Diablo Battle Chest
Binding : CD-ROM
ProductGroup : Video Games
Manufacturer : Blizzard Entertainment
Brand : Blizzard Entertainment
Label : Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher : Blizzard Entertainment
Model : 71730
Platform : Windows XP
Studio : Blizzard Entertainment
ReleaseDate : 2003-12-14
Lowest Used Price: USD $24.98
Lowest New Price: USD $29.90
- This collection features Diablo, Diablo II, Diablo II - Lord Of Destruction, and 2 Hint Guides.
- In Diablo II, an otherworldly force of chaos named Diablo has taken possession of the hero who banished him from Earth. He now walks the mortal world, causing death and destruction while making deals with other evil forces.
- Journey to strange lands as a mighty warrior or powerful wizard
- Travel an expanded world with new quests, weapons, spells, armor and monsters
- Discover sinister secrets, multiple dungeons, caverns and crypts as you fight to stop the Prime Evils
The Diablo Battle Chest takes you into the world of Diablo, as you experience the first-person action of this world-famous role-playing/shooter game! In Diablo 2 - Lord Of Destruction one of Diablo's underlings, Baal, has escaped and continues terrorizing the world Battle against 15 new enemies as you build a new party Earn new skills and use new character classes, like assassin and druid Multiplayer support for up to 8 players
Amazon.com Review
The Diablo Battle Chest is the complete Diablo saga in one box. It includes Diablo, Diablo II (the fastest-selling PC game of all time), the Diablo II: Lord of Destruction expansion pack, and the official Diablo II strategy guide from BradyGames. The combined retail value of everything in the Diablo Battle Chest is more than $70.
The Diablo Battle Chest makes the perfect gift for someone new to the action-RPG phenomenon, or for the hard-core Diablo fan that wants the complete series in one big collectible box.
Maybe I can stop playing long enough to write this review... (2009-05-19)
I've recently been on an ARPG (Action Role-Playing Game) bender starting back up recently with Sacred 2. Sacred 2 is a good game but after about 20 hours invested a bug corrupted my character (which is fairly common as I understand it). This happened twice. Being a console gamer I had only dabbled with the original Diablo when I was younger but during that time I wasn't heavily into ARPGs, not like I am now anyways. Sacred 2 gave me the ARPG bug so I had to find something. I always see ARPGs being compared to Diablo 2 so I decided to step out of my console comfort zone and give it a whirl. The good news - this game is addicting as ever and definitely scratches the itch. The bad news - this game is addicting as ever and I can't put it down!
Despite being around 10 years old $30-$40 for the Battle Chest is an absolute steal. You get all the Diablo goodness you could want including the original Diablo, Diablo 2, the LoD (Lord of Destruction) expansion and a surprisingly useful strategy guide. This is potentially thousands of hours worth of gaming if you're an ARPG-aholic. Of course if that's the case then you've probably played this game to death. For those of us who were living in the dark or who are mostly console gamers like me - read on.
Before I dig into the game I'd like to comment on the usefulness of the included strategy guide. When I first bought the Battle Chest I figured the strategy guide might be useful for a complete beginner and that it would soon become useless as I learned the ins and outs of the game. Not true. This guide includes nice detailed descriptions for every skill in the game as well as which ones are the most useful in general and which ones are useful for multiplayer (and which ones aren't all that useful). This is great because it allows you to dig through the guide and plan out a character build. It's actually really fun just to dig through the guide and try to come up with different build ideas. This part of the guide will stay relevant for as long as you play this game or at least until you can memorize every skill in the game! Something I'll never be able to do. Also the author of this guide has a good writing style. 5/5 for the guide. Other goodies in the guide include a walk-through, a catalog of all the baddies with their details, tips from the pros and more.
Now the meat of this set - Diablo 2: LoD. I have to admit, I haven't played all the way through the original Diablo but most people aren't purchasing this set for the original. It's great that it's included and I do plan on playing through it eventually. That being said - this review will be more focused on Diablo 2: LoD. Note: you should go ahead and install Diablo 2 with the LoD expansion. You get all the great stuff from the original Diablo 2 plus all the goodies from LoD.
Here, let me get the sound, graphics and story part out of the way real fast...
Being around 10 years old we can't expect stellar graphics by today's standards. I still find them to be great though. They aren't high res or anything but things like spells still look great. The dungeons are randomized so they had to use generic environments which do get a bit repetitive. I do love the hand-drawn look. I did play Baldurs Gate on the PC way back and like those games Diablo 2 uses an isometric perspective. Your character does change visually depending on what you wear and wield.
The sounds are good. Clinks and clanks all sound good, monsters sound good and the music is great. The voice acting is average most of the time.
I don't like to give anything away story-wise but I have to say this one is rather basic. Nothing real epic here but it's not terrible.
