Diablo 2 Resurrected didn’t get me hooked like the original

Like many people playing video games around the turn of the millennium, I was addicted to Diablo 2. I spent all of my free time playing dungeon crawler in the hopes of getting better loot. That’s why I was excited when Diablo 2 Resurrected was announced at BlizzCon 2021 in February. It promised to deliver the classic Diablo experience with a fresh coat of paint and quality of life improvements. Although the game delivered when it released on Tuesday, it didn’t quite capture me like the original version did all those years ago.

Diablo 2 Resurrected does everything you would expect from a remaster. It looks and plays better than the original, but that’s not good enough for someone who refueled Diablo 2 20 years ago.

I’ve played Resurrected on PC, consoles, and even Nintendo Switch, and every version looked great compared to the original. I know this because the game has an option that lets you switch between the enhanced visuals and the original.

While the visual upgrade isn’t exactly a GPU fusion caliber, it’s just the right amount to give you that nostalgic feeling. You want to believe this was what gaming looked like in 2000 on a Pentium II computer with a 15 inch CRT monitor. Going back gives you that reality check. These legacy graphics haven’t aged that well. Still, they were pretty good back then.

Then come improvements in the quality of life at the controls. Like the visuals, it’s easy to forget how monotonous the controls were back then. The new controls are intuitive and work just as well with a controller as they do with a mouse and keyboard.

Still, with all of these improvements, I didn’t have to play Resurrected for more than an hour at a time.

When it was first released, the original Diablo 2 had a unique charm. It was amazing playing the game and finding that when you started at a higher difficulty level you got a whole bunch of new gear which made everything you had before look like total crap. The goal of the game has changed from trying to stop Diablo to getting the most epic loot possible. This urge to seek better equipment became such a staple in later games as it exhausted its charm for me.

It’s not the only thing that has lost its charm. When Diablo came out in 2000, Blizzard was at its peak. He created a sequel that blew away the original Diablo, while also making incredible strategy games like Warcraft and Starcraft. Then, with World of Warcraft, Blizzard would reinvent the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (aka the MMORPG genre).

Today’s Blizzard, however, is rife with controversy instead of excellence.

In 2019, the company sided with China after a The Hearthstone player defiantly proclaimed his support for an independent Hong Kong. Then, this summer, Blizzard was hit by a lawsuit filed by the state of California for allegedly creating a hostile environment for its workers. Although Resurrected was not managed by Blizzard, but by developer Vicarious Visions, it is still an important property for Blizzard. I wouldn’t blame anyone for not wanting to get started.

Diablo 2 Resurrected has been released on PC and PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series consoles, for $ 40.