A lot of Diablo 2 players viewed Nightmare difficulty as the beginning of the actual game, since a lot of skill builds couldn’t be finalized until at least level 40. Many skills can be taken up to 20 times with diminishing returns as you spend points in them, encouraging niche builds and rewarding you for getting those higher levels on your character. As a result, the improved gear that drops on each new difficulty level is a requirement for defeating the higher difficulty levels, especially bosses like Diablo or Baal.ĭiablo 2 has gameplay that’s a bit slower and more measuredĭiablo 2 is less frenetic than Diablo 3, with more skills that add incremental damage increases and skill levels that boost damage by a small amount. You have to hit harder and be able to take more damage to defeat them. The three difficulty levels in Diablo 2 are straightforward enough - mobs deal more damage, have more health, and take less damage. You will also be able to make Hardcore characters once you finish your first Normal difficulty character, meaning that you die for good if you die while on a Hardcore character. Unlike Diablo 3, with its ever increasing Torment levels, there are three difficulty levels in Diablo 2 and thus in Diablo 2 Resurrected, the aforementioned Normal, Nightmare, and Hell difficulty levels. Three difficulty modes are all you’re getting in Diablo 2: Resurrected No Paragon levels, no endless treadmill of power ups, you have 98 skill points and 490 stat points, and you probably will have to play the game on Normal, Nightmare, and Hell difficulty to get to max level. Even if Diablo 2: Resurrected has respecs, they won’t be easily obtained - complete the Den of Evil quest (the first quest in the game) on a specific difficulty and you get one respec per completion per difficulty, for a grand total of three respecs.īy the time you reach level 99 (and it’s not going to happen soon, get that idea right out of your head) you’ll have 98 skill points and 490 stat points to allocate. I’m personally hoping Diablo 2: Resurrected will include respec, but just in case it doesn’t, be aware of this possibility. That means that Diablo 2 was designed so that once you spent a skill point, it was spent and you couldn’t get it back.
There wasn’t any such thing as respecialization in Diablo 2 before the 1.13 patch which released in 2010. Each level you get adds 1 skill point and 5 stat points that you can allocate as you see fit. So once you hit 99 - which you won’t by simply playing and finishing the game’s story - there are no more levels to achieve. Leveling was different in Diablo 2 than its descendantsĭiablo 2 has a level cap, and it’s level 99. So what does that mean, compared to Diablo 3?
The technical alpha test was definitely a big sign that Diablo 2 is what we’re getting with this game. It’s pure Diablo 2 - that’s the goal the developers of the remaster have been working towards, and so far it’s been very successful. Diablo 4 won’t be out for a while yet, but it isn’t that either. Having expectations is okay, but they will require a bit of adjustment. Big Torchlight fan? Well, it’s very much based on Diablo 2, but it also made its own changes. Grim Dawn, Wolcen, Path of Exile, all of these games came out after this one, after all. And that’s fine, it’s a good game, but it means you may have certain expectations when it comes to the franchise, and Diablo 2: Resurrected is not necessarily going to meet those expectations.Įven if you never played Diablo 3, you may be coming to Diablo 2: Resurrected from one of its spiritual successors - that is to say, any ARPG published after it. It’s entirely possible that for a whole generation of gamers, Diablo 3 is the game they think of when they think of the franchise. If you were born after 2000, first off, congratulations on making me feel like a shriveled animated corpse driven from its tomb, but also, congratulations on being younger than Diablo 2. The premier game in ARPGs was released in 2000, and we’ve seen a whole Diablo game released since then, 2012’s Diablo 3.