Great review! I think PvP has to be weighted against what's out there. i.e. - PoE, D4, etc. In PoE, PvP is very limited and same could be said for D4. In D2R, your ability to PK other players is ALWAYS there, regardless of GM or not. That is missing from so many ARPGs these days, imo. Also to note: D2R def made Vamp Gaze look way worse lol
Hey Cooley try playing this on PSN let alone Xbox or switch. Then I want you and llama to redo these rankings and your thoughts on the game. Clearly this is a PC only review/ranking but. Hey you want a real challenge? Get on the consoles bud.
@@meliodasgakill4282this game was made for and played on exclusively PCs for over 20 years, the console experience is the last thing on anyones mind. Might as well yell at Mario speed runners for not using an Xbox controllers it’s just nonsense.
PVP in D2 is really good and the one thing i really disagree with mrlama in the ratings. It is more like 8-9. PVP is for some the end game of d2, or I go go as far as saying it is THE game of d2.
overall rating feels very accurate. Your biggest areas of improvement tend to be D2’s infrastructure to facilitate ease of trade, community, communication, party play, and access to in-game systems . I’d love an in-game wiki where you could look up runewords, breakpoints, all uniques, drop rates, and more. Or an in-game trading hub like Traderie. Or a filter in the lobby so I can look for just baal runs, or TZ games. Despite the absence of these features, the game remains excellent for the reasons you touched on.
About Baal and Tz Games you can now write it out and only look for these games only?This been in like 2 ladders ago if not more or did you mean specific filters?
@@Amanik_Capoli By legendary do you mean unique items?Yes i agree if they upgrade/rework some of the more rare/cool uniques you could see a shift of meta and economy and bit and it will rejuvenate the game abit. But i also agree a Loot filter,better lobby and QoL like stacking Gems,Runes will improve the game alot.
so much nostalgia, my first game was Diablo, and i was running it on a 166mhz which was pretty fast for the time so the characters ran faster than normal lol
Over the last year Grim Dawn has taken over for me. It has much better build variety and the theory crafting is through the roof. You constantly pick up weapons and start making a new character in your head before actually making them. Very cool game that deserves more attention.
@@nomercy8989 that's me ATM with grim dawn 😆 I literally did a 7 hour straight session tonight. Or until my eyes were burning out of my skull lmao game is actually amazing. I'm playing a necromancer/shaman build. So much variety it's crazy
Grim Dawn is top dog for me. I haven't tried Last Epoch yet, (I will when it comes out with the full release), but I find myself returning to Grim Dawn more than D2 these days.
diablo 2 and d2r is by one of the best action rpg ever i remember back in high school grabbing the instruction manual for d2 me and a bunch of mates would read it and discuss what builds and skill points we would put in etc those were the days mind you we are talking about the year 2000 i would of been like 12 had my first pc and the two games i had or played was diablo 2 and baldurs gate
You should totally do this for pd2 as well since it’s an awesome overhaul and I want to see your insight on how some of the lower scores from d2 r compare in terms of how pd2 addresses some of d2rs issues.
Diablo 2's music is good enough to listen to just on its own; it's more like a concept album themed around travelling through the wilderness than it's like a soundtrack to a game. I actually have bits of it on my general listening playlists, and people don't even notice the difference. Which is a lot more than I can say for some of the other game soundtracks I've had on there. Star Control 2 also had some great music, but when you've got your phone hooked up to a speaker and it starts up with something like the Orz or Spathi theme - people notice.
Still love D2 after 20+ years, i totally agree about a huge party! What you did not really speak about is how well party play works, with all the buffs available (auras, war cries, curses, enchant, druid spirits, BoS/fade), and NOT having absurd mechanics that give you more speed when fighting like in D3.
I think the rating is very fair. D2's strength is that there are so many modes within the same game. So SC, HC, Ladder, Non Ladder, SP. There is really something for everyone!
love this llama guy! A few things that I think should be rated a little differently IMO -PvP honestly sucks for this game by today's standards. Even back in the day it was just okay. WoW came out only 3 years after LOD and I while I know it's a different game... that had incredible pvp. I would give a 3.5 -Social I think I would lower the score even further because of how dismal the chat/friend and lack of social pane is. I basically have to go back to BNet launcher to chat with someone if I am friends with them. If you haven't played this game in a while, coming back to figure out how to whisper, add friends, etc. is damn near impossible now. 5/10 -Overall I think Llama brings up some great points that really highlight how great this game is. The Ease of Access is solid but the depth of this game is truly incredible. -I think should have had a rating for Support or Updates because that is something that is a bit lacking, even though we all know this is a 20+ year old game.
Classic WoWs pvp is literally the most “unbalanced” PvP in WoWs history lmao there weren’t even PvP ranks at the beginning and even longer after that before the first BG was released. Huge Open world pvp battles were awesome but that was literally the only thing about classic WoW pvp that was fun. PvP was a literal afterthought for blizzard during classic and will always be the secondary “game mode”
How about recepie scrolls (runewords, crafting,...) that would randomly drop as loot and when read would be added to some kind of a book of recepies which would be shared account wide.
Great review! I honestly thought you were way too generous with your D4 review, but your D2R review I think was spot on. There is a lot that can be improved such as stash space, etc., but overall it is a fun and enjoyable game.
2:40 I prefer the classic campaign more, I always felt like the last act was out of place and killing Diablo should be the end. However the expansion added the druid which is probably my second favourite character after the Barb. I remember being a little kid seeing the expansion in a bin at Walmart and begging my parents to get the expansion.
Idk if i can agree with the ratings on builds and spells. Half the spells/abilities are almost useless and just used for synergies, 1 pointers to get to other spells, or ignored completely. You can certainly force some builds with the right gear and knowledge. But if you’re new to the game you Have to look up a build online or you may not even get through nightmare let alone hell. That being said i respect your opinion and the review was great and very detailed. I love and appreciate your content and i hope you keep it coming for years to come!
That's a good point. The game lets you put 20 points into all of the skills but some are absolutely a waste if you ever do that, like the druid's poison creeper or most of the necro's curses. And can you imagine putting 20 points into the barb's increased stamina skill?
DevilutionX handles auto-refilling of the belt for potions a bit better and the bottom row is also preferred when filling up the inventory with 1 slot items
Would love to see you try Diablo 2 Resurrected Reimagined and review it. I haven't have as much fun playing D2 in what feels forever as now since I started with that mod!
Honestly the story of d2 is really good. If you actually talk to all NPCS and listen to them talk and dont skip the Dialogue. I just found out the reason for collecting khalims body parts is because the zakarum tore him apart and stashed them everywhere
It is, it's just that people these days are use to playing interactive cut scenes. Diablo 1-2 is one of the few arpg that actually gave me sense of urgency and importance and understanding why main villain is major threat. You get how powerful Diablo is, who Mephisto is, who Dark Wanderer is and why it's important to stop him and why you chase him, etc. In lot of other arpg they kinda skip on this or it's not really explained, for example I had no idea who the bad guy was in Torchlight or why it's important I stop him. heck, even Titan's Quest is like this, yeah you chase some monsters because of this and that, then Typhoon kinda just shows up and you fight him and Zeus congratulates you on being good boy.
I don't know about expert. I tend to have expertise from setting up and running d&d all my life. The design of D2 has huge glaring flaws that devs must have overlooked after D1. The system of D1 and many games up to now are based on D&D stat distribution. D1 opted for a simplified version. Carried over into D2. However much better implemented in D1. Because of how D2 implemented casting for each class. For example, as a Warrior in D1, your prime requisites are strength and vitality. With dexterity secondary. So you start off by boarding dex to get decent hits. A bit of energy for mana. Then life and lots of strength. Yet the system got completely screwy in D2 because of how it implemented casting abilities on all classes. So everybody's prime requisite is vitality. Because ability scores just become meaningless aside from the importance of increasing hp as you level up. Including energy meaningless. Because you just need a sufficient amount as a baseline. They guzzle potions for mana. D2 is a really fun game despite being one of the most screwed up implementation of ability scores in the history of games. And an example of how 'professional' aaa games can screw up these types of point distribution and level progression design. Even up to modern games. It should never be like this and not the intention of devs. Something like vitality is meant to be mostly important to paladin and barbarian. Maybe a design for necromancer. Dexterity should be a necessity for classes like assassin and amazon. I play D2 according to design which means Amazon is pumping dex most with str secondary. And vitality third. So i distribute the ratio as 2 vitality - 3 strength - 4 dexterity. Because this is generally what the game intended for how this character is designed. Not exploit this major flaw that everybody and their mom exploits with all their points into vitality.
