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.

A tedious loot treadmill disguised as an RPG. The combat’s as deep as a puddle (click. Click. Click.), and the “endgame” is just running the same dungeons for slightly shinier numbers.

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.