Diablo II Resurrected is a remaster of Diablo II and it’s expansion Lord of Destruction. The story of Diablo II is that Diablo has returned, taken on the embodiment of the hero of the first game. A band of heroes come to the city encampment hearing of these stories of Diablos return, and as one of these heroes, it’s up to you to stop Diablo and reverse the destruction the demon lord has caused.
Lord of Destruction is the expansion of Diablo II and serves as a conclusion to the games story. In this fifth act, Diablo has been defeated but the heroes are sent to stop the corruption of a mythical stone that may once again throw the world into chaos and cause major destruction.
Diablo II Resurrected has you playing one of the seven character classes. You can play as a Druid, Sorceress, Paladin, Barbarian, Necromancer, Assassin, or an Amazon. The Druid class uses the forces of nature and is able to summon beasts to take down the hellish hordes. Sorceress uses magic which focuses on the three basic elements of fire, ice, and lightning. Paladin focuses on physical attacks with the benefit of them being blessed and holy. This gives a bonus when taking on undead foes.
The Barbarian has a mastery in all weapons and excels in close quartered combat. Necromancer class is the complete opposite of the Paladin, as this class is able to summon undead minions to fight of them and is able to use the dark arts against their demonic foes. Assassin class focuses on martial arts and can use hand to hand combat in place of swords, staffs, and bows. The last class is the Amazon class, which focuses on ranged combat with the use of large staffs and bows to take down enemies.
Once you select one of the classes, you are in the encampment where you hear the stories of Diablo and it’s minions. You take on quests from the people in the encampment and by completing quests you level up and use the skills earned to acquire new abilities and upgrade your stats. As you take on quests and defeat monsters, you can find gold and loot like weapons, armor, and other trinkets. These can be used to make you more powerful to get further in your quest to save the world, or sell them to make money to afford better weapons later on.
The game can be played either offline or online and you can choose to host a game or join a game either with friends or try to join a random game. The only downside to the online play is that there is no cross-play support, so you can only play with others that are playing on the same platform you are. This means that if you’re on Switch, you can only play with other Switch players.
Diablo II Resurrected is a remaster of an iconic PC game of the 90s. A hack and slash action RPG played in a some-what isometric view; it’s not the most graphically impressive game. But you aren’t playing this expecting to be blown away by it’s graphics. The reason you’re playing this game is either for nostalgia, just to play an amazing game, or a combination of the two.
With that said, the graphics are what you would expect from an old school PC game of it’s time. It’s a game that you really have to play to appreciate what it has to offer. Though the graphics aren’t spectacular, it does suffer from some performance issues.
As your traversing dungeons and in some cases the over-world, the game will slow down or seem to hiccup when there is a lot of enemies on the screen or a few enemies and lots of dynamic lighting in the area you’re in. It’s not game breaking, but it’s enough to be noticeable, given how fast paced this game is. I was rather surprised by the performance issues I experience both playing in Docked Mode and handheld on Switch. This tells me that the game wasn’t as optimized as it really should have been, especially for a game of this age. I get that it’s a remaster, but it still should have been better optimized. I can’t speak for those that play on other platforms, but I wouldn’t think they would experience these kinds of issues with performance.
Sound in Diablo II Resurrected is pretty good, much better in the audio department than the graphics department. The music in the game sounds crisp, clean, and just fits the vibe of the game in every aspect. The clang of weapons, sizzle of fireballs, sounds of enemies as they scream and get taken down, all sound very clear and are rather enjoyable, even if a bit repetitive. Being a game from the 90s I came into this game expecting that, and am in some ways glad it didn’t disappoint.
Diablo II Resurrected was a surprise on Switch. I really didn’t know how the game was going to translate from Mouse and Keyboard to a traditional controller layout. But the game works really well with standard controller input. The only issues I found with the game outside of performance issues due to poor optimization was the fact that you have to connect to Battle.net when you first boot up the game. The process with this is one that I found quite cumbersome as it wasn’t as intuitive as it would have been on a computer. But once you get past the initial login, and forgive it’s performance hiccups, it is really a rather enjoyable experience.
The argument can be made that Diablo was ported to the original Playstation, so why didn’t we get this game a lot sooner? Well the issue with Diablo was that things were cut from the game and it wasn’t as good of an experience as it was on PC. Well with Diablo II Resurrected, it’s not only a remaster, but had nothing cut from it. This is the full PC game experience on a console and it’s both impressive and really fun to play.
If you’re looking for a reason to revisit this iconic game or just looking for something really fun to play, Diablo II Resurrected is a game I would really recommend picking up!
Disclaimer: A review key was provided
In addition to writing articles, Ryan Byers also creates content for his YouTube channel called "Obscure Games and Consoles", collects video games, and dabbles in video game development.