I would take off points for the D2R cinematics. While the CG is more advanced and the voice acting is the same, they needlessly changed Marius's gestures and facial expressions for the worse. Because of that mistake alone, I prefer the original D2 cinematics.
Great reviews! Itemization is great it may need some updates such as so many useless outdated uniques making them more viable and adding to the elites. Somehow not nerfing enigma but just making it not the only endgame option buffing others maybe to make a reason to not want enigma the only endgame armor. Social and guild aspect needs work. Stash needs to be reworked gems stacking or charms becomes a paragon board like stash to open up space to use your backpack to pickup items. I like to pick through lots of different items for crafting ect… and only having your cube for backpack slows me down dramatically in my item hunt. In game recipes encyclopedia would be nice. PvP is a huge endgame aspect for many hardcore players and adding a ladder season for the dueling aspect would be huge. I think the pvp in this game is some of the most fun and can greatly be enhanced with some love.
It boggles me that Blizzard won’t leave 2-3 devs @ 80-100k/year to finish polishing D2R? There are so many stupid improvements that I’d gladly pay another $20-$30 for. Surely the player base is sufficiently large to make that economically feasible?
Imagine they dont even feel like an Expansion with the QoL features we all want(Rune/Gem Stack,Charm Space,Lobby and Trade improvements,Item Filters),continued 4 act maybe,New Uber boss along 6th act and his finall boss. Probably feel if they deliver something like this they ll have to pay a team to maintain and update it. But theyre corporate i dont think they are willing to spendk 200/300k just so the D2R playerbase to be happy. Other than that i feel like you its so easy to make it work or even add something so they can make money passively out of it.
Very well done Llama. I give your review of Diablo 2 10/10! People who downvote a game they played so much probably is because there is a bug or a cheater problem or some gamebreaking issue which developers don't bother to fix and I can relate to that. And Diablo 2 had it's own share of issues back in the day. Especially the inventory management became very problematic with LOD when all the runes, gems and items are taken into account. Biggest offender for me was muling with one account, making game, waiting for it to become permanent, dropping items, exiting and entering with other character. It became worse with every new mule character until I would get IP banned because of "many" exiting and entering games in a short period of time, effectively deleting my long sought after items just because there was not enough space nor was no actual mechanic to allow me to keep my valuable items. No wonder why the shared stash was one of the most requested features of D2R...
Overall a solid review. I personally would lower the scores for Itemization, builds and spells to around a 7. For me the real fun doesn't start until I can start farming areas for the loot chase and knowing where I want a toon to end up, a lot of spells and items are only used for a very small portion of that initial journey. After 20 years I keep coming back to D2, but what was a fun challenge to overcome is now a point of frustration I can't wait to be over. Every aRPG is going to have similar issues, and will never be a 10/10 IMO, so even a 7/10 for D2 is pretty incredible in my book.
Diablo 2's aesthetic remains unbeaten. For more than 2 decades I've been saying that nothing comes close to how dingy, dark and viscerally edgy it is. I just couldn't get into D3 because of the turbo vibrant sprite effects straight out of Overwatch, D2's fire, lightning, and ice effects were perfect. Levels like the Durance of hate, Andariel's throne room are so unsettling and convey that pure evil is at work with viscerally disgusting and unnerving piles of viscera and bodies with blood everywhere, it earned the M rating with it but it legitimately serves the story and worldbuilding, it tooks some guts (pun intended) to go in that direction but I believe it paid off in conveying the ascension of evil in the game's world.
Not bad. The thing I love about D2 is it’s not an on the rail experience (Sure the quests are straightforward but) like SO MANY damn games today. You really can play however you want and use the game to create your own challenges or experience. You want to twink out and go crazy? Go for it. Want to teleport around the map in seconds? Go for it. No “sorry you have a 15 sec CD” “sorry you can only go 10% faster run/walk”. It’s simple, you got life/mana, you got skills. No homogenous lazy game design disguised as “balance”. Every class isn’t just build charges spend charges hit big buff on CD... Just a simple, old school arpg.
Totally disagree that Holy Grail should be be considered a positive towards the completionism rating. Just because the COMMUNITY made up a challenge for themselves does not mean the game should get points for completionism. There is no aspect of the game itself that encourages Holy Grail completion. There are no in game notes about items seen or items owned. There are no specific stash slots for holy grail items. If anything, the fact that the community had to make up a challenge that the game doesn't encourage (and before shared stashes actively discouraged) should remove points from the rating.
I think it definitely should be counted. Just like you had no incentives to ever get all the summons in a game like Final Fantasy 7, yet people naturally gravitated towards doing it. The fact that there isn't an achievement popup to arbitrary gratify the players is really inconsequential. You can argue the idea of the challenge has been artificially pushed by the community, but I still think it's based on what the game is offering.
@@oli201 But that goes for any game in existence where you can loot. It shouldnt be a point in the rating because its just a challenge that doesnt even give achievments (because obviously achievments we have today were not a thing back then)
@@FloundFahrdienst If someone decides "I want to 100% Diablo 2" then they set their own rules since there is no set achievement to aim for. The fact that the holy grail is a fun challenge implemented by the community is only a result of people wanting to "100%" Diablo 2. If the challenge didn't exist, people would still make up their own challenges that are in the same vein or maybe completely different. You don't need to have a big brother to tell you what is and what isn't fun. The only thing that matters is what you find fun. If the concept of the holy grail didn't exist, and people wanted to have a noticeable achievement for their completion of the game, they would still have to come up with a challenge that they find fun. The fact that people enjoy the challenge of finding every item is because the game makes it fun. Saying it has nothing to do with the quality of the game is honestly such a bad take. Discrediting the game's completion potential because a goal was made by the community makes no sense.
@@oli201 The game does not make it fun. That's my entire point. The game makes you create a bunch of mules and makes you have to track your own progress in a spreadsheet and display that progress using an overlay that you create yourself. All of these things are not made by the game or encouraged by the game. It's all done in spite of the game limitations.
@@SteveSavageProductsthe thing is he just want to give a really good note at the game. He gave action a 9, no need to say more. Same for items, which I think runewords hurt a lot
I agree completely with lod having the better lobby system than D2R. Another cool thing to point out about that was the profile system in lod. You could fill out a little profile, pretty pointless but I thought it was cool lol
PVP in D2 is quite unique experience because this feature is almost absent from ARPG's today. Duels on classic bnet were common, played on all levels (low level duel, high level duel), there were even some clans and tournament style PVP. I liked it, PVP builds required different itemization and skillplan from PVE farming builds and that is good for an ARPG. In PVE you can get away with low fhr, it will be a little uncomfortable but it's passable. In PVP it's a no-go, you have to invest usually to the second highest breakpoint.
Taking into account that you are a fan boy (which I am too since the launch of D2R) I think this is a fair but amazing rating, especially for a game being that old.
That's very fair, considering it's a 20 year old game and we're still learning about it. But if you put it into comparison with other games like it, then it's suddenly a _personal_ 10/10
17:00 my one gripe with monster design is that they copy/paste/recolour base models so many times. I get that it was a product of the time in that sense, but I feel like in more modern games, that just shouldn't stand up. On another note though, would love to see you put some time into the now fully-launched Last Epoch and see how that compares cuz I have heard some good things about it.
I would be curious to know how your D4 score has changed since the launch of the game. It has improved quite a bit imo. Maybe after the big expansion it would be worth revisiting
Itemization was interesting... and then came Mozaic. And we all started to look like that Riddick character played by Vin Diesel - we need super dark glasses or we will die!
