[twillight]

This game is one of the biggest failures in the entire gaming-history.

First: although most refer this as an RPG, it is not at all an RPG. It offers absolutly no choice in the story, or any of the quests, heck, even when the expansion came out the quests had to be done in an absolute order, or you simply could never done what you skipped!

Of course there are theoretically almost endless ways to create a character. In reality it is not so. With every patch only a half dozen character were able to progress on its own, or be useful in party to the end. Two, maybe three builds in all characterclasses. and even after 13 main patches, some skills were still never an option.

Now back to the field of the quests: half of the "quests" aren't even quests, but things you'll have to do to progress. Like any last quest is "kill the actboss". Reward? There is none. And there are even quests, what are same as other quests - nothing separates them, there is no extra reward, no nothing. A complete failure.

The gameplay is actually simple hack&slash, with only the minimal variety of monsters. And advenced players will simply skip the monsters with any uniquesness, because they don't give what this game only can offer: experience. Of course you'll never progress to the maximum level anymore. Blizzard made it so hard and insanly repetitive, that you simply won't do it. No idea why they didn't simply lowered the level-limit...

Oh, the game theoretically offers countless items to. Also not in reality, as the only items you'll want are certain unique and set items (the set bonuses not worth it, so just think on 'em like unique items with different coloured names), no variety. Heck, there are items what 99% of the players will wear, no matter what build or charactercalss they have. Now also these items are hard to come by. A good amount of the items are not even avaiable anywhere else, but the final boss! And the rest have also so low chance being dropped, that you won't simply care. There goes your items.

The battle itself is simple. You hack&slash with two buttons, before the first strike changing with the hotkeys to the appropriate two skill if necessary. Some characters never even change their two ability. The progress is highly repetitive, because the levels are either insainly long with zillion of monsters (like Act3), or too short with only a few monsters so you'll have to go through the entire act again and again countless times just to reach the level necessary for the next act (like Act4).
Oh, battle-difficulty: it is as simple as this: you either kill or be killed. You don't have MAXIMUM resitances? You'll die, no matter your skills. You don't have the required level? You'll die, no matter your skills. You don't have the advenced item in one of your slots? In the best scenario 8if the items is a weapon) you'll simply not be able to kill anything.

Now the actual gameplay is all about gathering equipment to be able to kill more monsters. To get those equipments needed for that, you need to kill more monsters. Quests? Quests are rare, fixed, and don't give exp, and you're fortunate if they give any kind of reward at all (half of them won't).
Now killing monsters simply won't just work. You'll have to kill SPECIFIC monsters! Over and over again. And they are hard to reach,even when you're invincible you'll have to spend countless hours just to walk through that damned dungeon fnding the damned enterance to that damned monster that has 0.01% chance dropping the item you NEED.

And it is even worse in multiplayer. There the maps are not fixed, so you'll have to spend even more time finding that exit to that monster you want to kill for item. and after you have all items, you'll have to kill again the same monsters for specific key-items to unlock the multiplayre option's only addition: a superfight agains more bloody monsters. What yu kill for more items. And you'll do this countless other times to get the item for you, and the item in perfect condition.

Well, to be honest, you most probably won't kill any monsters, nor looking for equipments in the multiplayer after the first hour. Why? Because you'll be rushed to the very end of the entire game with a measily level 1 character. And as you see that everyone uses cheats, abuses bugs, uses programs to do the item-search and leveling up, hunting you down (with help of programs) and stealing from you, you'll simply turn off the game, or buy the stuff you want, and play alone behinde passworded games - in multiplayer.

Now ontu the statistics, if you are still interrested in this horrible game:
Strenght's only reason is to wear items. Not a single player invest into strenght.
Energy is the joke-stat of Diablo 2. It is there, but noone knows why. You simply never need to invest a single point into this. Oh, there is 1,and only one skill that'd make worth putting points into energy, but since 13 main patches there is a bug that prevents making it to any use.
Dexterity depends on wether you use a shield to block or not., If not, it is like strenght, though most equipments have no DEX-requirement. If you have shield, you go for the aximum amount of block - noone invest any more points then this. Forget about the defense-stat, as it can not realisticly rised ontu a useful level.
Vitality where all the rest of the points go.

Now the bugs as I mentioned them just above: this game has the longest bug-list ever, and every patch just enlargened that. Darn, it is almost as long as the bugs and problems with Windows! there are ca. 200 known bugs, not involving balance-issues, 66% of them identified (nd in mods corrected) by players, half of them being simple typos (one character mistyped). Some of these bugs are in there since 1.00 (like the infamous manaburn bug, what causes and monster with manadrain ability stealing thousand times more mana then they should, causing all your mana disappear even from the weakest of monsters to the strongest of character - all that because of a simple typo).

Balance again is not strong point of this game. Some builds and abilities simply overrule any other possbility. Oh well, maybe you can crawl through the game with an amazon holding lance, but why do it, when with javelins you are a thousand times more efficient?
Not to mention entire abilitytabs, entire builds are not useable. Like Summon Druid. Or Martial Arts assassin. If you choose skills from those tabs as main skill, you'll be stuck soner or later in the game, no exception.

Also the synergie-system introduced in 1.10 is a total failure. The synergies many times don't strenghten each other to any useable level, require too many points to be efficient even for the basics, and Blizzard connected this way the wrong skills almost all times.

Sounds: is there music?