It's becoming a running trend with Blizzard games and me that I think they have great stories and CG sequences but the gameplay just isn't that good. I'm there left wondering why sooo many people love Blizzard because a great story doesn't make a game and make it any less annoying to play. I dunno they're all dated games so I'll wait for SC2 and D3 to cast my judgement on Blizzard but so far i think they should make movies and not games. Now I'll be reviewing the expansion pack too in this review so I'll have two clone reviews going up on both pages.
So what I understand from Diablo is that Diablo broke from the SoulStone (or whatever it's called) and setup camp under the town of Tristram and made lots of minions and that to do whis dirty work for him until he gained his strength to set free his brothers of Hell... The 3 Prime Evils or Diablo, Baal and Mephisto. However the Warrior whose the protagonist of Diablo goes into Hell and puts Diablo back in the SoulStone and then shoves that into his head to try and contain Diablo..... I don't understand how you can stay alive with a big rock in your head and I don't know why you need to contain it in you but whatever lol.
Then in diablo 2 theres this guy named Marius who see's the wanderer in some bar and this crazy wanderer does all this crazy deamon shit and Marius feels like he needs to follow him.... which is stupid lol. The wanderer is the protagonist in the first game that shoves the rock into his head is struggling to contain Diablo and basically at this point Diablo has control of him and Marius follows him all the way east to some cave lol. There is one of Diablo's brothers trapped and guarded by the Archangel Tyrael who stops the Wanderer (controlled by diablo) from freeing the Prime Evil (his brother) however the dumb arse Marius decides he needs to free him for whatever reason. So the Archangel gives the soulstone to Marius and tells him to go to some fires of hell and destroy it.
The player is another character that you make and who wants to find the cause of all this demonic shite and sets to follow the destruction left by the Wanderer (Diablo) and then eventually meets up with them. He destroys the Soulstones of two prime evils... Diablo and Mephisto but theres still Baal whose carried by Marius that Tyrael told him to go into Hell and destroy it. However as you find out in the final cut scene that he fails to do so because he was too scared and ends up hiding. you then find out the guy he's talking to isn't Tyrael as Marius thinks and it's Baal. So Baal then kills Marius and takes his soulstone and then that makes way for the expansion.
As you can see the story is all there and is great, thought cheesy and didn't make sense in parts. Theres alot I've missed from the story but thats the main part and frigging I thought it was great. The only problem I had was all the great story parts were told by CG and while yeah thats great to watch it kinda makes the game abit pointless for me to play and I prefer my story told in game like a Half-Life or something. That said though the CG was fantastic for the day and still holds up, not in terms of graphics but in just the way it was delivered and styled. Such fantastic voice acting in the game too, though theres one thing that I hate and all Blizzard games do this is every time you click on someone, they always repeat the same thing over and over again.
Now my problem with Diablo 2's gameplay and the expansion is while they've made some improvements and uping the resolution (though not by much) it's basically the same as Diablo and I hated playing that game. The UI is still clunky and annoying to use and while the control is abit better I still find myself CLICK CLICK CLICKING everywhere and that makes combat clumsy and horrible to do. I would have much prefer WASD to move the numbers to set off spells and the mouse clicking to do your attacks, using the UI and clicking on people to talk like in WOW. That is a much more fun and better system to use than trying to get the mouse to do everything.
My other problems with Diablo are that it's just soo harsh in terms of finding where you have to go and learning what you need to do. This is probably because it's dated and I think Diablo 3 will make better use of a map and a quest journal but it still doesn't fix the fact that it's very easy to get lost in what you're doing. Also again to do with the clicking but I just found the gameplay on the whole to be very unfun and just annoying. I can honestly say I didn't enjoy anything to do with the gameplay and I even hated the character movement and the art style of the game. I really don't understand where the fans are saying that Diablo 3 looks worse when it looks tons better and in those comparison shots where thery took Diablo 3 and put one screenshot in the style of Diablo and one in the style of Diablo 3. I don't understand where they came to the conclusion that Diablo looked as kool as they made it out to look like because to me it's very bland and ugly.
I have to say though that Blizzard done a fantastic job with the story and the Sound in the game and I purely played Diablo 2 and LOD for the them reasons. I just can't give a high review to a game where I didn't enjoy the gameplay because I could have just watched the CG video and got the game outta it.
So yeah Diablo 2and LOD are frustrating experiences but if you're into story over gameplay and don't mind the dated graphics then give it a shot.