For me the QoL score could go up a point or two if a separate inventory space were provided for charms. More if they automate weapon swap for a specific skill/attack. I would have thought updates like those would be right behind the visual one but it ended up being other things
Yeah fair. When I played a lot most games felt inviting though and I ended up gaining lots of experience in finding specific things like where and how to hitch a ride on parts of a rush or a safe space to transfer items to mules. It was almost like a skill and that made it rewarding to do somehow. Maybe something different could be good too
It would be awesome if Cain would tell us about runewords per Difficulty. Or we could even go to him with a rune we have found and he could tell us in which runewords we could potentially use it.
My biggest pet peeve in D2R is that troll goblin players can use your TP, immediately go hostile, and kill you while you're trying to just play the game. My main wishlist item is that both players should have to agree to go hostile
Excellent, thank you for the review. Can you do one on PoE? Is it still worth playing? I've never played, but I'm willing to try it, and I'd like to know if you could share your thoughts on it.
I could disagree witch couple points from the list (like builds and endgame should be valued lower for me), but overall it fits my own objective score very well!
I still don't know why they didn't reuse the chat lobby/lobby ui we had in the old bnet. It was so perfect. Same goes with the idle stances of the characters / hardcore ones
Agree on everything except endgame, it should be a 10. This is why I'm still playing this. That and replayability. Replayability should have been a category even though it interact with many other categories it is such an important aspect of a seasonal game. About endgame, how do you define endgame? By the amount of objectives are in the endgame? Or by how long you enjoy the endgame? For me it is the latter and i think endgame should have this focus in modern arpgs. Many modern arpgs has a lot more objectives to interact with than d2r yet many of them fall short in the long run. Why is d2r fun for so long? Perhaps because it is more up to the player what to do with the endgame than the game itself. Edit: 5 on Bosses is a bit low imo. Would you really whant to make them more complicated in d2? They are meant to be slayed with ease(on a decent geared character) over and over. Im not sure i would enjoy having to dodge kill moves for a 100 times. This might also be hard to balance with such a huge class difference. Imo. Bosses are an 8.5 for the game they are in.
People always underrate just how important music is. That should be weighted at a 3 at least. And given the current state of gaming id weight monetization a 4 or 5. Crafting should be a baseline of one. Your scores were pretty spot on though.
i think diablo 2 still has the best pacing, groundedness, atmosphere, and exploration to allow you to really get pulled into the world. it makes the rpg part of diablo still the best in arpgs to me.
My review! The game is better than is was from bug fixes. Some of the blood animations are gone... I want them back. Vicarious visions did amazing job. Bring this game back to life
I pretty much agree with most of this…although I do love my enigma, grief and whatever else OP RW. Maybe I missed it but I do want to say please please give us a currency stash tab?! It would be another VERY easy (QoL) change. Hell, a very nice “imagined” one had popped up online…use it. Another very simple (no effort) change could be another level of difficulty
Can someone help me out. I am noob in diablo , but I've played a lot in the past, I've always played with runewords, but that for me really made the game boring. It's always the same basic runewords till we get spirit to beat hell. I really want it to play the game without runewords. Do you believe it's possible to beat hell without runewords? Im currently in nightmare with a furry druid and I'm struggling a lot to hit things.
It is possible after all the game came out without runewords.The problem you have i suppse is you lack attack rating at your level try to find Angelic Amulet,2x ring combo that will help you alot and also use Heart of Wolverine for more Attack rating.
@@wtbskilllololo I am using hearth of wolverine and the blessed aim aura from Merc . I was lucky to find a deathbit unique throwing knifes. It gives me almost 400 AR. Really lucky .
@@ronignino I see welp melees were always slower,jankier and depending on good weapons. I guess if you manage to find a Ribcracker(think Mephisto Nightmare had a nice chance of dropping it)that could boost ur dmg pretty hard.
My mom is almost 70 years old and playing d2r. But she has a lot to learn. I was finally at the right place at the right time. Clone diablo just spawned twice back to back as she gets her 1st char to level 70. Never even started hell mode yet. I believe he spawned 3 times but missed 1st time trying to get in game. Lag spike from everyone creating games. Shout out to all the SoJ sellers. Lol
been playing D2 since 2001-2002 and still playing nowdays alot I agree with what you said and I dream about more stuff new runewords buff sets and more... so sad they just put new Ladder with nothing new
15:10 Totally true. I can't give a newer game enough of my brain power to sit and learn their doctorate depth of skill trees and then to figure out what I'm doing when i cant find the next quest location. They might look fancy or appealing, but I simply will not immerse myself in them because of the exasperating level of fluff they have to chase.
blizzard would automatically become the coolest company in the world if they gave us updates to diablo 2. if only they could please the fans who want to love them!
I LOVE d2. But, I've always hated managing potions. Potions are fine and finite resorces make the game intersting. BUT Can we please be able to dedicate a slot to a certain potion type? Also an option to not over pickup potions or auto slot from inventory \ auto pickup would be amazing. I don't think anybody enjoys clicking potions around the inventory. I've always hated how tedious it is. I dont like the flask idea from poe necessarily either. Definitely not d3 or d4 nonsense either
I disagree with: - Itemisation: I'd give it like a 5/10, maybe even lower. D2 itemisation is much better than D3 or D4, but that's because D3 and D4 are absolutely awful (like 2/10). If you look at other modern ARPGs, D2 fall far behind. First of all, Runewords absolutely sink this category for me. But even aside the Runewords, even the base itemisation isn't THAT great if we're being honest. We're just used to it. Countless useless affixes, countless useless uniques, lacking interesting interplay with other game systems like skills (just "+1 to these skills" is boring in the context of a modern ARPG), lack of variation to many of the item types that you're looking for or could find viable (charms for example). There is also the issue of how the game itself is built as a "single-main-skill-for-everything" kinda game, which also brings down itemisation. - Action: I'd give it like a 7/10 Again, it's the issue of the game being a single-skill-for-everything game. 7/10 is still pretty high, it's a fun game. But it is also extremely repetitive, which makes it boring at parts. You NEVER consider which monster type you are fighting, to decide which of your skills to use. Even in D1 you had to switch between Fireball and Lightning/Chain Lightning depending on what monster you fought. In D2 it's always the same skill. I'm a Nova sorc, so I use Nova. I'm a Blizzard sorc, so I use Blizzard. I'm a Javazon, etc.... The Sunder charms made this issue EVEN WORSE, they moved the game in the WRONG direction. This really brings down the Action score for me. - Builds: I'd give this one a 6/10. I just can't motivate a higher score for a game where a few builds are so much stronger than other builds. You can theorycraft builds for a Whirlwind barb or a summon necro all you want, but is it ever going to get EVEN CLOSE to the power of a Blizzard sorc or Javazon or Hammerdin? Not likely, right? This is an area where the game could have been much, much better and offered much better variety. Also, build variety would also have been more positively affected if characters in general needed to alternate between 2-3 "main skills" as they played, as it would exponentially widen the possible builds and theorycrafting rather than knowing your build should be focused on just picking one single skill to max. - QoL: Should probably be lower than 5/10, but you mentioned that already - Spells: I agree skills/spells in D2 feel very good to use, it's a responsive game and the feedback comes just when it should. 9.5 is probably too high for me though, it's still not that much spell variety, and there is no freedom to augment your spells in any way like is possible in many modern ARPGs. - Monetisation: I'd say it's a 7/10, because the monetisation is a guarantee that it will not get further content updates. "You buy the game and that's it" is the sign that a game will not receive any content additions once the point is reached where the company notices the alternative cost (the money they could have gotten from investing the money elsewhere, for example just buying stocks) is higher than the cost of developing new content for the game, compared to new sales being made. You mention at 24:40 "people running around looking godly cause they paid for it, that's just annoying to me personally", but this is honestly one of the least intrusive forms of monetization for me personally. Especially if it's tied to some sort of player accomplishment in some form. For example, there could be cosmetic UPGRADES to unique items in the game, you still need to find the unique and equip it, but it might look cooler. I wish the game would have had better monetisation, because that would have meant there would still be content updates for the game. As it is now, they've already taken our money and any updates they make to the game won't increase the amount of new players buying the game, so there will be very little future content.. which kinda sucks. So, I would never say Monetisation is a 10/10 for D2R. - Crafting: Should probably be closer to a 2/10 for me, compared to crafting systems in good modern ARPGs (not D4). Honestly, "crafting" in D2 is essentially just gambling an entire item, and that's it. To be fair I think I'm being generous to even give it a 2/10 because in a modern ARPG context it wouldn't even be called crafting, because it has nothing to do with crafting. For the rest I think you are spot on. The graphics, the music, the feel and so on. But I think there are some huge parts of this game that could have been substantially improved.
