I’m waiting for it to go on Game Pass, personally-- I don’t feel any compelling need to replay D2, even with better graphics.
I didn’t play it first time around, and I’ve been in the mood for some Diablo so I figured I play this instead of firing up D3 on the pc again.
I love Resurrected. I wasn’t sure how much I’d enjoy D2 gameplay again after all these years, and the answered turned out to be: a LOT!
I personally think they did a great job with the visuals too. I know they had to pick an art style since the original art couldn’t be just up-rezed, and some don’t like the style they chose, but with the better lighting and additional touches, I think it ended up looking excellent.
I really do need to get back to the game though. I haven’t played it since they went “past” the original Diablo 2. Meaning, I only played it back when they were trying to replicate the original. But since then they’ve gone past it and added more Rune Words, and done additional skills balancing etc. past where the original Blizzard team stopped.
I made myself laugh. So true.
I got this recently, too. Maybe shouldn’t have played it while I’m still playing Grim Dawn. The stiffer character movement/controls (on Xbox) and constant inventory fiddling are really trying my patience. I’m playing this for the first time so don’t have nostalgia to back it up with, though I did play the first Diablo back in the day.
I just got this as well. The core gameplay holds up surprisingly well and the controller support is rock solid. The inventory issues drag things down a bit though. I spent as much time teleporting back to town and clearing my bag out as I did fighting mobs. Still, I am really impressed with the game- especially the with skill synergies as you level up.
You don’t really need to haul the loot back to town. Just keep an identify book to check the rares you may need and throw the rest. The items that are worth hauling back to town are the ones that provide + to skills, even blue/white ones, and that only applies if you need money.
Now on sale for $13 directly from Blizzard. I finally picked it up.
That’s what it’s going for in the Xbox Christmas sale, presumably the same for Playstation. I’m sorely tempted to pick it up.
I recommend it. It looks very cool on the Series X. And it’s really fun to play with the controller, of course. The tetris inventory is a slight pain, but not much.
I recommend Hardcore characters to anyone who wants to play it for the long haul. Still the most fun way to play.
Hey! I got to Act 3!
I’ve never seen Act 5 before… i played a bunch of Diablo 2 at the time but i don’t believe i ever picked up the expansion. Oddly i picked up all the weird, off-brand expansions for Diablo 1.
This is a couple weeks old, but made some pretty significant changes to the offline (single player) experience:
Mainly, Terror Zones are now available to those who don’t want to play online. I didn’t mention them before since I hadn’t had much experience with them but they really change up how you go about farming for items and leveling your character. They also introduced Sundering Charms which allow you to basically play without worrying about immunes, but come with a significant penalty to a resistance based on the immunity broken (for example, the Fire Sunder charm gives you a -75% penalty to your fire resistance).
Here is Blizzard on Terror Zones:
The journey to level 99 is a celebrated experience for players and quite the milestone if achieved—a rite of passage, even. We want to offer an alternative to repeatedly farming Baal, Diablo, or Nihlathak. When playing a Terror Zone-enabled game, every hour, the armies of the Burning Hells will focus their demonic might on specific zones, terrorizing them. The monsters in these zones will be at least two levels higher than your current level or their original level, up to a maximum per difficulty. The experience received and the loot dropped by killing a terrorized monster will be based on this new level. In addition, terrorized monsters will also grant additional experience points.
You need to have killed Baal to unlock Terror Zones for each difficulty.
This is the bit on Sunder Charms:
You’ll notice a new keyword below called Sunder . This keyword means that if a monster has immunity to a specific damage type, their resistance will be reduced to 95% regardless of what their starting resistance percentage was—breaking their immunity and allowing damage of that type to be dealt to them. Sunder is applied before other resistance reducing modifiers and only affects non-players . These new unique charms will only drop from Terrorized monsters of Champion, Unique, Superunique, or Boss difficulty. There is one tradeoff the comes with the new Unique Grand Charms—while they reduce a monster’s resistance, they also reduce your resistance to the same element, allowing you to receive more damage of that type.
It is a bit unclear to me if they have changed up where Sunder Charms drop, as originally they were exclusive to Terror Zones but now I’m reading you can get them in the Chaos Sanctuary on Hell Difficulty (where you fight Diablo before going to Act 5). This would be really helpful because the place that always got me stuck was trying to do the Ancients before entering the Worldstone Keep, as they could spawn with some awful immunities (like having one be immune to both Cold and Fire).
The Terror Zone and Sunder Charm information comes from their 2.5 Patch notes, which are here:
All in all, I can really see myself getting a character up to 99 now. Its still a grind but now there is a great deal more variety available.
Hmmm… This is on sale for a mere $13.19 on the Xbox Store. I played the original over 20 years ago with mouse and keyboard. I’m assuming they did a good job adapting it to the controller, given the D3/D4 experience?
Should I buy this, as I loved D2 but barely remember it because it was half my life ago, or go back and finish Diablo III, which I think I only put 5 or 6 hours into when I got distracted by another shiny game?
D2R is an absolute blast to play with a controller and feels like the game you played 20 years ago without actually being that game, which was a bit clunkier and uglier. D3 on consoles is incredibly solid as well but I have a soft spot for D2’s classes, such as the Amazon and Druid.
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They have also changed some of the skills, for example a pet druid is now viable.
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Ha, those are two classes I played the least!
Sorceress, Barbarian, Necro, Paladin
Diablo 4 beta made us pick this up instead.
100%. The new graphics look how we thought the original did back in the day.
The controller support is kind of incredible, but it sucks for menu-ing. I hot swap when I go to town or have to level up or have to mess with my inventory which is kinda annoying because there is this weird pause whenever the UI switches.
That being said, being able to always access what is equivalent to “six right click skills” with a single tap of the gamepads face buttons instantly is so empowering. You can do all sorts of combat tricks effortlessly.
D2 with a controller is great. IMO D2 is now more than ever, just a much better game than D3.
Reading up on how to progress and best builds, it’s funny that the winning solution is always just make every build for every class like the Sorceress, or rather a more gear-independent spellcaster. Even the Barbarian via Warcry which is effectively a magic spell. Your weapon damage never matters, and the same rune words can be used for any class since we be turning all of them into mages!
I have mixed feelings about this. Like I want the Barbarian to be gear-dependent.