I am fully aware that this critical review is heavily influenced by my being spoiled by modern game mechanics and variety.
I never got around to playing Diablo 2 when I was younger and it still could at least be considered relatively modern. I remember briefly playing it at a friend's house and hating how you had to click everywhere to move. I grew up playing consoles so this seemed very cumbersome to me.
Anyway, I was very excited for Resurrected because Diablo 3 was a very fun co-op experience for my wife and me and now Diablo 2 is here with controller support. Let's goooo!
First issue: why did I have to buy two copies of this game to play it co-op? I don't believe that they couldn't have added local co-op if they wanted to. It's ok though because we got it when it was 50% off so we basically just paid full price for one copy. It all worked out.
But then we start playing and everything is just... blah. Act 1 is nothing but bland environments and getting swarmed by the same enemies over and over again with very little variance. The number of skills available to you is pretty lackluster and none of them are terribly exciting (for the two classes we chose at least). It's just a whole lot of "run forward and then stop and hold the A button".
The field areas are mostly just empty space and the dungeons are mostly just cluttered mazes. Some areas take upwards of 20 minutes to explore fully, and the fact that they are procedurally generated (and an always online connection while playing co-op) means that you can't stop to take a break when you need one unless you want to waste a bunch more time finding the dungeon that you needed to get to. There were multiple times that we were playing 30-60 minutes longer than we really wanted to because we had to get to the next waypoint or half of our current play session would have been wasted.
I like physical inventory systems, but since there is no way to expand your inventory, everything should have been smaller and you should have been able to rotate things like in Resident Evil 4. It's too easy to fill it up. What is the point of finding a crapload of loot if you don't want to pick up 90% of it because it'll just take up space?
Act 2 did at least make things a bit more exciting with the level and enemy design, but even that was just a step up.
We made it about halfway through Act 2 before we decided it wasn't worth our time. Couldn't imagine going through another 3 Acts of this monotonous gameplay. I definitely can understand that it was revolutionary when it came out, and I'm sad to say that I didn't enjoy it, especially after likely D3 so much. I'm still looking forward to D4 and will definitely get that one.
I never got around to playing Diablo 2 when I was younger and it still could at least be considered relatively modern. I remember briefly playing it at a friend's house and hating how you had to click everywhere to move. I grew up playing consoles so this seemed very cumbersome to me.
Anyway, I was very excited for Resurrected because Diablo 3 was a very fun co-op experience for my wife and me and now Diablo 2 is here with controller support. Let's goooo!
First issue: why did I have to buy two copies of this game to play it co-op? I don't believe that they couldn't have added local co-op if they wanted to. It's ok though because we got it when it was 50% off so we basically just paid full price for one copy. It all worked out.
But then we start playing and everything is just... blah. Act 1 is nothing but bland environments and getting swarmed by the same enemies over and over again with very little variance. The number of skills available to you is pretty lackluster and none of them are terribly exciting (for the two classes we chose at least). It's just a whole lot of "run forward and then stop and hold the A button".
The field areas are mostly just empty space and the dungeons are mostly just cluttered mazes. Some areas take upwards of 20 minutes to explore fully, and the fact that they are procedurally generated (and an always online connection while playing co-op) means that you can't stop to take a break when you need one unless you want to waste a bunch more time finding the dungeon that you needed to get to. There were multiple times that we were playing 30-60 minutes longer than we really wanted to because we had to get to the next waypoint or half of our current play session would have been wasted.
I like physical inventory systems, but since there is no way to expand your inventory, everything should have been smaller and you should have been able to rotate things like in Resident Evil 4. It's too easy to fill it up. What is the point of finding a crapload of loot if you don't want to pick up 90% of it because it'll just take up space?
Act 2 did at least make things a bit more exciting with the level and enemy design, but even that was just a step up.
We made it about halfway through Act 2 before we decided it wasn't worth our time. Couldn't imagine going through another 3 Acts of this monotonous gameplay. I definitely can understand that it was revolutionary when it came out, and I'm sad to say that I didn't enjoy it, especially after likely D3 so much. I'm still looking forward to D4 and will definitely get that one.