Diablo II: Lord of Destruction

Diablo II: Lord of Destruction Review

What do you do when you have killed Diablo, slain him when he rose from the dead and put away one of his two brothers in the bargain? Well, you wait for Blizzard to come out with a sequel that allows you to have a go at the remaining brother. And sure enough, hot on the heels of Diablo II comes the expansion pack Lord of Destruction in which you are entrusted with the task of putting away Baal, the brother who got away when you were slaughtering Diablo and Mephisto in Diablo II.

Lord of Destruction is the second expansion pack in theDiablo series. Sierra had attempted an expansion titledHellfire for Diablo, but it met with limited success. Blizzard seemed to take heed from that and henceforth decided not to entrust expansion packs of their games to other companies. And if Lord of Destruction (LOD hereafter) is a sampler of its capabilities, they made a move in the right direction.

First things first, LOD is not a new game in itself. It is an expansion that adds a new act to the plot of Diablo II and a whole of new features to Diablo II itself. You need to have Diablo IIinstalled to be able to install LOD. Unlike Diablo II, LOD comes on a single CD. And that makes for a slightly less complicated installation – I have never been one for CD swapping during games. The game installed easily with no requests for restarts.

The first thing that hits one about LOD is the prevalence of snow. The new opening screen of the game has the two new characters (more about them later) walking into a snowbound area. And the movie that gets the new act under way has enough snowflakes to make it seem right out of a polar region. Well, LOD is not based in Antarctica but in Harrogath, the region to which Baal has escaped, carrying with him the remaining worldstone. Your job, of course, is to go get him before he corrupts the world, bringing doom to all good, and all those things bad guys do.

If you have finished Diablo II, you can get into the new act straightaway. However, in case you have not, you will have to finish tackling Diablo and Mephisto before you are allowed a go at Baal. You can, however, use many of the new features and gameplay tweaks added by LOD by changing your Diablo II character to an ‘expansion character’. Be warned though — there is no way you can convert an expansion character back.

Which brings us to the character classes. Of course, you can play LOD with the five character classes used inDiablo II – the Amazon, Barbarian, Sorceress, Necromancer and Paladin. LOD adds two new characters to this list – the Assassin and Druid. And fortunately both add more than their pennyworth to the game. The Assassin can fight with both hands and can employ martial arts’ kicks that would make Jackie Chan proud. It is the Druid though who is more fun to play. Heck, any person who can change into a wolf or a bear and can summon ravens and poisonous creepers to attack the enemy has got to be fun! Both characters come packed with the usual array of spells and weapons that are designed to give the player a real headache about which to pick and which to discard.

Other additions to the game include a whole lot of weapons and magical items that help you in your quest. This includes a new class of weapons termed ‘ethereal’, which pack quite a wallop but cannot be repaired. There are different varieties of gems to be found and more sockets in armours and weapons to slot them in. In short, there’s a whole new arsenal at your disposal when you go looking for trouble. You can also now wield two sets of weapons at the same time and switch from set to another at a keystroke. So, you can carry your sword and shield as well as bow and arrow at the same time and swap them. And, joy of joys, the stash is twice as big as it was in Diablo II. More space for tucking away all those weapons and gems, not to mention gold!

One welcome addition to the game is the feature that allows you to take any mercenaries or warriors that you hire from one act to another – something that could not be done in Diablo II. For instance, if you hire an archer to help you in the first Act, she can accompany you even when you finish all the quests in that Act and move on to the second one. This saves you from the headache of having to hire mercenaries every time you enter a new Act. What is more, you can heal your mercenaries and also equip them with weapons and armour. And if he or she happens to get killed, you can revive them, although this act of mercy will leave you with a lighter purse. Mind you, you still cannot have more than one mercenary to support you, so be sure to invest in some spells that can invoke strange creatures to fight for you.

LOD also introduces a new theatre of action that is rather spectacular. If Diablo II had a fault, it was that its battlefields were a bit monotonous. You arrived at a place and before you knew it, you had to climb down into a dungeon and start killing people. Well, Harrogath sees more battles fought on the land than under it. There is even one assignment that involves battling one’s way through a frozen river. Of course, you have to descend into a basement for your final battle with Baal, but the odd spell underground is preferable to a perennial assignment in the sewers. And the waypoints that transport you instantly from one place to another are more conveniently located so one does not have to spend hours searching for a waypoint before exiting the game.

The battles themselves are rather interesting, too. There are several new adversaries ranging from demon imps to berserk moon lords to rot walkers. Some of them have catapults to inflict long-range damage on you while others can teleport themselves. What’s more, every new quest brings with it a ‘special boss’ who is just that bit more resilient than his flock. And it is not just the bad guys who are thirsting for your blood. You even have to tussle with a pantheon of gods before you get to fight Baal – of course, they are just testing your ability, but it takes more than a little luck to be still breathing after passing that examination. Now I know what they meant when they made ‘The Gods Must Be Crazy’.

The gameplay is thankfully unchanged and is as simple as ever. The mouse and a few keystrokes are all that you need to get along. Moving up a level enables you to allot additional points to your characteristics of strength, dexterity, energy and vitality, and it also entitles you to learn a spell or a skill as per your skill tree. Your character still depends on life and manna, and you can replenish them through potions and scrolls. If all this seems Greek to you, then do take a look at my review of Diablo II.

There are two new cinematics and they are both spectacular, although I am not too sure what happened in the second one. LOD’s music is perhaps the best in the Diablo series and the voice acting is as good as ever. The graphics look simply awesome in the new 800X600 resolution option that LOD brings to Diablo II.

If LOD was an entire new game, I would have hailed it as infinitely superior to Diablo II. However, it is just an expansion pack, and while it does alleviate some of the ills of the earlier game, most of them remain. Battling in Harrogath may be fun, but to get that far you have to fight your way through the Acts of Diablo II first. The levels of violence remain on the higher side (the only way to get rid of an enemy is to kill him or her), and if you save and exit a game before finishing your current mission, you will find that all those you had slaughtered have respawned when you next start playing.

In sum, I would recommend LOD for all those who have finished Diablo II as it enables them to get into the Harrogath Act straight away. Playing the Assassin and the Druid may be fun, but playing them right from the beginning can sorely test one’s patience.

So, is LOD the end of the Diablo saga? After all, the closing scenes of both Diablo and Diablo IIclearly indicated the fact that a sequel was on its way. The end of LOD (relax, I am not giving the plot away) while being a bit fuzzy, contains no direct reference to a sequel. Of course, there may be some hidden brother of Diablo lurking in some cave, corrupting the innocent and waiting for you to come and destroy him. At the time of writing, Blizzard gave us no indication of his existence, although diehard gamers insist that Diablo III is being developed.

If the Diablo series has indeed come to an end, thenLOD is an apt sign-off to one of the greatest RPGs of all time. The influence of the game can be gauged by the fact that every time I sit down and type out my profile, I am sorely tempted to include ‘slew Diablo twice, Mephisto and Baal once each’ under ‘academic and professional distinctions’.

Diablo II: Lord of Destruction Screenshots

[Show as slideshow]

Diablo II: Lord of Destruction Videos

Diablo II: Lord of Destruction Trailer

Diablo II: Lord of Destruction Guides / Links

Diablo II: Lord of Destruction Wikipedia Entry

FAQ/Walkthrough