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Metascore

Generally favorable reviews - based on 34 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 534 Ratings

  • Summary: In Diablo II, return to a world of dark fantasy. As one of five distinct character types, explore the world of Diablo II -- journey across distant lands, fight new villains, discover new treasures, and uncover ancient mysteries, all in the quest to stop the Lord Of Terror, once and for all. [Blizzard Entertainment] Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 33 out of 34
  2. Negative: 0 out of 34
  1. Blizzard has scored again with an object lesson in polish, depth and sheer compelling playability.
  2. 100
    Anyone who ever considered an action/RPG should run straight to the store and sell their souls for Diablo II.
  3. 86
    Held back from being an EXCELLENT game by the fact that it features no really interesting characters or roleplaying, it only has a few simple quests, its story is paper thin, it has a few technical issues, Battle.net is unreliable, and the gameplay is ultimately shallow and repetitive.
  4. What Diablo II lacks in visuals, it makes up for in music, as the appropriately selected and highly engaging tunes never fail to live up to the moment and truly serve to immerse the player.

See all 34 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 80 out of 95
  2. Negative: 9 out of 95
  1. 10
    LOL, I'm reviewing a 11 year old game. Does that tell you how amazing it is? 11 years ago this very week my friends and I played this game nonstop for a week at my house. Ah, memories. Moving on, Diablo 2 is showing it's age now, with bad pathfinding, cramped spaces, and clunky menus. But even after 11 years Diablo 2 is as addictive as ever. At a recent LAN party we were deciding what to play, all the options with so many games coming out over the years. What did we decide on? Diablo 2. I believe this is the very definition of a timeless classic. Gaming's come a long ways with modern hits like Torchlight, but then again I always find myself coming back home. Ah, Diablo 2, I've missed you... Err, anyway, If you've never played it, be sure to download the Hi-Res mod first and go enjoy finding some chipped skulls! Expand
  2. SimonB.
    8
    No game deserves a 10. Some games deserve a 0 for blatant null everything. Diablo 2 is a successful game in many regions aside PVP. Actually going through the story shows the irony of "SINGLE PLAYER" as you are forced to fight on your own or with a companion ( many for Druids and Necros ) throughout the game. You then finish the game but... surprise! You are only level 25 , buddy. Start over again, finish Nightmare... surprise! You gotta do it all over again. Level 82, finish hell... surprise! You got nothing left to do. Well, yeah you do. You can still get to level 99 , do some PVP, make people bitch at you because you're a level 90+. This game is fun, don't get me wrong, but it gets a whole hell of a lot boring when all you can do is Baal Runs for hours in order to get the amount of XP you want in a record amount of time. PVP is the main reason I give this a 8. It's fun when you can beat people with all your mad equipment and +# skill levels stuff. But how annoying can it be when a sorceress can transform into a bear, do warcries and cast ravens at you and still kill you? Some of the runewords should have never been made available for other characters. Instead, you'd be better off allowing players to choose what synergy they want to have for their characters. This makes it so that in PVP, people without the RIGHT kit can't do crap against people that spent hours and hours just "running" to get the precious runes that give them the amazing items of "incessant pwnage". Breaks all the fun, to me. Makes the game far too individualistic for an RPG that is multi-player. Expand
  3. Positive points : * Decent story for a hacknslash game. Ok, it is simple and full of cliches, but the dark atmosphere is nice and it is so much better than the pure lack of story in many games of that time. * The skill trees system is just perfect. Simple but effective. (and it was later copied by half the game designers on the planet) * Hours and hours of pure fun. * Excellent cinematics for its time. * Highly addictive Negative points : * The randomness of the level design adds nothing to the game. It makes the maps seem blank, soulless and illogical without adding real replay value. * Unbalanced difficulty. Some tough fights among a lot of easy monster-bashing requiring no special skills. * Sometime, while playing, you suddenly realize how repetitive the action is. But it does not last long. * Highly addictive Total : Off course it has completely outdated graphics and purely repetitive gameplay, but it is terribly fun and enjoyable nonetheless. An old imperfect game really still worth playing. It defined the hacknslash category. It still does. Expand
  4. StevenH
    3
    The highly anticipated sequel to Blizzard's classic stand-around-the-corner-bonkfest, in many ways Diablo 2 improved on Diablo. You no longer move at an elderly pace, and some classes can even move across the screen within a second or two. Skill trees are fresh and offer new strategy and customization. Stacked belt slots create new and exciting potion mashing in a way that attempts to ameliorate the broken, simplistic gameplay like never before. Fortunately it's so easy to exploit design loopholes (even despite the horribly simple design) that the difficulty of the previous game is only a slight issue. Also new in this version is 640x480 resolution (gasp!) that really brings the visual acuity to a level never before seen, except perhaps 10 years prior and ever since. Basically the graphics are as awful as they could possibly be with the title still considered to be AAA. The expansion brings the resolution up to 800x600. A few months after that (in 2001), Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance came out, on a console no less, with graphics that are comparable to the now imminent Diablo 3 (estimated to be released in 2011 or 2012). You can see the trend here. But Blizzard does not focus on graphics! They focus on innovative new gameplay. There had never been a game with similar gameplay to Diablo 2 before... lol. By that I mean Blizzard is full of marketing geniuses that shove mediocre games down our throats until we reward them with billions of dollars. This concludes my review. Expand

See all 95 User Reviews