Highly Recommended
A classic reborn, minor gripes aside, still fantastic
I’ll admit it, this is the third time in my life I’ve bought Diablo II, and this time it came down to three simple reasons: it finally landed on Steam, it’s Steam Deck verified, and the new Warlock class gave me an excuse to jump back in. Naturally, after beating this game so many times as a kid with every other class available, I decided the smart move was to roll a Warlock for this playthrough. That said, this review is really about the Resurrected package as a whole rather than the class itself.
The music still holds up beautifully, and the upscaled graphics are a very welcome change, especially since the original visuals haven’t aged well at all. If you’re the type who misses that grainy pixelated hell, you can toggle the old graphics back on, though I can’t imagine why you’d want to. The updated FMVs are a great touch too. On top of that, the quality of life improvements to the stash are huge, with more overall space, a dedicated section for runes and gems, and a shared stash for both items and gold across your whole account. Auto gold pickup alone makes the game feel infinitely better to play.
That said, it’s a little strange that they kept the stamina mechanic and the run and walk toggle around. It doesn’t really serve much purpose anymore. The game never forces you to walk unless you’ve drained your stamina bar, and later on stamina becomes such a non issue that the whole system just feels like an unnecessary hurdle at the start of the game rather than something meaningful. I would have been fine seeing it cut entirely, but here we are 25 plus years later still dealing with it. Don’t let that scare you off though.
For the collectors out there, The Chronicle is a genuinely cool new addition in the latest Warlock update. It automatically tracks the unique items and set pieces you’ve picked up, giving the game a nice collectathon style archive that adds some extra longevity for dedicated Diablo II fans.
Some of the quests definitely show their age, and there’s no getting around the fact that this is an early 2000s game wearing a very nice new coat of paint. Even so, I had a genuinely good time with it. There’s plenty of replay value here, and it’s got me hoping Diablo III eventually makes its way to Steam with similar controller support down the line.
As a final word, I have no doubt there are better ARPGs out there today, so take this review with the understanding that nostalgia is doing some heavy lifting here. Still, this is the giant whose shoulders today’s genre defining titles are standing on.