REVIEW : Diablo II: Resurrected (XBOX Series X)
The 2000 classic, not as it was back then, but as you remember it.
When talking about the remastering of a classic, the most exciting aspect is: how much have the graphics improved? Does it respect the essence of the original title? Have there been changes beyond the visuals?
Let’s go by parts. First of all, as some of you will already imagine after seeing images and trailers, the technical section of Diablo II Resurrected has been completely rebuilt from scratch. Gone are the pre-rendered scenarios of the original title and the sprites drawn to model characters and monsters. Vicarious Visions has created 3D models for the entire title, accompanied in turn by new effects and a dynamic lighting engine, capable of realistically lighting and darkening the scenarios through the sun, spells, and any other type of source. Of light.
All this recreation of the game’s art has been made with absolute respect and an exquisite taste for the original material. Many people have tried Diablo II Resurrected and have affirmed that the title looks exactly as they remember it, 11 years later, only to see later how wrong they were after trying the legacy mode, which allows you to switch between classic and modern graphics instantly, similar to how you can do in Halo: The Master Chief Collection. Memory can play tricks on us, especially when it comes to Vicarious Visions, who have also done incredibly faithful remasters for classics like the original Crash Bandicoot trilogy and Tony Hawk 1 and 2.
As for the gameplay, Vicarious Visions wanted to change as little as possible, so everything that makes Diablo 2 feel like Diablo 2 is still there intact. The engine of the original title continues to work after the new graphics layer, doing all the calculations and all the work in this regard, so it is pretty challenging to achieve a higher fidelity level than this.
The few aspects that the developers have decided to modify are, in our opinion, very successful changes. One of the most notable is an increase in stash space. Now we will have 4 space tabs, 3 of which will be shared among all the characters that we have in our account. This aspect will significantly facilitate the storage of objects and the transfer of them between the characters, putting aside the tedium that exchanging objects between them could involve in the past.
An option has also been added (that most purists can deactivate if they wish) to collect the gold that monsters drop automatically, simply by hovering over it. Again, this is an option that is difficult to complain about, as it simply makes the gameplay more comfortable.
At more advanced levels, how the secret level of cows works has been changed, probably the minor secret and most popular secret level in the history of video games, which had a somewhat annoying mechanic that could make it impossible to reaccess it if we weren’t careful enough or if we were playing online with someone we weren’t supposed to, which could get to annoy us the whole character since many builds depend on accessing the level. It will no longer be possible for that to happen. In addition, all the runewords that were exclusive to the ranked mode have become available in the rest of the game modes, a change that the community has requested for years.
Yes, we have been more worrying about the claims of various users of having found new bugs in this remastering that were not present in the original title, such as some who claim to have had crashed, to have suffered minimaps that get “stuck” and are not updated as it is due to or having lost characters. Personally, and without seeking to invalidate the experiences of those users, our experience with Diablo II Resurrected has been almost entirely free of crashes and bugs. The only bug that we have experienced “regularly” is that of some doors that are shown closed even though they are open when playing online. The error has been chiefly a nuisance since those doors could still be traversed with it.
The lord of destruction rises.
One of the significant differences of Diablo II compared to other similar action RPGs lies in the importance of choosing the right build for each character. While for example, in Diablo 3, we can change these skills on the fly, as we want and without any penalty; in Diablo II, we will be very limited in this aspect, so that we can only restart our skill branches 3 times per character, once at the start of each of your 3 different difficulties. This decision adds a greater depth to each class, so it will not be strange to want to have, for example, two different sorceresses, each with their different branch of skills.
Diablo II does not give away its valuables; most of them are very hard to come by. However, it offers enough alternatives to make significant progress in our characters if you work on it. An example of this is runewords, which we can imbue in everyday objects with holes to give them beneficial magical powers. But for this, we must first farm to get the necessary runes and objects with the exact holes.
We will have at our disposal 12 quick shortcuts to the skills we want, which should be more than enough for each character’s build. We will have 6 shortcuts using A, X, Y, B, RB and RT, and another 6 on the same buttons if we press LT simultaneously. At the moment of truth, we have found that this arrangement makes us more comfortable than the existing one for keyboard and mouse, which entails choosing a shortcut between several keys and then press the right click of the mouse. We also liked having a button that automatically orders our inventory and the tabs of our stash, which is not available with keyboard and mouse and saves us the work of ordering our endless items by ourselves.
Diablo II Resurrected Review – Conclusions
Diablo II Resurrected manages to breathe new life into this classic from 2000 with a renewed graphic layer of the highest quality and some tweaks to elements that make it more comfortable to play but not modify its essence. And most importantly, its excellent arrival on consoles has made the title more accessible than ever. Vicarious Visions have proven that they are one of the best studios for remastering these classics, and we hope they manage to stay out of the spiral of terror currently ravaging Activision Blizzard.
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