This also means that new players will have precisely zero context for the long, expository cutscene that plays before the game even starts. (Transferring items was a huge pain in the base game.) Diablo II: Resurrected gives you crystal-clear options for online and offline play, including whether you want to play with the Lord of Destruction expansion content, whether you want a hardcore (perma-death) character, or whether you want other players to jump into your game. You can now pick up gold automatically, see a full list of gear bonuses, respec high-level characters and share an inventory stash across all of your characters. It’s even odder when you consider that Diablo II: Resurrected does, indeed, have a few quality-of-life improvements. Now that games like Diablo III and Torchlight have streamlined a lot of these inconveniences, it’s odd that Diablo II wouldn’t at least have an option to follow suit. Micromanaging your inventory and making frequent trips back to town was tedious when Diablo II debuted. You’ll also have to dive in and move items around manually to max out your space, since the game’s auto-sort options are limited. As such, after 15 minutes or so of adventuring, your inventory will be packed to the brim, even if you’re fairly judicious about what you want to keep.

Your inventory in this game is tiny, and nothing stacks, not even potions. Granted, most of the equipment you find is not all that useful - and this is where Diablo II starts to show its age. Defeating enemies feels rewarding, since you never know what they might drop, whether it’s a lifesaving potion, or a powerful piece of unique equipment. This has been one of Diablo’s biggest draws ever since the first game. Gathering loot is the other big part of the equation. Combat is always simple, but not always easy, thanks to a huge variety of procedurally generated enemies and levels.

A Necromancer might hang back and let scads of skeletons do his dirty work, while an Assassin might disable powerful foes with martial arts while picking off weaker ones with traps. Managing huge crowds of enemies is an interesting challenge, since each class has a somewhat different approach to it. As such, the vast majority of Diablo II: Resurrected is clicking on enemies as quickly as humanly possible, occasionally retreating to quaff a health or mana potion.

Diablo 2 resurrected xbox review