A Demon From Hell (Diablo 2 (PC))

Member Name: Gannondorf

Product:	Diablo 2 (PC)
Date:	22/08/02 (249 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great Game, Very Interesting

Disadvantages: none

Introduction:
Diablo II is the most amazing role-play game on the market. It is the follow up to the first, Diablo, but I only own the second, Diablo II. I think the name is pretty boring, because the Blizzard team could of come up with something more interesting like, Diablo II: Diablo’s resurrection.

The Game:
The game takes place in different areas called Acts, these being: Act 1- Moors, Act 2- Desert, Act 3- Jungle and finally, the hardest, Act 4- Hell. After each Act there is a Boss, and I’ll tell you more about them later in the op. Each Act becomes more challenging as the monsters/creatures learn new, better and stronger spells. There are four difficulty levels to choose from, after you have completed the game in Normal mode. The difficulty settings are based on evil, being Normal, Nightmare, Hell and Hardcore. I advise you not to try Hardcore until you’re at least level 60, as you only have one life! However if you do try this, have the biggest belt you can find and fill it with super healing potions or full rejuvenation potions to restore mana as well (if you are a spell caster, e.g. Sorceress, Necromancer, or Paladin.) But before you can choose the difficulty, you must select a character class first. After each Act there is a boss, on the first it’s Andariel, which is a large naked woman who has tentacles on her back, which spit poison. The second it’s Duriel who is a huge maggot and is cold enchanted, and he moves at the speed of light! The third one’s name I’m not familiar with as I have not reached that level. The fourth boss is obviously Diablo!

Characters:
In Diablo II there are five character classes to choose from, each with different traits, abilities and skills, which means you can shape your character in any way, and choose what spells and skills they learn when you get to a certain level. All the characters are have set sexes, meaning they are either male or female. Here is
a brief summary of the five character classes. Before you can play the game you must type a character name, it might seem hard, just use your own even if it sounds a little weird, it doesn’t matter because no-one calls you by your name they call you by your class (e.g. Hi there lowly barbarian, I am not surprised to see many of your kind here, to challenge the evil, I guess?)

Sorceress:
The Sorceress is my all-time favourite even she is a woman (just kidding!) Although she is a weak fighter overall, she is a strong spell caster who has many abilities and destroy even the strongest of foes very quickly. Her spells can become very powerful very quickly; if you are fighting one do not underestimate her. The Sorceress is a very powerful fighter from a distance as her spells are based on the three elements, which are: fire, lightning and cold. After you have built up her levels she becomes virtually unstoppable and as long as you keep her away from strong melee attackers she won’t die!

Necromancer:
The Necromancer is one of my favourite characters because he has the ability to raise skeletons, skeleton mages and four types of golem; basically he is the king of the dead! If you don’t like fighting on your own then he is the character for you. Another thing I love about the Necromancer is his ability in poison and bone-type spells meaning that he learns to fire a bone missile at his enemies, which carries on going until it hits a stone pillar (it cuts through every living thing, even bosses.) I also love the way he can curse other groups of enemies and not just a single creature, my favourite curses are attract: it makes a monster fight for you, Life Tap: if you curse a creature with this and attack with melee combat you get half of damage back as health (say you cursed them then inflicted 40 damage you would receive 20 health.)

Barbarian:
If you like fighting up close and personal, well what are you waiting for, th
is is the guy for you! He is the only character who can wield two two-handed weapons in each hand or a two-handed weapon and a shield, it’s entirely up to you what he holds and wears. His ability to do this makes him unstoppable in hand-to-hand combat, which means you can use him in parties or groups as the front man to cause some bloodthirsty destruction! Not forgetting his incredible strength, he can wield almost every weapon in the game after you increase his strength by five each of the first three or four levels!

Paladin:
The Paladin is a man who has a heart of pure goodness and if you see one will most likely have a little light underneath him, this means he is protected by a special aura which he has learned to defend himself and his allies or to re-generate something faster, like health or mana. There isn’t much I can say about him, as I have never actually played as this character before.

Amazon:
In my opinion, this is by far the worst character to choose from. Anyway, she is good at long-range attacks meaning a bow and arrow or a crossbow and bolts. Her spells are based on bow & crossbow skills, javelin skills and ‘passive magic’ skills. When I say passive magic skills I mean skills that are active all the time, which you don’t have to activate using the left or right mouse buttons. One of the Amazons’ best skills is her ability to summon a powerful Valkrie warrior to help her. One of her best spells is to create a decoy, which is an identical copy of herself to distract her enemies, I can’t say much about it, as I have never seen it in action. An Amazon is usually a member of a group as she can create decoys and fire at enemies from long range.

Monsters/Creatures:
While playing the game you’ll come across these species of creatures some of these are:
Dark one
Dark shaman
Zombie
Skeleton
Ghost
Mummy
Yeti
Corrupted Rogues
Giant Spiders

Rock worm
Rock worm young
Spike Fiend
Scarab Demon
Blood Raven
Radament
The Summoner
The Countess.
Each of these creatures/monsters are there to hinder you and their aim is to kill you by any means possible. Some of them are easier than others to kill, as they move at different speeds and have different spells and strengths.

Conclusion:
There are countless ways to play the game and my advice is to play with all the characters and if you get stuck, you can play the one player mode across the internet and other people will help you as the multiplayer is the one player. You can help each other or go separate ways and if you bump into each other be friendly or nasty, it’s entirely up to you! Overall it is a very good game and can be bought at any computer game shop for about £20- £30. It is my favourite P.C game because the graphics are excellent, the sound effects are amazing, the difficulty and complexity are varied as there are different levels and I’ve defeated Duriel, Mephisto and Diablo, it took me about 2 months to kill Diablo as he has an unbeleiveable amount of health, because my strongest spell inflicted the tiniest amount of damage, but it was very satisfying when his soul emerged from his body and collapsed, bleedeing, staring, laying lifeless on the floor of huge domain!

Thanks for reading Alex

Summary: