I really liked the original Diablo game, but found it to be a little repetitive after a while. So I was kind of interested in the sequel, which promised to expand the story started in the first game.
A few months after I heard about it, I picked up my copy and started playing. The game is a lot like the old game, convoluted story intact. It so happens that the hero of the first game, after killing Diablo, shoved the rock containing his soul into his own head, in an attempt to contain it, and then wandered off to the East to destroy it. You follow him in an attempt to do the same.
The game takes a lot of the more annoying things about the first game and fixed them. Probably the most important thing that was fixed was that your character can run, which solves the problem of the low-speed chases in the first game.
The game does boil down to just being the same as the first game, but just more. You still run around hitting things until they quit moving, but you have more ways to do it (more classes) and more things to bludgeon your enemies with (more loot). Instead of going down dozens of levels in a dungeon under a town you do a few quests in a wooded area, a few quests in a desert, a few in a jungle, and a few in Hell. But the ending is fairly wide open. It turns out that a while after this game went on sale that an expansion was announced. But it wasn’t an expansion in the normal sense. It was the final chapter of the game. I was pretty upset that I had to pony up another couple of Jacksons for the rest of the game that I was playing, so I passed on it for a long time.
I did acquiesce eventually and pick up the expansion, but not for several years. We’ll talk about that another time.