I agree on all your things that could improve the game, and that it would be great if they just happened. But we know that what drives Blizzard nowadays is pretty much purely money. If you had the attention of blizzard, and they said they needed at least $100,000 to make your requests happen, how would you suggest they actually get that money from the audience to make that a reasonable expenditure? The D2 audience seems a lot more resistant to a lot of the money making avenues than gamers in general. I hate a lot of those tactics too, but they do get the work paid for. With the smaller D2 audience though, they do not have a lot of options, and if they choose the wrong monetization model, they could alienate and drive away a significant part of that small audience. I think this is likely the main thing paralyzing them from giving us the changes that could continue to elevate the game. Microtransactions, even just cosmetics, likely alienate the audience. Expansion does not really fit with the nature of the changes, unless they also double/triple the cost so they can add more traditional content that folks think of as an expansion like another act of content and a character class, etc. Even something direct like an in house kickstarter equivalent that once paid covers the cost to make it free for everyone is likely to bring out all the chorus of folks that "these kinds of changes are things we should get for free based on the price we already paid". This shouldn't be our problem, but Blizzard seems unmotivated to find a solution to it, and that means the state of D2R is going to be largely static. So the only path forward seems to be for the D2R community to figure out what they would find acceptable as a solution to fund it, tell blizzard that, and hope they listen.
An smaller expansion with QoL updates such as Rune/Gem stack,Charm inventory,Lobby and Better trade feature,Act4(maybe finish it and add all the quests that they supposed to on release),Act 6 with a new boss and maybe new Uber boss. This will generate way more than 100k for sure but i feel like they ll have to stick and maintain and update any issue with it further so they ll need a team that supervises the game and as you said they dont feel like this would be positive income for them even if i think Selling something like this for 40-60$ dollars would generate a pretty good sum even if the D2R community is smaller in general to most games and that also will clash with their plans on pushing D4 for their maing ARPG.
@@wtbskilllololo Dude. You can't explode the scope like that for the same costs. Llamas suggestions could get done with like a 3 man team of game designer, UI/UX designer, and programmer for 3-6 months. Your suggestion for another act and a half requires story writers, concept artists, 3d render artists, etc, etc, etc while extending the time needed to probably a year. You are multiplying the development costs by more than an order of magnitude. I would love it if those things were on the table, and I would buy whatever they put out, but I am extremely skeptical the audience is big enough to even consider things on that scale. Llama's suggestions for paid stash tabs and character slots seem like a reasonable possibility, but they would also need to factor in the cost to develop those features, the recurring data storage costs to save the characters, etc. I still worry plenty of people are fine just deleting characters to make new ones, etc and would not pay the premium. But dev costs to enable those things should be suitably low, and then you can just wait until the profits of them reach a level that allows you to reinvest them. Of course at that point Blizz probably just pockets the money and moves on.
Imagine Blizzard making D1R with a Plus: After beating Diablo and turning in him the player would make the Diablo's way does in Diablo 2, fighting knights, warriors, rouges and mages.
The only thing I disagree with is cosmetics. the random coloring of items makes it look cartoony (looking at you Shako) unless you luck out on matching "sets"
Id say this is an overall great review, of course as you said, when you or I quickly think about a rating its a 10. However when you meticulously go over each point you get a more overall score that pertains for everyone. With just simple quality of life improvements this game would skyrocket up and not even including new content. i feel this is a such a lost opportunity that Blizzard is overlooking to keep this game really alive. I however I give Diablo 4 a higher rating, around 7.5-7.8 which equally has a lot of potential i think. It wont be D2 but they can certainly improve it a lot to bring the score higher.
I love d2 I think it's the goat. But i also think that melee is a huge flaw. Although melee is really fun and I actually like the attack rating system. It would just be better if there was a little more balance there.
I've never seen a review so comprehensive, and adding weights to adjust the score based on the significance of each component? Mwah. You're probably the single best person at game analysis I've ever heard.
Surely the category of "crafting" should include Runewords. You collect ingredients, you put them together according to a recipe, and you craft a piece of equipment. The existence of "crafted items" and the Horadric Cube doesn't mean that there aren't other crafting systems. Because of Runewords, crafting is a massive core part of the game experience. You have that rated way too low.
If it weren't for the following 3 things I'd give D2R a 10/10. Yes a full 10. 1: Poor mod support. What we got was meh at best. Remodded has done a lot but even that is just.. not what could be possible if we could do what's been done with D2 legacy. 2: No TCP/IP (let alone modded realms). Even with the subpar mod support it'd be great if I could play these with my friends. 3: BUGS. Specifically the ED bug. Why?! Why?! And because of number 1 we can't mod it out like D2 legacy mods have. D2 mods have fixed the bug and the devs couldn't put it in? Blizzard did this game dirty... Vicarious Visions did what they could with what blizzard gave them.. and did a great job so I'd still give it a 7/10 but man.. It could have been so much more.
gives more value to that specific. For instance itemization is more important than cinematics so it gets a higher weight and more influence in final score
The 8.34 seems low but it sounds like you are rating it as a modern game and comparing to modern day systems. When you rate it through that lens, 8.34 is very impressive for a 20+ year old game.
![[GUIDE] Diablo 2 Resurrected - How Combat Mechanics Work (Deadly Strike, Crushing Blow, Etc)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/e5iSXOUUMOA/mqdefault.jpg)
![[GUIDE] Diablo 2 Resurrected - How Combat Mechanics Work (Deadly Strike, Crushing Blow, Etc)](/img/tr.png)
Great review! I think PvP has to be weighted against what's out there. i.e. - PoE, D4, etc. In PoE, PvP is very limited and same could be said for D4. In D2R, your ability to PK other players is ALWAYS there, regardless of GM or not. That is missing from so many ARPGs these days, imo. Also to note: D2R def made Vamp Gaze look way worse lol
Hey Cooley try playing this on PSN let alone Xbox or switch. Then I want you and llama to redo these rankings and your thoughts on the game. Clearly this is a PC only review/ranking but. Hey you want a real challenge? Get on the consoles bud.
Boo PVP. There is enough extraction shooters and PVP focused games out there already. Give the option for PVP, don't force it on people.
@@meliodasgakill4282this game was made for and played on exclusively PCs for over 20 years, the console experience is the last thing on anyones mind. Might as well yell at Mario speed runners for not using an Xbox controllers it’s just nonsense.
@@meliodasgakill4282 Sorry for your sad situation. Solution? Get on a PC, bud! 🙂
PVP in D2 is really good and the one thing i really disagree with mrlama in the ratings. It is more like 8-9. PVP is for some the end game of d2, or I go go as far as saying it is THE game of d2.
overall rating feels very accurate.
Your biggest areas of improvement tend to be D2’s infrastructure to facilitate ease of trade, community, communication, party play, and access to in-game systems . I’d love an in-game wiki where you could look up runewords, breakpoints, all uniques, drop rates, and more. Or an in-game trading hub like Traderie. Or a filter in the lobby so I can look for just baal runs, or TZ games.
Despite the absence of these features, the game remains excellent for the reasons you touched on.
About Baal and Tz Games you can now write it out and only look for these games only?This been in like 2 ladders ago if not more or did you mean specific filters?
PD2's lobby and loot filter in D2R would be some final form magic
That would be awesome but legendaries need an overhaul. Tired of the fact that I need runewords in every slot that can take it.
@@Amanik_Capoli By legendary do you mean unique items?Yes i agree if they upgrade/rework some of the more rare/cool uniques you could see a shift of meta and economy and bit and it will rejuvenate the game abit.
