Shuffle My World Again

I must admit, I have been captured by the action & adventure of Diablo II. Even with its blocky character graphics (compared to the silky smooth DC Lodoss graphics), there is something nice about the way the landscape scrolls by as you run to your next killing assignment.

The quests are nicely done, presented to you by an NPC in the starting village. The "open-space" battling zones seem to have their contents shuffled randomly each time you enter the game. Which keeps the travelling fresh. It does mean you have to explore each zone again, to find the exact location of particular landmarks. This can only add to the replayability. There are portals that can be found in each zone, where you can teleport to and from your encampment. Once you have discovered and activated a portal, it is available for all subsequent games - which saves on boot leather. The dungeon zones are set in stone, and don't jiggle about. Most of the dungeons are where the big bosses live - which is only right and proper. There a mini-bosses dotted around the landscape, these named mobs are often tougher than their minions, with particular strengths that need to be overcome. I like these. However, they never seem to deliver much in the way of special items, once you've craved them up.

One quest sees you battle a huge pink minotaur called 'The Smithy' in order to steal back the magical hammer. On returning the hammer to the camp blacksmith, she will imbue one of your standard weapons with 1 to 5 magical powers. Making your plain old long sword into a demon of a blade. This sort of thing excites me the most. Transforming something tatty into something you cannot battle without. The single imbue is only offered once in the whole game, which is a shame. Building this into some more quests would spice up the game no end.

The limited inventory slots forces you into making bug decisions about which weapons to use. Specialising in one or two is preferred. It does mean that sometimes a weapon you've trusted and repaired many times - may have to be sold in the cold light of day - just to afford you the luxury of trying out a different form of attack.