Trading, forever trading (Diablo II Expansion Set - Lord of Destruction (PC))

Member Name: edinburgher

Product:	Diablo II Expansion Set - Lord of Destruction (PC)
Date:	04/01/09 (26 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Enjoyable, fast paced slash-em-up

Disadvantages: Trading can become far too involving!

Whatever you do, please don't play this brilliant game unless you have a modicum of self control! I lost 5-6 years' worth of evenings thanks to the simple, but well-crafted 'tasks' of:

a) Killing a lot of very nasty monsters
b) Collecting stuff for Internet bragging rights

This particular disc is a one act expansion to the original Diablo II, adding a challenge as well as some closure to the events of the original game. The heros must chase a series of diabolical foes across a richly rendered (but compact) world, completing a range of quests that boost their basic abilities and help to expand the storyline.

Players can choose from a range of six staple characters (assassin, barbarian, druid, necromancer, paladin, sorceress) to do battle against their many foes. They can join up online with up to seven friends (or complete strangers) to make things easier - although difficulty does scale up as the party size increases.

The five acts differ in size in both terms of physical size of the maps and the number of quests to be completed. For example the fourth act, while physically large, doesn't exactly have a lot to do in it. As a result, large chunks of gameplay are spent 'grinding' the same sets of high level monsters over and over again for extra experience and loot.

While the basic concept of essentially linear quests and killing the bosses is a familiar one, Blizzard managed another coup in games development by making it particularly easy to trade online with your peers, meaning that a rampant virtual economy of pixels shuttled back and forth around the globe.

Third party hacks, websites that sold items that didn't exist and trading communities with tens of thousands of members were spawned and many still exist.

The game is enjoyable in itself, but many of the 'builds' are very item-dependant (hence the focus on trading). Once you've mastered a few characters that can handle the game itself well (Player versus Machine/PvM), there is still fun to be had designing characters that can beat on your peers (Player versus Player/PvP).

Thankfully? Some of the trading communities are slowing down a little, in preparation for the release of the newest part of the saga - Diablo III.

Play if - you're a casual gamer looking for a good, intuitive game with an online community

Avoid if - like me, you're a bit obsessive with computer games ;-)

Summary: Good older RPG, with some cool features and an online community