Once again, VV took a “less is more” approach here. That leaves us with the last and likely most important aspect of the game for most players: the gameplay. Without playing them side by side over and over, I would not be able to tell you if the sound I’m listening to is the chime effect from 2001 or 2021. The effects themselves are redone to support more channels and surround sound, but with the clear goal of deviating from the originals as little as possible. Some would argue that some extra voice lines here and there could have helped add more personality to the characters, but VV applied a “don’t fix it if it ain’t broken” mentality here, which I agree with. Sound was changed the least out of any aspect of the game, and for good reason: the sound design of D2 was stellar, and absolutely does hold up in 2021. To the younger members of the audience, it might seem silly that I’m even talking about cinematics, but upon watching these, you may just understand! No, they’re D2’s cinematics, just as I remembered, carefully recreated in HD. The cinematics are breathtaking, and they lack the Disney-esque corniness of modern Blizzard cinematics.
D2’s cinematics were no exception, and VV had their work cut out for them, updating them without pissing off long-time fans - and I’m glad to say that again, they delivered. Blizzard always had a reputation of having killer cinematics, with incredible presentation and state-of-the-art visuals. I had to turn down the graphics settings and reduce the internal resolution to 75% in order to get a decent frame rate, which is honestly somewhat unimpressive and likely betrays a slight lack of optimization, as the graphics are not that good.Īnother visual area that was updated to great effect is the cinematics. That’s slightly too faithful to the original for me. At a 4k resolution with graphics settings set to highest, I was getting 25 FPS, which ironically is the FPS of the original game. My rig’s not the strongest out there, but I’d call it decent, sporting a GTX 1070 GPU and an i7 7700K CPU, yet this game absolutely crushed my PC. In fact, the only complaint that I could have about the graphics is that they’re perhaps slightly too good. It’s Tyrael, just like I remember him - but in HD! There is no way that 2021 Blizzard, with its constant stumbling, would have been able to put together something of this quality, and my heart could not have handled a Diablo 2: Reforged type situation. VV is simply unmatched at taking old, beloved games, and enriching them with modern graphics and conveniences without jeopardizing the game’s soul, as vague as that may be.
#Diablo 2 resurrected review pro#
Sane Trilogyand Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2.Īfter playing through D2R, I think that was definitely the right call. But after seeing gameplay footage, many hardcore fans - myself included - were cautiously optimistic.īlizzard decided to outsource this project to Vicarious Visions, an Activision Blizzard subsidiary who had received generally favorable feedback following their recent remasters, Crash Bandicoot N. There was perhaps less enthusiasm in the room than they had hoped for, as fans had become wary of Blizzard remasters after the Warcraft III: Reforged disappointment just a year earlier. Yet D2 made it on the list of the 20 best-selling games of 2008 and had up to 11 million active players in 2010, almost 10 years after its release - it’s hard to overstate how dominant of a force it was.įast forward to 2021: Blizzard announces that D2 is being remastered as Diablo II: Resurrected (D2R), to be released in the same year. A lesser game would not have been this relevant and gotten this much hype 20 years after its original release. There is perhaps no greater testament to how genre-defining D2 was than the very fact that I am writing this review. For those of us who were gaming on PC in 2001-2003, this is a picture we can hear
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