Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction Review

Both veterans and beginners are sure to find the two new classes the Assassin and the Druid most intriguing. There is a system for importing old characters from Diablo II which modifies them to suit the needs of the expansion, and saves them as Expansion Characters. This means you won't be able to use those characters in Diablo II without the expansion... and for that matter, why would you? Diablo II really needed the expansion both for the patches and for the story.

The only thing you can do with the new classes is to start the game all over, which might prove interesting because of the way the classes are balanced. The Assassin is a combination of the Paladin and Amazon, and the Druid is somewhere between the Necromancer and Barbarian.

The Assassin uses darkness and stealth skills to do her tasks. She has three groups of skills with ten skills in each group: Martial Arts, Traps and Shadow discipline. Some shadow discipline skills enable her to become a shadow and pass unseen by her enemies. Her trap skills are also interesting - the spike generator (a bunch of blazing spikes flying all over when activated), Shock field (temporarily shocks the enemy), but my personal favorite was the wake of fire sending a flame-wave towards your opponents. This is ideal if you are surrounded by a large number of foes. Assassin's special weapon is her spiked gauntlet, which can be used in combination with some Martial Arts skills for spectacular finishing of enemy bosses.

The Druid is in fact the priest of the nature, and he functions much the same as the Necromancer. The Druid can shapeshift into werewolf and werebear with bonuses such as rabies (poison damage), fury, maul, hunger (mana and life stealing)...He can summon ravens, spirit-wolves, plants (poison creeper, carrion wine, solar creeper) or a grizzly-bear. He also has a repertoire of elemental spells that can scourge and destroy his enemies: tornado, arctic blast, firestorm, armageddon, twister, fissure, and volcano. His constitution is somewhere between the Necromancer and the Barbarian, and his skills have been divided into Shapeshifting, Elemental and Summoning. He is quite an interesting character to play with, and strong one too. While playing him, I didn't die once, which is pretty scary. I think that Blizzard realized they made him too strong, so they decided to soften him up in the latest patch.

I have to say that even though I hate what Diablo Hack'n'Slash gameplay does to my mice (note: I said mice), this expansion and what it had to offer really got my attention. If you are an old Diablo fan, you probably already finished the expansion, and if you never even played Diablo II, well, now you can play a complete debugged game with seven available PC classes.