But i also agree a Loot filter,better lobby and QoL like stacking Gems,Runes will improve the game alot.
so much nostalgia, my first game was Diablo, and i was running it on a 166mhz which was pretty fast for the time so the characters ran faster than normal lol
24 years and still top of it's genre.
Over the last year Grim Dawn has taken over for me. It has much better build variety and the theory crafting is through the roof. You constantly pick up weapons and start making a new character in your head before actually making them. Very cool game that deserves more attention.
@@nomercy8989 Grim Dawn sucked me in pretty hard a few years back and then after that was last epoch for me.
@@nomercy8989 that's me ATM with grim dawn 😆 I literally did a 7 hour straight session tonight. Or until my eyes were burning out of my skull lmao game is actually amazing.
I'm playing a necromancer/shaman build. So much variety it's crazy
Grim Dawn was fun until all of the hacks and exploits killed it for me. Idk if that's resolved but I hope LE holds strong. @@nomercy8989
Grim Dawn is top dog for me. I haven't tried Last Epoch yet, (I will when it comes out with the full release), but I find myself returning to Grim Dawn more than D2 these days.
diablo 2 and d2r is by one of the best action rpg ever
i remember back in high school grabbing the instruction manual for d2 me and a bunch of mates would read it and discuss what builds and skill points we would put in etc those were the days mind you we are talking about the year 2000 i would of been like 12
had my first pc and the two games i had or played was diablo 2 and baldurs gate
You should totally do this for pd2 as well since it’s an awesome overhaul and I want to see your insight on how some of the lower scores from d2 r compare in terms of how pd2 addresses some of d2rs issues.
Diablo 2's music is good enough to listen to just on its own; it's more like a concept album themed around travelling through the wilderness than it's like a soundtrack to a game. I actually have bits of it on my general listening playlists, and people don't even notice the difference.
Which is a lot more than I can say for some of the other game soundtracks I've had on there. Star Control 2 also had some great music, but when you've got your phone hooked up to a speaker and it starts up with something like the Orz or Spathi theme - people notice.
Still love D2 after 20+ years, i totally agree about a huge party!
What you did not really speak about is how well party play works, with all the buffs available (auras, war cries, curses, enchant, druid spirits, BoS/fade), and NOT having absurd mechanics that give you more speed when fighting like in D3.
A no rules PVP would be pretty intense. The best builds VS the best builds with a full belt of rejuvs would be a sight to see.
Real men duels in hardcore.
... Yes, softcore is the demoOo version of the game- @@awQng89
Curious to see the same rating for Poe, last epoch, grim dawn.
I think the rating is very fair. D2's strength is that there are so many modes within the same game. So SC, HC, Ladder, Non Ladder, SP. There is really something for everyone!
love this llama guy!
A few things that I think should be rated a little differently IMO
-PvP honestly sucks for this game by today's standards. Even back in the day it was just okay. WoW came out only 3 years after LOD and I while I know it's a different game... that had incredible pvp. I would give a 3.5
-Social I think I would lower the score even further because of how dismal the chat/friend and lack of social pane is. I basically have to go back to BNet launcher to chat with someone if I am friends with them. If you haven't played this game in a while, coming back to figure out how to whisper, add friends, etc. is damn near impossible now. 5/10
-Overall I think Llama brings up some great points that really highlight how great this game is. The Ease of Access is solid but the depth of this game is truly incredible.
-I think should have had a rating for Support or Updates because that is something that is a bit lacking, even though we all know this is a 20+ year old game.
Classic WoWs pvp is literally the most “unbalanced” PvP in WoWs history lmao there weren’t even PvP ranks at the beginning and even longer after that before the first BG was released. Huge Open world pvp battles were awesome but that was literally the only thing about classic WoW pvp that was fun. PvP was a literal afterthought for blizzard during classic and will always be the secondary “game mode”
How about recepie scrolls (runewords, crafting,...) that would randomly drop as loot and when read would be added to some kind of a book of recepies which would be shared account wide.
Great review! I honestly thought you were way too generous with your D4 review, but your D2R review I think was spot on. There is a lot that can be improved such as stash space, etc., but overall it is a fun and enjoyable game.
2:40 I prefer the classic campaign more, I always felt like the last act was out of place and killing Diablo should be the end. However the expansion added the druid which is probably my second favourite character after the Barb. I remember being a little kid seeing the expansion in a bin at Walmart and begging my parents to get the expansion.
Idk if i can agree with the ratings on builds and spells. Half the spells/abilities are almost useless and just used for synergies, 1 pointers to get to other spells, or ignored completely. You can certainly force some builds with the right gear and knowledge. But if you’re new to the game you Have to look up a build online or you may not even get through nightmare let alone hell.
That being said i respect your opinion and the review was great and very detailed. I love and appreciate your content and i hope you keep it coming for years to come!
That's a good point. The game lets you put 20 points into all of the skills but some are absolutely a waste if you ever do that, like the druid's poison creeper or most of the necro's curses.
And can you imagine putting 20 points into the barb's increased stamina skill?
DevilutionX handles auto-refilling of the belt for potions a bit better and the bottom row is also preferred when filling up the inventory with 1 slot items
Would love to see you try Diablo 2 Resurrected Reimagined and review it. I haven't have as much fun playing D2 in what feels forever as now since I started with that mod!
Honestly the story of d2 is really good. If you actually talk to all NPCS and listen to them talk and dont skip the Dialogue. I just found out the reason for collecting khalims body parts is because the zakarum tore him apart and stashed them everywhere
It is, it's just that people these days are use to playing interactive cut scenes. Diablo 1-2 is one of the few arpg that actually gave me sense of urgency and importance and understanding why main villain is major threat. You get how powerful Diablo is, who Mephisto is, who Dark Wanderer is and why it's important to stop him and why you chase him, etc.
In lot of other arpg they kinda skip on this or it's not really explained, for example I had no idea who the bad guy was in Torchlight or why it's important I stop him. heck, even Titan's Quest is like this, yeah you chase some monsters because of this and that, then Typhoon kinda just shows up and you fight him and Zeus congratulates you on being good boy.
I don't know about expert. I tend to have expertise from setting up and running d&d all my life. The design of D2 has huge glaring flaws that devs must have overlooked after D1.
The system of D1 and many games up to now are based on D&D stat distribution. D1 opted for a simplified version. Carried over into D2. However much better implemented in D1. Because of how D2 implemented casting for each class.
For example, as a Warrior in D1, your prime requisites are strength and vitality. With dexterity secondary. So you start off by boarding dex to get decent hits. A bit of energy for mana. Then life and lots of strength.
Yet the system got completely screwy in D2 because of how it implemented casting abilities on all classes. So everybody's prime requisite is vitality. Because ability scores just become meaningless aside from the importance of increasing hp as you level up. Including energy meaningless. Because you just need a sufficient amount as a baseline. They guzzle potions for mana.
D2 is a really fun game despite being one of the most screwed up implementation of ability scores in the history of games. And an example of how 'professional' aaa games can screw up these types of point distribution and level progression design. Even up to modern games. It should never be like this and not the intention of devs. Something like vitality is meant to be mostly important to paladin and barbarian. Maybe a design for necromancer. Dexterity should be a necessity for classes like assassin and amazon. I play D2 according to design which means Amazon is pumping dex most with str secondary. And vitality third. So i distribute the ratio as 2 vitality - 3 strength - 4 dexterity. Because this is generally what the game intended for how this character is designed. Not exploit this major flaw that everybody and their mom exploits with all their points into vitality.
Llama the kind of dude that names his kid after things in a game
TalThulOrtAmn
Baby Bonesnap 🥰
I would take off points for the D2R cinematics. While the CG is more advanced and the voice acting is the same, they needlessly changed Marius's gestures and facial expressions for the worse. Because of that mistake alone, I prefer the original D2 cinematics.
Keep the videos coming Llama, can't wait for Llama rpg
Great reviews! Itemization is great it may need some updates such as so many useless outdated uniques making them more viable and adding to the elites. Somehow not nerfing enigma but just making it not the only endgame option buffing others maybe to make a reason to not want enigma the only endgame armor.
