Okay gang, let's go kill the devil.
Welcome to Diablo II, the lord and master over all ye who dares enter the skeleton-clicky genre! Released by Blizzard North in 2000, Diablo II's randomly generated dungeons filled with dozens of monsters holding various pieces of treasure just begged to be clicked on endlessly, for hours on end, with your friends or alone in single player. This timeless mouse-bashing will most certainly outlast our generation. What other game in the recent Action RPG genre has inspired so many knock-offs and competitor promises of improvements, only to have them fall, dead at its feet? This is devil magic, my friends.
Despite the pre-rendered 3D swaths of dirt and blood that on some monitors can appear to resemble video game graphics, Diablo II's greatest strength above all of its peers is the world and its story. Neither are overly special; the story is fairly simple and the world has little to set it apart, only peppered with randomly generated dungeons with loot galore. But Blizzard's greatest power is one of execution. As we have seen through the years with WarCraft, StarCraft and the many sequels they have created, Blizzard never does anything unless they can make it the very best in the industry. The basic story doesn't have amazing writing but it's serviceable for the game it supports and the ways in which the story is expressed is what makes the deal work. Townsfolk gossip among themselves, and small glimpses around the landscape reveal just enough to keep the world interesting and exploration rewarding. None of this is necessary to experience, but it's there and it works. Furthermore, the CGI movies that surround the experience are jaw-dropping and well directed, never failing to make the player keep moving forward to the next act.
But what makes the package work is the combat system, which, even in 2000, was fairly conservative in the Action RPG genre. Again, Blizzard's strength is in the execution, and the foundation here is solid enough to allow their polish, skills and abilities make this game a star. The normal click-on-bad-guys-until-they-die melee is entertaining enough, and the well-designed interface makes it effortless to do so. The skill tree is simply icing on the cake, allowing players to gather extra spells and abilities, dangling a carrot in front of the player that seems to get bigger and more rewarding to snap up as they play. The different classes play differently from one another to make an actual, genuine difference, and in multiplayer the way in which the characters can work together is a game in and of itself. The way in which the game changes from game to game is subtle, but notable enough to make subsequent explorations less of a chore than it may seem on the first glance - which makes the multiplayer far more worthwhile.
The game's flaws stem mostly from its age. The game resembles an ugly bruise. The voice acting is barely mediocre and the writing doesn't give much to work with. And as good as Blizzard has made their combat system, in single player the game loses some of its forward momentum and at times its hard to feel a progression at all, even though the game's goals aren't all that difficult to obtain. Additionally, part of the key to success is simply sheer luck: whether or not an enemy drops a certain piece of armor or sword that you've been hunting for for a millennium is up to only some random number generator, hidden deep within the Diablo source code. However, this is a criticism of the genre as a whole, and to be fair Diablo's attempted fixes do far more than many of its competitors (I'm looking at you, Mr. "One Dungeon For The Entire Game" Torchlight).
As such it's hard to recommend the Diablo Battle Chest for either gamers hooked on high resolution graphics with more than four colors or even anyone for the current price of forty dollars. The game's certainly worth your time and money, but despite the classic combat and the enjoyable community on Battle Net (Blizzard's multiplayer service) this is not a game that can command such a price nowadays. However, with a better price and a bit of nostalgia, Diablo II still holds up to this day, and it's highly recommended to anyone who likes to click on skeletons all day to grab it when it's on sale. Heaven knows it's still a worthwhile purchase.