Diablo II is, of course, also a lot bigger than the original. Rather than clearing the demon-infested halls beneath another town like Tristram, you have to fight through four very different locations set in locations such as a rain drenched moor, a desert next to a town, a jungle and of course the depths of hell. Much of the action in Diablo II takes part in huge outdoor areas rather than the cramped dungeons of the original, a welcome change if ever there was one. As in the original, replayability is again increased by maps that are randomised each time you play.

One thing that Diablo II has received a lot of criticism for is its graphics, and it's easy to see why. We can forgive that it isn't 3D, especially as it uses Direct3D for some spell effects and the like. But even for a 2D game, Diablo II looks a little dated. The resolution and colour depth is unusually low and would have been even if the game arrived a year or two ago. On a bigger monitor things can also get rather pixelated. The huge number of monsters that sometimes appear on screen would also be impossible in 3D, although a higher resolution and colour palette would surely have been possible with minimal performance hit. On the other hand it is still a much prettier game than the original and the lacklustre graphics don't stop it being a lot of fun. Still, for those desperate to see a Diablo game in 3D, we'd be very surprised if the highly inevitable sequel didn't head down that road.

In sharp contrast to the rather lacklustre graphics, the video sequences that appear before and after each of the four acts are simply gorgeous. Blizzard doesn't tend to do a lot of computer generated video for their games compared to people like Westwood, but the quality more than makes up for the lack of quantity. The humans, demons and even archangels that make an appearance in the video are convincing and very well done, making the video sequences a good reason to continue playing despite the rather predictable and disappointing ending.

We gave the multiplayer in Diablo II a long test over a LAN and as you'd expect, it was a lot more fun that playing it solo. The numerous hordes that you fight in single player become vast armies when you add more people to the game, which just makes things more frantic and entertaining. We had much less success online, however. We did manage to get into a few open battle net games as they aren't hosted on battle.net servers. Closed battle net games, where you have to start a new multiplayer only character rather than using an old single player one, proved impossible for us to access, day after day even trying different ISPs. The phenomenal success of Diablo II is obviously more to blame than Blizzard's competence in setting up servers, but it is still something that lets down an otherwise good game, especially as multiplayer is what many people were looking forward to most about the title.