Social and guild aspect needs work.
Stash needs to be reworked gems stacking or charms becomes a paragon board like stash to open up space to use your backpack to pickup items. I like to pick through lots of different items for crafting ect… and only having your cube for backpack slows me down dramatically in my item hunt.
In game recipes encyclopedia would be nice.
PvP is a huge endgame aspect for many hardcore players and adding a ladder season for the dueling aspect would be huge.
I think the pvp in this game is some of the most fun and can greatly be enhanced with some love.
It boggles me that Blizzard won’t leave 2-3 devs @ 80-100k/year to finish polishing D2R? There are so many stupid improvements that I’d gladly pay another $20-$30 for. Surely the player base is sufficiently large to make that economically feasible?
Imagine they dont even feel like an Expansion with the QoL features we all want(Rune/Gem Stack,Charm Space,Lobby and Trade improvements,Item Filters),continued 4 act maybe,New Uber boss along 6th act and his finall boss.
Probably feel if they deliver something like this they ll have to pay a team to maintain and update it.
But theyre corporate i dont think they are willing to spendk 200/300k just so the D2R playerbase to be happy.
Other than that i feel like you its so easy to make it work or even add something so they can make money passively out of it.
I've never been into PvP in Diablo, but I would 100% love to see them implement the arenas that were being created for D3's doomed PvP
Very well done Llama. I give your review of Diablo 2 10/10!
People who downvote a game they played so much probably is because there is a bug or a cheater problem or some gamebreaking issue which developers don't bother to fix and I can relate to that. And Diablo 2 had it's own share of issues back in the day. Especially the inventory management became very problematic with LOD when all the runes, gems and items are taken into account.
Biggest offender for me was muling with one account, making game, waiting for it to become permanent, dropping items, exiting and entering with other character. It became worse with every new mule character until I would get IP banned because of "many" exiting and entering games in a short period of time, effectively deleting my long sought after items just because there was not enough space nor was no actual mechanic to allow me to keep my valuable items.
No wonder why the shared stash was one of the most requested features of D2R...
Overall a solid review. I personally would lower the scores for Itemization, builds and spells to around a 7. For me the real fun doesn't start until I can start farming areas for the loot chase and knowing where I want a toon to end up, a lot of spells and items are only used for a very small portion of that initial journey. After 20 years I keep coming back to D2, but what was a fun challenge to overcome is now a point of frustration I can't wait to be over. Every aRPG is going to have similar issues, and will never be a 10/10 IMO, so even a 7/10 for D2 is pretty incredible in my book.
Diablo 2's aesthetic remains unbeaten. For more than 2 decades I've been saying that nothing comes close to how dingy, dark and viscerally edgy it is. I just couldn't get into D3 because of the turbo vibrant sprite effects straight out of Overwatch, D2's fire, lightning, and ice effects were perfect. Levels like the Durance of hate, Andariel's throne room are so unsettling and convey that pure evil is at work with viscerally disgusting and unnerving piles of viscera and bodies with blood everywhere, it earned the M rating with it but it legitimately serves the story and worldbuilding, it tooks some guts (pun intended) to go in that direction but I believe it paid off in conveying the ascension of evil in the game's world.
Not bad. The thing I love about D2 is it’s not an on the rail experience (Sure the quests are straightforward but) like SO MANY damn games today. You really can play however you want and use the game to create your own challenges or experience. You want to twink out and go crazy? Go for it. Want to teleport around the map in seconds? Go for it. No “sorry you have a 15 sec CD” “sorry you can only go 10% faster run/walk”. It’s simple, you got life/mana, you got skills. No homogenous lazy game design disguised as “balance”. Every class isn’t just build charges spend charges hit big buff on CD... Just a simple, old school arpg.
Love the video. Would love to see a rating video like this of Path of Exile
Forgot to rate most important feature
Chat Gem Working as Intended/Working as Intended 0 Working as Intended
Totally disagree that Holy Grail should be be considered a positive towards the completionism rating. Just because the COMMUNITY made up a challenge for themselves does not mean the game should get points for completionism. There is no aspect of the game itself that encourages Holy Grail completion. There are no in game notes about items seen or items owned. There are no specific stash slots for holy grail items. If anything, the fact that the community had to make up a challenge that the game doesn't encourage (and before shared stashes actively discouraged) should remove points from the rating.
I think it definitely should be counted. Just like you had no incentives to ever get all the summons in a game like Final Fantasy 7, yet people naturally gravitated towards doing it. The fact that there isn't an achievement popup to arbitrary gratify the players is really inconsequential. You can argue the idea of the challenge has been artificially pushed by the community, but I still think it's based on what the game is offering.
@@oli201 But that goes for any game in existence where you can loot. It shouldnt be a point in the rating because its just a challenge that doesnt even give achievments (because obviously achievments we have today were not a thing back then)
@@FloundFahrdienst If someone decides "I want to 100% Diablo 2" then they set their own rules since there is no set achievement to aim for. The fact that the holy grail is a fun challenge implemented by the community is only a result of people wanting to "100%" Diablo 2. If the challenge didn't exist, people would still make up their own challenges that are in the same vein or maybe completely different. You don't need to have a big brother to tell you what is and what isn't fun.
The only thing that matters is what you find fun. If the concept of the holy grail didn't exist, and people wanted to have a noticeable achievement for their completion of the game, they would still have to come up with a challenge that they find fun. The fact that people enjoy the challenge of finding every item is because the game makes it fun. Saying it has nothing to do with the quality of the game is honestly such a bad take. Discrediting the game's completion potential because a goal was made by the community makes no sense.
@@oli201 The game does not make it fun. That's my entire point. The game makes you create a bunch of mules and makes you have to track your own progress in a spreadsheet and display that progress using an overlay that you create yourself. All of these things are not made by the game or encouraged by the game. It's all done in spite of the game limitations.
@@SteveSavageProductsthe thing is he just want to give a really good note at the game. He gave action a 9, no need to say more. Same for items, which I think runewords hurt a lot
I agree completely with lod having the better lobby system than D2R. Another cool thing to point out about that was the profile system in lod. You could fill out a little profile, pretty pointless but I thought it was cool lol
Location: Rite bhind u
PVP in D2 is quite unique experience because this feature is almost absent from ARPG's today. Duels on classic bnet were common, played on all levels (low level duel, high level duel), there were even some clans and tournament style PVP.
I liked it, PVP builds required different itemization and skillplan from PVE farming builds and that is good for an ARPG. In PVE you can get away with low fhr, it will be a little uncomfortable but it's passable. In PVP it's a no-go, you have to invest usually to the second highest breakpoint.
Taking into account that you are a fan boy (which I am too since the launch of D2R) I think this is a fair but amazing rating, especially for a game being that old.
That's very fair, considering it's a 20 year old game and we're still learning about it. But if you put it into comparison with other games like it, then it's suddenly a _personal_ 10/10
The music is so good it alone makes D2 a 9.5 :D the weighting should be a 2-3 for music IMO but this was a great breakdown!
17:00 my one gripe with monster design is that they copy/paste/recolour base models so many times. I get that it was a product of the time in that sense, but I feel like in more modern games, that just shouldn't stand up. On another note though, would love to see you put some time into the now fully-launched Last Epoch and see how that compares cuz I have heard some good things about it.
What a pleasant surprise to see DII content here. Seriously though, great review,
you say casuals just give 10/10. Wrong. I give 11/10
Amazing review my man, watched this while doing my Solo Online Grind to try get higher lvl an gear!! 🤣
I would be curious to know how your D4 score has changed since the launch of the game. It has improved quite a bit imo. Maybe after the big expansion it would be worth revisiting
I agree, the game he played at the start isn't the same one that's out now
Itemization was interesting... and then came Mozaic. And we all started to look like that Riddick character played by Vin Diesel - we need super dark glasses or we will die!
