. I must have played the first act 100 times and it still blows me away. Graphics be damned this is the most atmospheric and addictive game with the BEST soundtrack to ever have graced the PC. If they remastered this I'd think I'd died and gone to heaven.

D2 is a really great game but I didn't play it in 2000 so by the time I got to it there were some incredibly outdated features that took me out of it a bit. Even though I'm sure mods exist to modernize it in positive ways I was much too lazy. But I don't want to criticize it too much for design choices made back then so I will simply say that this is one of the best ARPGs of all-time and had I played it then I might feel that it's the best. Playing it now is wonky though.

I've spent my entire teenage playing this.