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bt455's Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction (PC)
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| [February 28, 2013 01:41:41 PM]
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Diablo II, with an expansion pack named Lord of Destruction is an action role-playing hack and slash video game developed by Blizzard. The game was first released on 2000, and one year later, the expansion pack LoD came out with a lot of new features and improvements, making it one of the best games to play ever.
=Storyline= (as I played the game a long time ago, I might not be able to point out every single details or telling the proper story, but I will try to describe it).
The game has a dark, horror theme with violent actions (including blood). At the beginning, the game's story is divided into 4 Acts with 4 different locations. Act I you began in Rogue Encampment, a camp near the forest of Tristram. Act II is the desert of Lut Gholein, Act III is the fallen kingdom Kurast, Act IV is Hell. After the expansion, the game is added one more act located on Mount Arreat in the northern Barbarian Highlands. In each act, you have a set of quests that you need to do as the story proceed. There are some quests that are optional, however, you always have to complete the last quest, which is killing the Boss of that Act, in order to proceed to the next Act. The game is very linear, as you play the game, the things you do are pretty much predetermined, however, there are still some random generated dungeons or areas where you can spend time discovering and killing everything inside, just for fun, or for the sake of looting and leveling. The game has 3 difficulties that is unlocked after you finish the previous one (Normal, Nightmare, Hell).
=Characters=
The game initially has 5 different characters, with different skill set and equipment. These include Amazon, Paladin, Barbarian, Necromancer and Sorceress. Later, they added 2 more characters, Assassin and Druid, making the game even more fun to play. As mentioned above, the character that you choose has an unique skill set and their stat attributes that can be increased when leveling up (you get 1 skill point and 5 attribute points to spend each time you level up). Based on your play style, and your strategy, you can decide to build your characters in different way and find different skill combos to fight. However, if you play long enough and get to high level with tough enemies, you will know that there are only some ways you can build one character, because not all skill are that great versus enemies. Your stats, besides providing more strength, speed and health or mana in combat, can be used to meet the requirement to equip some armors or weapons, so be careful and build it accordingly. Last but not least, besides your main character, you can hire a follower to support you during the game, and you can also equip items for him/her.
=Items=
It is undeniable that items play a very important role in the game. Each character has a number of slots that can be filled with armors, weapons and accessories. Items that you equip can aid your character in various way: increase attack, defense, speed, attribute points, skill points and special abilities. As you proceed to higher difficulty, the enemies are stronger but also have higher chance to drop rare items. Item names have different colors indicated the rareness of it, and of course the rarer it is the stronger it is likely to be. First you start with mainly white item, which is item with no bonus stat. Then, the blue items with only a few lines of bonus. The rare items (yellow) will bonus even more (up to 6 lines). Set items (green) can be specialized for certain character (for example, set items for Paladin cannot be equipped on Amazon) and if you have the whole set, then they can bonus you with special stats and abilities that are unlocked when you equip the whole set. Legendary items (dark yellow), are of course the rarest and most powerful items in the game, with a strong stats and a lot of bonus lines. However, sometimes having the whole item set makes you stronger that having only legendary items.
=Gameplay=
As mentioned above, the game is action hack and slash type of game, so pretty much what you do in the game is smash the mouse and skill buttons. Mainly, you can choose 2 skills on the two slot that can be triggered with your mouse. Does that mean you can only use 2 skills at one time? Well not exactly, since you can switch very fast between skills by setting up the hotkey. So that means when using only left mouse and right mouse to use your skill, you can use your hotkey to switch between different skills very fast, making it pretty easy to use as many skills as you want. During combat, if sometimes you are hurt pretty bad, you can use potion to regenerate your health and mana. The potions are placed in your belt, so the type of belt you use allow you to equip a certain number of potions. However, you can always open the inventory and right click the potion to heal, it works just fine, but only less convenient.
After killing single enemy on the map, what do you do? You loot. As simple as that, but looting is the most fun and enjoyable part of the game. You pick up items on the ground, see which item is strong to equip, and which item is valuable to sell in shop. Some items are not yet identified (which means you cannot read the "value" of that item yet), and you have to use the red scroll to "read" it. The game makes you only be able to carry a limit amount of items, so you have to go back and sell it, or just drop it on the way.
=Enemies=
In each Acts, there are certain types of enemies, mini bosses and one final boss. The enemies initially are weak, and not aggressive. They only hit you if you attack them first, which is nice. And then they become tougher and tougher, with special abilities (deal lightning when being hit, freeze you when attacking, or explode when they die), but you can read the tiny description that is located below their name and health, to know what ability they have, in order to have proper strategy against them. Besides the Mini Bosses and Final Bosses that always appear in some certain area, there are elite packs and mobs that can be very powerful that are randomly generated. Killing these enemies can drop a lot of rare items, so finding and killing them is very fun.
=Overall=
This is the first game that I have ever played on my very first computer (I did not own any consoles until college, so my life sucks) and it is indeed one of the best games ever. With fast paced actions, easy control and the glory of looting makes it still enjoyable after you clear the map hundreds of time. It is too good that it makes Diablo 3 quite failed the expectation that huge fans like me had hoped for.
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bt455's Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction (PC)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Sunday 24 February, 2013
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