+

1) Very addictive game play. Everytime the player pushes a button, something cool happens.

2) Very life-like animations that look really cool. In the original Diablo, many of the characters would walk around looking very stiff. In Diablo II, however, they have much more flexible and realistic-looking animations.

3) Fighting the fallen enemies involved some strategy: kill the spell caster first, so he doesn't revive the smaller minions.

4) The loading times during game play happen much faster. One of my biggest complaints about the original Diablo was the loading times the would occur when I was going from the town to the dungeon. But in this game the transition from battleground to town is seamless and instantanious.

5) Five different characters to play and master, each with their own unique fighting style and skills to learn. The Necromancer was my personal favorite.

6) The wammie factor is very high. Enemies explode when they die like a pinata, leaving the player with a bunch of different items to collect, each spell has it's own unique animation that looks really cool... and much more!

7) The cut scenes are of some of the highest quality detail that I've ever seen.

8) You can skip the cut scenes! :O)

9) Reasonable system requirements.

10) In the original Diablo, the game structure was very simple: work your way down through the labyrith, level by level. In Diablo II, however, there are more town, an open field landscape that you can traverse, and smaller caves that you can explore along the way.

11) The biggest improvement that this game has over the original Diablo is the run feature. It allows the player to get to point B faster, and it also allows the player to escape from a dangerous battle situation with incredible ease.

12) The waypoints are also a good way to help the player get to point B faster.

13) Akara automatically heals you when you talk to her, rather than the original diablo where you have to request to be healed.

14) The automatically regenereating Mana is also an excellent improvement over the original.

15) The arrows and other projectile weapons almost always hit their mark. In the original Diablo, I would sometimes have to fire my Bow four or five times before it even hit he enemy. Having it so that they always hit their mark makes the game's gratification come faster.

16) The easy to use point-and-click interface makes the game's learning curve very short.

17) The multiplayer option is great for replay value. Well, until the hackers figure out how to cheat anyway.

18) Randomly generated maps also give the game a ton of replay value, just like the original.

19) The day/night rotation is a great environmental effect. It really adds depth to the environment.

20) Several different themed towns and areas to discover and explore as you continue your journey.


-

1) The story was weak. It just didn't hold my interest, I couldn't get into the storyline.

2) The game play only focuses on doing one thing: hack and slashing demons, collecting treasure, exploring dungeons, and clicking on people to talk to them. This is the only fun thing you do in the game from start to finish.

3) The dynamic loading of the frames gets annoying after awhile.