By mixing and matching combat and magic, my characters turned into absolute machines. I tend to use these secondary buttons for magic or special abilities (which drain the characters’ mana pool), while keeping my vanilla buttons for immediate, non-draining attacks. For example, I press X to do a basic attack, but by holding L2 and X, I can execute a character’s more powerful magic attack. Resurrected allows me to map a secondary set of actions to the controller’s left trigger. Once I actually figured out the button-mapping mechanics, the characters opened up. It is not hard to figure out, but a bit more guidance would have been welcome – especially for new players who never played the original. I also had no idea that when levelling up, I could choose to obtain new skills and abilities, in addition to upgrading Attributes. When I obtained a new skill, I thought it would be automatically mapped and bound to an available button – instead, I had to figure out binding and manually do it myself. However, in keeping with the theme of old-school games, Diablo 2: Resurrected does little to guide players. Playing on PS5, I feel every jab and magic bolt on the DualSense.

The controls are wonderfully responsive, and each class has its own mechanical feel. In contrast, my Necromancer stands back to let his army of foul beasts, ghouls, and skeletons simply wash over the land, leaving nothing but destruction in its wake. My martial artist Assassin would be right at home in a Yakuza game, chaining jabs that build into a devastating final blow.

For the purposes of this review, I went through them all. Players choose from a pool of seven character classes, with which they smash, shoot and magically blast their way through randomized environments ranging from rural encampments to creepy tombs. It is, in essence, Diablo 2, complete with all the joys and annoyances players might remember.

There are no big updates to controls, camera angles, or map design. It remains campy as hell, and it’s a joy for being so.ĭiablo 2: Resurrected is a remaster of the dungeon-crawling classic. Upon its release in 2000, it was the video game equivalent of a self-aware black metal album, with a performative seriousness that’s not meant to be taken earnestly.

For the uninitiated, Diablo 2 is an isometric action-adventure with RPG elements, set in a dark fantasy universe with angels, demons and all sorts of nefarious entities.

Remastered diablo 2