Developer: Blizzard Entertainment, Vicarious Visions
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment
Platform: PC, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5
Tested on: PC
Diablo II: Resurrected: Reign of the Warlock DLC – Review
We were surprised when Diablo II received a new lease on life in 2021, roughly 21 years after the original game’s release. We quite enjoyed the updates of this classic as well as the improved visuals, but the new build had quite a few bugs that weren’t present in the two-decade-old title. The content was mostly the same, albeit with a new lick of paint, controller support, and console versions with cross-platform support. We expected that to be the definitive way to play Blizzard’s classic hack-and-slash RPG, and we didn’t expect anything new to be added. To our surprise, the Reign of the Warlock DLC was dropped, adding a new class to the game, new items, and a lot of QoL updates.
Some are calling Reign of the Warlock an expansion, but we beg to differ and would call it an enhancement with a new class added to the game. There will be no real new content in the form of additional acts to play through, no real new quests, and no added noteworthy lore. While this sounds negative, we do have to say that the Warlock class stands tall on its own, and for us, it was a completely fresh Diablo II experience where we didn’t know by heart how we would build our freshly made character. The Warlock class has three skill trees, much like the other Diablo II characters, and there are sufficient synergies between skills to allow for several different builds. We personally went for the demon build for our playthrough here, as we always loved our huge armies with the Necromancer when we used to play the original when we were younger. That being said, the summoner Warlock does work differently, as you will only be able to summon several demons (three of them at mastery level 20), but you will be able to actually target enemies with them. This is a huge step up from the erratic behavior of the Necromancer’s minions. This alone felt like a huge improvement. That being said, there are many viable builds currently already being figured out, so it’s a nice class to experiment with.
As mentioned above, there were quite a few QoL improvements with the release of this new DLC. The most notable ones are probably the improved stash experience and the loot filter. The latter basically lets you choose what loot gets priority when picking up valuable items after slaying the many monsters that lurk in Sanctuary. The stash is something that a lot of people have been asking for for years, namely, dedicated spaces for gems, runes, and materials. The gems now have a separate stash tab, where they are grouped together, and can easily be placed in the Horadric Cube. The runes and materials also have their own individual tabs. This makes organizing your stash so much easier, and these small materials stop taking up so much valuable space.
On top of all of this, there is also new endgame content available for when you’re done beating the three difficulty levels. We appreciated the added content, as it did give us new enemies to defeat, but it’s also just more of the same, to get even more powerful loot. Don’t get us wrong, this is certainly one of the reasons why picking up Reign of the Warlock is also interesting, but we were probably more into the new class and the QoL updates.
Conclusion
If you’re still in love with what Diablo II has to offer, slightly over 25 years after its initial release, chances are that you’ll love the new class and will probably assemble the rest of the ‘old crew’ you played the original with. The new Warlock class is a lot of fun, the QoL changes make the game so much smoother, and the additional endgame content is a pleasant bonus. We only wished there was a new act to play through, or that a bit of additional lore was added to the mix. It’s also a bit of a shame that the legacy graphics aren’t available in the Reign of the Warlock DLC. That being said, while perhaps a bit overpriced, we enjoyed what was on offer here.
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