Diablo II remaster a middling dungeon-crawling experience

My first foray into the Diablo franchise was Diablo III, which I played years after its 2012 release and thoroughly enjoyed, much to my own surprise. Isometric action role-playing games had never been high on my list to play; it took until the phenomenal Hades for me to give the genre another look.

Diablo II: Resurrected has me regretting that decision.

It’s a little too kind to call Blizzard Entertainment and Blizzard Albany’s remaster an actual remaster. The original Diablo II came out in 2000 — and despite some minor changes (and some truly stunning cinematics), Resurrected feels like a 20-year-old game. It’s clunky and plodding, miserly so in some places, and bafflingly resistant to utilizing the same quality-of-life improvements that made D3 such a more enjoyable and addicting experience. You can say all you want that you want to stay faithful to the source material, and there’s value in that, but no one likes suffering through 20-year-old trappings. 

For better (sometimes) or worse (most of the time), little of the core game has changed in the two decades since its initial release: You get to pick from a suite of seven characters classes, ranging from paladin (my pick) to sorceress to barbarian. You’re tasked with surviving in a world soaked in blood and dense dialogue as angels and demons eternally clash. You loot — you loot everything in sight. 

Which, honestly, is both the game’s blessing and its curse. There’s a story involved in D2, but it’s so over-the-top and nonsensical that it doesn’t even matter. (The people of Sanctuary you talk to tend to drone on and story-dump anytime you talk to them, making it a less-than-appealing activity.) What draws you forward is the looting (and the combat inherent in getting better loot) because there’s nothing quite like getting a fantastic random loot drop. (Looking at you, gacha games.) 

D2 was sporadic in its granting of said fantastic loot, ebbing and flowing through the game’s five acts. (The original game had four acts with a fifth one released with the Lord of Destruction DLC; this time around, it’s all merged together.) You could go hours without picking up anything worth adding to your inventory (more on this later) and then get bombarded with high-level gears. It’s mostly just chance, so that tracks, but the droughts could be a bit frustrating. 

You know what’s more frustrating, though? D2’s inventory system. I felt I spent most of the game transporting loot and consumables back to the hub locations because your on-person inventory is not only capped — you can only increase the size of your potion belt — it’s absurdly, comically tiny. One floor of a dungeon could fill the inventory with potions alone, much less weapons or armor. So you constantly have to travel back to the hubs to either drop off wanted items in your permanent stash chest or sell off unwanted items to merchants for gold. It’s a never-ending, tedious loop, one that breaks the natural rhythm of the combat and looting. Nothing quite ruins the jubilation of seeing a unique weapon drop only to have to manage your inventory for five minutes before you can even pick it up.

When you aren’t playing Inventory Management 2021, combat and exploration will likely be your course of action. The maps are randomly generated, so you’ll be scouring large swaths of any given region to progress the story — kill this, find that. Along the way,  you’ll fight countless hordes of hell spawn (and humans). It’s mindless for the most part: You see monster, you attack monster, you gain experience, you level up, you get new skills, you rinse, you repeat. Your mana, the energy needed to use abilities or spells, is really the only thing you need to keep track of for most encounters. While it slowly recharges after you use it, you’ll likely burn through it quickly as you’re using abilities/spells; keeping a stock of mana-regenerating potions (but the inventory space!) or investing skill points to increase your mana pool are worthwhile investments.

And speaking of investments, Resurrected’s updated cinematics are breathtaking, and Blizzard deserves kudos for putting so much work into making those as dazzling as they are. The rest of the game, though, mostly looks like a 20-year-old game. It’s faithful to the original, sure, but I can’t say that’s a compliment in this case. 

In the end, unless you’re a diehard Diablo II fan, it’s hard to recommend Resurrected. A remaster of a 2000 game shouldn’t feel like a game that’s old enough to drink. Why Blizzard decided to do only the most superficial upgrades (cinematics aside) is beyond me, but it’s detrimental to Resurrected’s playability. I’m glad I got the chance to experience D2 before the release of Diablo IV, but it was rarely a truly enjoyable trek. The beleaguered folks of Sanctuary deserved better.

Two blood-soaked stars out of five.