There Is A Cow Level!
Diablo II was a game that I had heard many good things about, had the computer capacity to play, and somehow managed to never ever pick up a copy until the Lord of Destruction expansion was underway, at which time I finally got around to playing it and boy was I wowed from beginning to end.
Diablo II takes place several years after the original Diablo. The game is set in a sort of dark fantasy setting where all of the evil within the world is personified (and embodied within) three demonic entities: Ba'al, the lord of destruction, Mephisto, the lord of hatred, and the titular Diablo, the lord of destruction. Leading armies of demonic entities, the three demonic brothers are free to sack the various nations and kingdoms, leaving in only a few dim points of light throughout the world. Opposing these monstrous creatures are warriors of virtue who have heeded the call for a hero including the archangel Tyrael and the wise old sage Deckard Cain.
As the player, you can choose among a number of classes: The sorceress, amazon, necromancer, barbarian, and paladin in the original game and the druid and assassin in the expansion set. Each class has three branching tiers of unique, class-specific abilities keyed to it. These abilities include special attacking powers, personal and/or party enhancements (aka buffs) and mechanics-altering modifiers which can further enhance preexisting abilities. Most abilities cost mana to use, making resource and attribute management a vital part of the game. While each class features a specific attribute set from the beginning, each level allows the player to add points into the various attributes while allowing access to more and more powerful class powers. Equipment is a big part of Diablo II and, while maximizing your equipment is not vital in Normal difficulty, it most certainly is in the succeeding Hell and Nightmare difficulties, particularly with the updates that occurred at the same time as the expansion.
As the player navigates their character across the blighted landscapes ravaged by Diablo's forces, the player slowly pieces together the events leading up to the current cataclysm, retelling events through interactions with NPCs and taking brief, prerendered glimpses into the past through the story of an old drunkard driven mad by his journey into the depths of hell. Each locale that the player journeys to is infused with local color, from the lightly forested farmland of Act I all the way to the burning hellscape of Act IV. The scenery is evocative of each location, the melodic musical score compliments it well, and the subset of monsters is mostly unique to that area with few overlapping exceptions.
The single player alone is quite evocative and infused with enough variation and customization to create a breadth of satisfying replay with other classes and unique treasures to explore, but the game also features a vibrant multiplayer experience with monsters that become more challenging to compensate for additional players and allowing groups of different classes to unite on the battlefield and play their abilities off of one another.
Diablo II is one of my favorite games of all time--I keep coming back to it time and time again and I doubt that even the (eventual) release of Diablo III will supplant my ardor for this title. Truly an example of Blizzard's fine work over the years.
