Diablo II Resurrected - Review
Nostalgia is a powerful thing, when triggered activity starts ramping up in both of the areas of the brain associated with memory and reward. Sometimes though some things should be left in the past to live on as memories in our brain cavities rather than being revisited because some things just aren’t as good as we remembered them to be 20 years ago. We have all been a victim to nostalgia whether it be from going back to watch TV shows or playing video games that you remember being very good only to find out that they have aged terribly over the years because video game mechanics and budgets and production techniques for TV shows are a lot better these days than they were two decades ago. The year 2000 is one that is particularly steeped in nostalgia more than others for me, the world as a whole had just taken one big exhale as the ever-looming Y2K bug didn’t send society back into the dark ages, regardless of how much the media had spread doom and gloom proclaiming it would.
It is not because of this though that the year 2000 is especially nostalgic for me, back then there was a game called Everquest, one of the first ever MMOs to feature full 3D graphics, my favorite game of all time and it was during the early 2000s when I was fully immersed into its world of Norrath to an almost unhealthy like extent. It is a game and time I often sit and reminisce about even to the point of loading up the game again from time to time in order to try and recapture the magic of what made the game so special to me, unfortunately every time I do revisit Norrath though I am left feeling disappointed, video game have improved so much in the past twenty years that the game mechanics of Everquest feel positively antique and just outright cumbersome it’s hard to imagine that anybody ever sunk their time into playing the game in the first place, this just reaffirms my belief that most of the time nostalgia should just be a feeling that lives in our craniums and it shouldn’t be a cue to go back and revisit what triggered the feelings in the first place.
The year 2000 also saw another milestone in video game history, particularly on the 29th of June, the day the much hyped Diablo II was released. The second entry in Blizzard Entertainments’ series had a lot to live up to, given that the original Diablo (released back in 1997) was one of the highest selling PC games of the year and had critics heaping praise upon it, especially for its multi-player mode, in fact it is often said that the original Diablo gave birth to the ARPG genre as a whole, so as you can imagine these were big achievements to live up to and there were bucket loads of hype surrounding Diablo 2IIs release. Thankfully, the hype was justified and Diablo II was lauded by critics and to this day remains one of the highest played video games of all time, this game has fanatics that aren’t backwards in coming forwards when it comes to giving opinions on the game.
Diablo 2 really was the most quintessential ARPG, dungeon-crawling, hack and slash looter when it was released, many games over the years tried to imitate it and even though they expanded on some of Diablo IIs features they just never really captured the charm of the game they were trying to imitate. Diablo II saw people lose countless hours of sleep and live out their demon slaying fantasies by taking control of barbarians, necromancers and paladins and ridding the world of Sanctuary of its evil denizens. If you were into fantasy and gaming it is pretty much a safe bet that you would’ve purchase or at least played Diablo II at a friend’s house, back when it was released it was the new big thing on the block and if you weren’t playing it then you pretty much weren’t one of the cool crew.
This brings us to 2021 and the release of Diablo II: Resurrected, touted as a remaster of the original dungeon-crawling classic, but in my opinion, it comes off as more of a love letter to the original game. New develop Vicarious Visions have done their best to not alter too much here in this remaster, whether this stems from fear of backlash from the games fanatical supporters or more of a culture of keeping things simple we will never know, not upsetting the games major supporters is a wise move in my opinion. So what exactly is resurrected here then? The new version of the game brings with all new 3D graphics, cross progression between platforms, shared and expanded item stashes, all new totally remade cut scenes and improved Battlenet performance amongst several other features. Jumping into the game you are immediately hit with one of the all new remastered cut scenes and let me tell you the amount of time, effort and detail that has been put into these remastered scenes is nearly unbelievable, sure Blizzard has long been known as one of the masters of cut scenes but these are truly on another level. Apart from the cut scenes though stepping back into Diablo II feels like walking past the old house you grew up in, very familiar but alien at the same time, the reason for this is the many quality-of-life improvements on game mechanics that have occurred over the years since the original games release, especially when it comes to control schemes.
Playing Diablo II : Resurrected feels like a step back into the past in a good way except when it comes to how the game controls, point and click mechanics have become much less of a favourite control scheme of mine over the years, and it’s not just this the way you fire off abilities in DII:R feels positively archaic, especially with the amount of skills you have to juggle in the later parts of the game. I can understand why the developers didn’t want to alter the games original control scheme for fear of upsetting the games more hardcore fans, but it would not have been hard to add an optional mouse and keyboard control scheme that included a skill-bar ala World of Warcraft. The decision not to add this is even more puzzling when you plug in a control pad and the gameplay experience caters itself to your new choice of control method with an all new UI that is much more intuitive. It wasn’t until I swapped over to using a dual shock controller that I actually started having fun playing the game and I feel that the lack of an updated control layout for mouse and keyboard users is a huge oversight.
Control Issues aside, I did have fun steeping back into the world of Sanctuary, whilst the gameplay and character choices are much more simple than current ARPG powerhouse Path OF Exile there is no denying that Resurrected still has the power to draw me into its world. The point is though was this remaster needed? With the original game still much loved and heavily played on Battlenet is there enough here in this new iteration to bring in new players and make old time players switch over? At this price tag I would think not and this brings me back to the opening of this review and my points about nostalgia, sometimes things are better left as a memory in our heads rather than being revisited. Sure there is no denying that Vicarious Visions have done a great job with keeping it simple whilst also adding a lot of new features especially the gorgeous new 3D graphics however I just don’t think this remaster was needed especially when looking at the price point and lack of some QOL improvements with the game.
The Score
7.0
Review code provided by Blizzard
The Pros
+Amazing cut scenes and 3D graphics that remain faithful to the original
+Diablo IIs gameplay loop is timeless and rewarding
The Cons
-Positively archaic control scheme when it comes to mouse and keyboard
-Price point is very high considering the upgrades
-Nothing really here to bring in new players or motivate current players to move across
