So, I got the privilege to get into to first closed beta for Diablo 2 Resurrected and couldn’t wait to get in and try it out.
At the very start, I was ready to press the play button, the cinematic intro started playing and I was extremely impressed with the graphical quality. Then when I got into the game itself, I was met with a bunch of disappointment, my high-end GPU (graphics card) started ramping up and was at a constant of 98% usage. And the game felt like Diablo 2 was still in the grave and had not yet been resurrected. I played for about 30 minutes and sadly closed out of the game. I started writing my review with the expected, “This game is rushed for publicity”-idea. However, I figured to give Blizzard a second chance (not that they deserve one at this time, but I do really like the Diablo series) and waited for some updates that quickly came in the following days. After that I had to scrap my article completely, it felt as if they uploaded a completely different game, this felt actually resurrected now!
Diablo 2 is and always will be a great staple in RPG history and is a great experience even if the game is old enough to drink alcohol in the US by now. So, it is hard to mess up a remaster of such a game. However, that also brings around some great expectations. And in my opinion, Blizzard did a great job here. The new visuals are looking amazing, and the animations of the skills are just great and yet they do not feel too different from the original.
Diablo 2 Resurrected features some changes and improvements on the original version, but to the delight of some old-school gamers, most of these are optional and can be turned off, to get the experience of the game back in 2000. One of these features is the automatic gold pick-up. This is one that I sure as hell will not be turning of anytime soon.
The only issue I have at this moment is that the game does not seem as polished as I want it to be. My fear of a rushed game with such a great title flares up when I see performance issues and I loathe the idea of having a public opinion on the game as we had with titles like Cyberpunk 2077. But the game is still in beta and thus not finished yet. So, we’ll have to see if these issues are fixed on day one of release. Blizzard desperately needs some good publicity but rushing a game is never the answer.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, I had an amazing time playing Diablo 2 resurrected and am looking forward to its release. I have been a Diablo fan since the very first game of the franchise and will absolutely play this game multiple times over. If you have never gotten the chance to play this game or if you just want to replay it, I strongly recommend it. Be aware that there are some technical issues at this very moment, but we are still in beta and they are few and far in between. I am hoping for a bit more optimization before launch and then I think this game will have been well worth the wait.