For me the QoL score could go up a point or two if a separate inventory space were provided for charms. More if they automate weapon swap for a specific skill/attack. I would have thought updates like those would be right behind the visual one but it ended up being other things
It should drop by 2 points because he didn't even mention how horrible the lobby is. You can't find any games
Yeah fair. When I played a lot most games felt inviting though and I ended up gaining lots of experience in finding specific things like where and how to hitch a ride on parts of a rush or a safe space to transfer items to mules. It was almost like a skill and that made it rewarding to do somehow. Maybe something different could be good too
It would be awesome if Cain would tell us about runewords per Difficulty. Or we could even go to him with a rune we have found and he could tell us in which runewords we could potentially
use it.
How do I check my hours in D2R
My biggest pet peeve in D2R is that troll goblin players can use your TP, immediately go hostile, and kill you while you're trying to just play the game. My main wishlist item is that both players should have to agree to go hostile
i agree on everything you say here Llama, variety and procedural design is still to this day not beaten.
Excellent, thank you for the review. Can you do one on PoE? Is it still worth playing? I've never played, but I'm willing to try it, and I'd like to know if you could share your thoughts on it.
10 out of 10. Because I don't care about factuality. I care about spending a few more 1000 hours to find me that Ber rune
I could disagree witch couple points from the list (like builds and endgame should be valued lower for me), but overall it fits my own objective score very well!
I still don't know why they didn't reuse the chat lobby/lobby ui we had in the old bnet. It was so perfect. Same goes with the idle stances of the characters / hardcore ones
You and Noxious were the best providing feedback for D4. It's a SHAME they didn't listen
Man I almost forgot about noxious! I watched him play hearthstone back when it first came out
32k hours in one game is insane. Thats almost 4 years of your life in 1 game. I love my d2 but damn thats a lot of hours
I have 3k hours in Skyrim and I thought that was insane! Which, it is, but still! I dont think a single game could keep me occupied for 30k hours!
When will MamaLlamaSC appear on the channel? I’d be there day 1 for that.
Agree on everything except endgame, it should be a 10. This is why I'm still playing this. That and replayability. Replayability should have been a category even though it interact with many other categories it is such an important aspect of a seasonal game.
About endgame, how do you define endgame? By the amount of objectives are in the endgame? Or by how long you enjoy the endgame? For me it is the latter and i think endgame should have this focus in modern arpgs. Many modern arpgs has a lot more objectives to interact with than d2r yet many of them fall short in the long run. Why is d2r fun for so long? Perhaps because it is more up to the player what to do with the endgame than the game itself.
Edit: 5 on Bosses is a bit low imo. Would you really whant to make them more complicated in d2? They are meant to be slayed with ease(on a decent geared character) over and over. Im not sure i would enjoy having to dodge kill moves for a 100 times. This might also be hard to balance with such a huge class difference.
Imo. Bosses are an 8.5 for the game they are in.
It would have been really hard for me to give itemization a 9, when including item balancing in that category.
I feel the pvp rating was a bit harsh. What arpg does pvp better?
People always underrate just how important music is. That should be weighted at a 3 at least. And given the current state of gaming id weight monetization a 4 or 5. Crafting should be a baseline of one. Your scores were pretty spot on though.
i think diablo 2 still has the best pacing, groundedness, atmosphere, and exploration to allow you to really get pulled into the world. it makes the rpg part of diablo still the best in arpgs to me.
My review! The game is better than is was from bug fixes. Some of the blood animations are gone... I want them back. Vicarious visions did amazing job. Bring this game back to life
I pretty much agree with most of this…although I do love my enigma, grief and whatever else OP RW. Maybe I missed it but I do want to say please please give us a currency stash tab?! It would be another VERY easy (QoL) change. Hell, a very nice “imagined” one had popped up online…use it. Another very simple (no effort) change could be another level of difficulty
Can someone help me out.
I am noob in diablo , but I've played a lot in the past, I've always played with runewords, but that for me really made the game boring. It's always the same basic runewords till we get spirit to beat hell. I really want it to play the game without runewords. Do you believe it's possible to beat hell without runewords? Im currently in nightmare with a furry druid and I'm struggling a lot to hit things.
Yeah, some sets are pretty busted, you just have to grind to collect them
It is possible after all the game came out without runewords.The problem you have i suppse is you lack attack rating at your level try to find Angelic Amulet,2x ring combo that will help you alot and also use Heart of Wolverine for more Attack rating.
@@wtbskilllololo I am using hearth of wolverine and the blessed aim aura from Merc . I was lucky to find a deathbit unique throwing knifes. It gives me almost 400 AR. Really lucky .
@@ronignino I see welp melees were always slower,jankier and depending on good weapons.
I guess if you manage to find a Ribcracker(think Mephisto Nightmare had a nice chance of dropping it)that could boost ur dmg pretty hard.
My mom is almost 70 years old and playing d2r. But she has a lot to learn. I was finally at the right place at the right time. Clone diablo just spawned twice back to back as she gets her 1st char to level 70. Never even started hell mode yet. I believe he spawned 3 times but missed 1st time trying to get in game. Lag spike from everyone creating games. Shout out to all the SoJ sellers. Lol
MrLlama"SC" any interest in Stormgate? the SC successor
SC in this case stands for Softcore, not StarCraft.
@@cosmicfox5671 No way, the Llama man is OG StarCraft. 🦙 ⭐️ 🛸
been playing D2 since 2001-2002 and still playing nowdays alot I agree with what you said and I dream about more stuff new runewords buff sets and more... so sad they just put new Ladder with nothing new
I'd give D2R 9.5 if they fix broken chats and remove tons of bots in the lobby
Excellent video, thank you!
15:10 Totally true. I can't give a newer game enough of my brain power to sit and learn their doctorate depth of skill trees and then to figure out what I'm doing when i cant find the next quest location.
They might look fancy or appealing, but I simply will not immerse myself in them because of the exasperating level of fluff they have to chase.
It's funny that when you changed it to your personal preference it got to an 8.5 which is about where I would rate D2R
So they only need to fix the chat. If they then implement a trade system that even works for casual players - we have an 11 out of 10...
We need cross platform play desperately
Is there a video where he does this for D4?
blizzard would automatically become the coolest company in the world if they gave us updates to diablo 2. if only they could please the fans who want to love them!
I LOVE d2. But, I've always hated managing potions. Potions are fine and finite resorces make the game intersting. BUT Can we please be able to dedicate a slot to a certain potion type? Also an option to not over pickup potions or auto slot from inventory \ auto pickup would be amazing. I don't think anybody enjoys clicking potions around the inventory. I've always hated how tedious it is. I dont like the flask idea from poe necessarily either. Definitely not d3 or d4 nonsense either
I disagree with:
- Itemisation: I'd give it like a 5/10, maybe even lower.
D2 itemisation is much better than D3 or D4, but that's because D3 and D4 are absolutely awful (like 2/10). If you look at other modern ARPGs, D2 fall far behind.
First of all, Runewords absolutely sink this category for me. But even aside the Runewords, even the base itemisation isn't THAT great if we're being honest. We're just used to it. Countless useless affixes, countless useless uniques, lacking interesting interplay with other game systems like skills (just "+1 to these skills" is boring in the context of a modern ARPG), lack of variation to many of the item types that you're looking for or could find viable (charms for example). There is also the issue of how the game itself is built as a "single-main-skill-for-everything" kinda game, which also brings down itemisation.
- Action: I'd give it like a 7/10
Again, it's the issue of the game being a single-skill-for-everything game. 7/10 is still pretty high, it's a fun game. But it is also extremely repetitive, which makes it boring at parts. You NEVER consider which monster type you are fighting, to decide which of your skills to use. Even in D1 you had to switch between Fireball and Lightning/Chain Lightning depending on what monster you fought. In D2 it's always the same skill. I'm a Nova sorc, so I use Nova. I'm a Blizzard sorc, so I use Blizzard. I'm a Javazon, etc.... The Sunder charms made this issue EVEN WORSE, they moved the game in the WRONG direction. This really brings down the Action score for me.
- Builds: I'd give this one a 6/10.
I just can't motivate a higher score for a game where a few builds are so much stronger than other builds. You can theorycraft builds for a Whirlwind barb or a summon necro all you want, but is it ever going to get EVEN CLOSE to the power of a Blizzard sorc or Javazon or Hammerdin? Not likely, right? This is an area where the game could have been much, much better and offered much better variety. Also, build variety would also have been more positively affected if characters in general needed to alternate between 2-3 "main skills" as they played, as it would exponentially widen the possible builds and theorycrafting rather than knowing your build should be focused on just picking one single skill to max.
