About the Game

As in the original game, you are to pursue your nemesis, the Dark Wanderer, into and through hell. As you explore, you will discover the fate of the three Prime Evils (or devils/ demon-kings etc), namely: Diablo, Baal and Mephisto. The previous game’s monsters, heroes, various arts and mystic spells are all lovingly brought over from the original – brought over, enhanced and improved!

This is an epic story told in five spell-binding acts. There are several playable classes, each with their own benefits and skills and associated weaknesses and failings. Choose from: a cunning assassin; or be a master of traps, cunning and shadow disciplines; or a druid, a bold shapeshifter; a summoner who can control primal elemental magic. Other classes include Amazon, barbarian, necromancer, paladin, and sorceress – so you have plenty of scope to try them all out.

As well as the single player story campaign, there is support for eight players in co-operative play and multiplayer competitive play.

Need to Know

All the cut scenes are completely new, having been completely redone from the ground up. In a pleasing turn, there are togglable visual modes to make it easier for colour-blind and other partially visually impaired people to play and enjoy the game.

Perhaps the best improvement of all, is that you can load up your original Diablo II saves and continue in the game from where you were, enjoying the new graphics and smooth gameplay. However, you don’t have to keep to the new graphics though, you can access the original artwork in the new game’s menu – but you will be pleased to keep the other technical improvements as your gameplay glides so smoothly over your screen.

The developers say that the game is easier to play but emphasise that this does not mean it is an easier game. This seems like a contradiction, but it is not: you will earn every point and feel challenged. But you will be entirely without the frustrations that you might have experienced with the original as issues such as lag, finding information or resources and making tricky moves have been streamlined and made more intuitive.

What’s New and Improved?

Remember it’s not a remake but a remaster (the latter being so much more, according to the developers!) These are the main improvements to look out for:

• Lord of Destruction, the expansion pack is automatically included in the remastered game
• The graphics have been digitally remastered and made to support 4K graphics for a superb game playing experience
• The sound is vastly improved to 7.1 Dolby Surround Sound
• Small but hugely convenient changes have been made. For example, the tertiary mule needed for character to character swaps has been done away with and your team can now exchange items directly thanks to the shared item stash that you and your characters can all access
• Auto gold pickup can be toggled on or off
• The game now reminds players to pick up skill points and that they are irreversible once spent