Diablo II: Lord of Destruction
Blizzard
Rating: 4.5/5

In Diablo II you manage to kill all of Baal's brothers and he is not the slightest bit happy about it. The daemon takes his revenge on the nice and happy lands of the barbarian hordes, then lie in wait expecting you to come a' calling. This, the fifth act in the saga of Diablo II, sees your intrepid adventurer facing snow, ice, terrible winds and a few evil nasties as well.

For your troubles, you have access to better weaponry, better magic items, and far better side-kicks. These sidekicks now get to wear armour, and carry new weapons, so you can arrange it so that your best buddy does not die every five minutes as he did in Diablo II. Much of the new gear is class specific, and much of it is ethereal. These, sometimes powerful magic imbued items are not repairable. The annoying thing about this, is they tend to fail at the worst possible moments. To add to such indignity, these items tend to have little re-sale value, especially after you have beaten them to bits. On the plus side, there are some very nice class specific items which can make the game a lot easier. But, more on that later.

There are new additions to the possible additions to socketed weapons. In addition to precious stones, there are now jewels and runes. The jewels are added like precious stones and give new abilities to the item in which they are placed. The runes have a dual purpose, well at least in the Realm games. The first of these abilities is similar to that of a jewel or gem. However, if one combines the runes into Norse (presumably) words, their ability is increased exponentially. The downside is that this feature is only available in Realm games right now. (Runes words.) Why it only works in the online game and not the solo game is a mystery to me. However. it is promised that this will be corrected in a future update.

Blizzard has come up with two new classes to keep the user interested even after the fairly short fifth act is completed by one?s existing characters. It is useful to note that once a character has been adapted for use in the expansion, he is not able to go back to just plain Diablo II. Why one would want to regress is beyond me. Any character that has beaten Diablo should be able to breeze through the fifth act. If one is able to get some good kit for one?s side-kick, it can be annoyingly easy.

There are two new classes two chose from in addition to the 5 existing ones. These two classes are similar. Both up close and personal characters. One relies on stealth, the other on pure beastly force. The assassin is another female character who excels in stealth and sneaky ways of killing the baddies. I found this character to be rather dull in comparison to some of the other classes in the game. I would not recommend to any newcomer to the game, as it has some quirks and nuances that take a bit of effort to learn.