- QoL: Should probably be lower than 5/10, but you mentioned that already
- Spells: I agree skills/spells in D2 feel very good to use, it's a responsive game and the feedback comes just when it should. 9.5 is probably too high for me though, it's still not that much spell variety, and there is no freedom to augment your spells in any way like is possible in many modern ARPGs.
- Monetisation: I'd say it's a 7/10, because the monetisation is a guarantee that it will not get further content updates.
"You buy the game and that's it" is the sign that a game will not receive any content additions once the point is reached where the company notices the alternative cost (the money they could have gotten from investing the money elsewhere, for example just buying stocks) is higher than the cost of developing new content for the game, compared to new sales being made.
You mention at 24:40 "people running around looking godly cause they paid for it, that's just annoying to me personally", but this is honestly one of the least intrusive forms of monetization for me personally. Especially if it's tied to some sort of player accomplishment in some form. For example, there could be cosmetic UPGRADES to unique items in the game, you still need to find the unique and equip it, but it might look cooler.
I wish the game would have had better monetisation, because that would have meant there would still be content updates for the game. As it is now, they've already taken our money and any updates they make to the game won't increase the amount of new players buying the game, so there will be very little future content.. which kinda sucks. So, I would never say Monetisation is a 10/10 for D2R.
- Crafting: Should probably be closer to a 2/10 for me, compared to crafting systems in good modern ARPGs (not D4). Honestly, "crafting" in D2 is essentially just gambling an entire item, and that's it. To be fair I think I'm being generous to even give it a 2/10 because in a modern ARPG context it wouldn't even be called crafting, because it has nothing to do with crafting.
For the rest I think you are spot on. The graphics, the music, the feel and so on. But I think there are some huge parts of this game that could have been substantially improved.
Soundtrack is amazing.
I have it on vinyl. Lol.
I agree on all your things that could improve the game, and that it would be great if they just happened. But we know that what drives Blizzard nowadays is pretty much purely money.
If you had the attention of blizzard, and they said they needed at least $100,000 to make your requests happen, how would you suggest they actually get that money from the audience to make that a reasonable expenditure?
The D2 audience seems a lot more resistant to a lot of the money making avenues than gamers in general. I hate a lot of those tactics too, but they do get the work paid for. With the smaller D2 audience though, they do not have a lot of options, and if they choose the wrong monetization model, they could alienate and drive away a significant part of that small audience. I think this is likely the main thing paralyzing them from giving us the changes that could continue to elevate the game.
Microtransactions, even just cosmetics, likely alienate the audience.
Expansion does not really fit with the nature of the changes, unless they also double/triple the cost so they can add more traditional content that folks think of as an expansion like another act of content and a character class, etc.
Even something direct like an in house kickstarter equivalent that once paid covers the cost to make it free for everyone is likely to bring out all the chorus of folks that "these kinds of changes are things we should get for free based on the price we already paid".
This shouldn't be our problem, but Blizzard seems unmotivated to find a solution to it, and that means the state of D2R is going to be largely static. So the only path forward seems to be for the D2R community to figure out what they would find acceptable as a solution to fund it, tell blizzard that, and hope they listen.
I think implementing some sort of stash tabs for $ or additional characters would easily generate 100K
An smaller expansion with QoL updates such as Rune/Gem stack,Charm inventory,Lobby and Better trade feature,Act4(maybe finish it and add all the quests that they supposed to on release),Act 6 with a new boss and maybe new Uber boss.
This will generate way more than 100k for sure but i feel like they ll have to stick and maintain and update any issue with it further so they ll need a team that supervises the game and as you said they dont feel like this would be positive income for them even if i think Selling something like this for 40-60$ dollars would generate a pretty good sum even if the D2R community is smaller in general to most games and that also will clash with their plans on pushing D4 for their maing ARPG.
@@wtbskilllololo Dude. You can't explode the scope like that for the same costs. Llamas suggestions could get done with like a 3 man team of game designer, UI/UX designer, and programmer for 3-6 months. Your suggestion for another act and a half requires story writers, concept artists, 3d render artists, etc, etc, etc while extending the time needed to probably a year. You are multiplying the development costs by more than an order of magnitude.
I would love it if those things were on the table, and I would buy whatever they put out, but I am extremely skeptical the audience is big enough to even consider things on that scale.
Llama's suggestions for paid stash tabs and character slots seem like a reasonable possibility, but they would also need to factor in the cost to develop those features, the recurring data storage costs to save the characters, etc. I still worry plenty of people are fine just deleting characters to make new ones, etc and would not pay the premium. But dev costs to enable those things should be suitably low, and then you can just wait until the profits of them reach a level that allows you to reinvest them. Of course at that point Blizz probably just pockets the money and moves on.
greatest all time music
Imagine Blizzard making D1R with a Plus: After beating Diablo and turning in him the player would make the Diablo's way does in Diablo 2, fighting knights, warriors, rouges and mages.
D2 is my favorite game of all time...which makes D4 seem like a really sad experience =/
3:35 Increasing CB values and put it on more items it would help compete against many caster skills.
The only thing I disagree with is cosmetics. the random coloring of items makes it look cartoony (looking at you Shako) unless you luck out on matching "sets"
Id say this is an overall great review, of course as you said, when you or I quickly think about a rating its a 10. However when you meticulously go over each point you get a more overall score that pertains for everyone. With just simple quality of life improvements this game would skyrocket up and not even including new content. i feel this is a such a lost opportunity that Blizzard is overlooking to keep this game really alive. I however I give Diablo 4 a higher rating, around 7.5-7.8 which equally has a lot of potential i think. It wont be D2 but they can certainly improve it a lot to bring the score higher.
Bring back shockwave bear. My boy deserves to live!
I love d2 I think it's the goat. But i also think that melee is a huge flaw. Although melee is really fun and I actually like the attack rating system. It would just be better if there was a little more balance there.
when will act 6 drop?
sure the itemization has some flaws that could be improved but its the best arpg item system weve ever got. It's hard to say it's not a 10.
I've never seen a review so comprehensive, and adding weights to adjust the score based on the significance of each component? Mwah. You're probably the single best person at game analysis I've ever heard.
Surely the category of "crafting" should include Runewords. You collect ingredients, you put them together according to a recipe, and you craft a piece of equipment. The existence of "crafted items" and the Horadric Cube doesn't mean that there aren't other crafting systems. Because of Runewords, crafting is a massive core part of the game experience.
You have that rated way too low.
If it weren't for the following 3 things I'd give D2R a 10/10. Yes a full 10.
1: Poor mod support. What we got was meh at best. Remodded has done a lot but even that is just.. not what could be possible if we could do what's been done with D2 legacy.
2: No TCP/IP (let alone modded realms). Even with the subpar mod support it'd be great if I could play these with my friends.
3: BUGS. Specifically the ED bug. Why?! Why?! And because of number 1 we can't mod it out like D2 legacy mods have. D2 mods have fixed the bug and the devs couldn't put it in? Blizzard did this game dirty... Vicarious Visions did what they could with what blizzard gave them.. and did a great job so I'd still give it a 7/10 but man.. It could have been so much more.
what is weight score ?
gives more value to that specific. For instance itemization is more important than cinematics so it gets a higher weight and more influence in final score
thnx capt @@MrLlamaSC
D2R is the only game I would even dream of playing these days :) (sadly, no time...)
The 8.34 seems low but it sounds like you are rating it as a modern game and comparing to modern day systems. When you rate it through that lens, 8.34 is very impressive for a 20+ year old game.
Sound Design is a solid 9/10
Support is a 3/10
modability is a 8.5/10
I'm kind of amazed that people can play the game for 20 years and do not care in the slightest about it's lore and story even once :"D
I wish we could have one HUGE D2R QOL improvement and this game would skyrocket in playability for me.
And I play it all the time. Lmao
I just do not understand why Blizzard is giving up D2R, even for their sake.