Gameplay

K.I.S.S.

The core behind Diablo's addictiveness - its simple gameplay - remains in Diablo 2 with a few notable enhancements. First off, you don't have to keep clicking constantly to move and attack with your character. In that sense, Diablo 2 is less of a clickfest, but Diablo 1's harshest critics aren't going to be converted to fans all of a sudden - it just means that you can hold down the button to move and attack instead of clickclickclickclick. Hopefully this means that we will no longer wear down mice playing this game. The memory of buying 2 button Logitech first mice in bulk at $5 a pop is still fresh in our minds; I personally broke 3 mice playing Diablo 1.

Time to git some skillz

I think more strength is in order

As it turns out, bad habits are hard to break. James and I had most of the office well aware of what we were doing today with our constant clicking. I think I'd better grab a junky mouse off the shelf for this game lest I break my Quake mouse playing the D2 beta.

Branching Special Abilities

Diablo 2's branching tree of special abilities will be the main reason that people would play the game over and over (aside from the 5 classes). Even within a single character class, there are so many different choices you could make as you level up. Should you pick a couple of favorite abilities and add levels to those abilities to make them more powerful? Or should you use the "buffet table" method of choosing skills - taste a little of everything and be more versatile. James is a brute force kind of person so he chose to level up his might ability on his Paladin almost exclusively. In contrast, I wanted to try out a few different things with my Necromancer, so thus far, I've got a couple of different abilities, including raise skeleton, raise golem, teeth (like magic missiles), and an area effect spell that improves your damage rates on targeted monsters.

You need keys to open those

The map overlay comes in handy

Between the 5 different character classes, and the branching system of special abilities, Diablo 2 has more than its share of replay value built right in.

Less gold

One of the odd things we noticed is that there's a lot less gold in Diablo 2. Almost every monster in Diablo 1 gave up some gold upon dying but that's not the case in Diablo 2. About half the time they give up nothing, and most of the other half of the time, they coughed up a broken weapon or a common piece of armor. At least in the opening of the game, James and I found ourselves unable to stock up on as many health potions as we would have liked before setting out to fight. It was also tough scraping up enough cash to identify the magic items we found on our trips out. Eventually we got a decent revenue stream going by pawning off unwanted items but the amount of raw gold you find on your trips out seems to be much less than you might be used to from D1. Blizzard might have made up for the lack of gold by including more "named" monster heroes in Diablo 2. We found quite a few of these special monsters in just a couple hours of gameplay. They always give up a magical item, so in a way it replaces the lack of gold.

A patch already?

Looks like a job for HolyBoy!

Mercenaries/Entourages

Another thing that's new about Diablo 2 is the ability to hire mercenaries. After completing a couple of quests, we returned back to the Rogue's Caravan where they were happy enough to supply both myself and James with a Rogue for a companion (a battle companion you perv). An unfortunate cave incident resulted in James losing his battle partner but mine survived. Combined with my level 3 call skeleton ability I had a full entourage of partners to fight my battles for me! Ah the advantages to being a Necromancer. Upon returning to the Rogue's caravan we found it was possible to hire replacement mercenaries, each with their own special abilities (cold arrows, fire arrows, etc.)