You're not buying this game for amazing graphics or anything like that. You're buying this game because you want a great APRG and this game delivers wildly beyond my original expectations. It's no wonder the community is still active and there are plenty of people still addicted even 10 years later.
The beauty of this game is in its simple no-nonsense approach to character builds. ARPGs these days try to do way too much with the genre and ultimately bog down the game. D2: Lod is much simpler. You choose a character, you pick a handful of the many skills they possess and focus on leveling those skills up. It's really not wise to try and level up all skills because towards the middle of the game you will have a lot of low-level skills but they will all be very weak - so it's best to get an idea of the type of character for your chosen class, pick some skills that sound interesting to you and run with that (this is where the included strategy guide is extremely helpful!).
With a total of 7 characters and each character having a robust skill tree (each character has unique skills) the possibilities seem endless. There has to be at least a few hundred skills total and most of them are useful in one way or another. The skills are great because you can actually see a lot of them in action - it's not usually a simple buff up - you're summoning things, pummeling things, shooting chain lightning spells - things like that. With each level-up you get to assign a handful of points to your attributes (strength, agility...etc) and you get to assign a skill point. This makes leveling up a joy because you really get the sense that your character has improved. Each and every point really makes a difference. As far as I know you can level up each skill as much as you want provided you have the skill points to do so. So essentially if you wanted to you could invest in a single skill and by level 30 your one skill could be at level 30 (plus maybe a few more if you find skill books) That one skill would be insanely powerful but your character would be very narrow. The other extreme would be to level up a different skill with each level you gain (more skills become available as you level up by the way). Your character would be extremely versitile but also very weak. The goal is to find a happy medium between these extremes with the skills that work for your character idea.
Of course what would an ARPG be without a bunch of different weapons, armor types and other trinkets? D2: LoD definitely delivers here and then some. There has to be thousands of different types of weapons/armor in this game - maybe even tens of thousands of possibilities. There are a slew of amulets, rings and charms you can carry to help buff your character up as well. There are weapons and armor that have sockets (up to 6 slots) that allow you to insert gems and the like. Some of these gems are very powerful indeed! In short there is no shortage of goodies in this game - the possibilities really are staggering.
The gameplay itself is relatively simple but highly addicting. You have a sash that carries potions (health, mana, antidote - things like that), which is mapped to your 1-4 numerical keys (you'll quaff a lot of potion) and your skills are mapped to your F keys (F1 - F8 for each mouse button so 16 total hot keys). Well not entirely true you can map scrolls and a few other actions as well but most will use the F keys for their skills. Some skills are passive and are constantly activated as long as it's your active skill and some are more active - like spells and offensive skills. You can map both mouse buttons. So for example you can assign your left button to an attack and your right button to a skill and you use the F keys to switch between the skills. There's a lot of frantic clicking but if you like to use different strategies for one character you can easily map everything so you can switch between different combat/defense strategies real quickly. Also worth mentioning is you can carry two different weapons/shield combos at the same time and easily switch between the two in real time using the W key (default). This allows you to come up with many interesting combat strategies.
This game might seem like a simple point click at first but it can get quite deep, especially on higher difficulties where you need to use more strategy. As far as hack and slash action goes this game has virtually no negatives to speak of - not for me anyways. Some may create a simple barbarian who charges the field using powerful offensive skills. Others may prefer the sorceress and choose to invest in the different elemental magic skills ready for battles against all the different elements. Or maybe some will have a character that wields a powerful sword/shild as well as a bow so they can pick off enemies from afar and charge them when they need to (which is easily done thanks to being able to instantly swap between 2 different weapons/shield combos). The limit is your imagination and no game pulls this off better then Diablo 2.
The game still not intense enough for you? Well, try hardcore mode and bring your character online. Normally when you die it's a bit inconvenient because if you have high quality goodies then you have to battle your way back to your corpse so you can retrieve them (good thing you kept backup goodies in your chest - didn't you?). You also have to rehire any hirelings you might have and you have to pay gold for your death. This is painful enough but for you truly obscene players you can try hardcore. In this mode when you die you die. You lose your character forever, your loot - everything! That should keep the battles tense enough for you! I've only played a little bit of a character on hardcore. Right now it's still scary for me because you can end up flushing many hours of invested time right down the toilet. I must say it definitely adds an "oh crud this really matters!" layer to the game and I'm sure many players wouldn't have it any other way.
Another cool feature is the random maps. Yes they will all feel similar from game to game but they are random which means you can't just breeze through the game knowing where everything is located - that would be boring! The maps are randomized once for each single player game and randomized every multiplayer game. So if you clear half a dungeon then quit when you go back to that dungeon your minimap will reveal which part was already discovered and the dungeon will not be re-randomized (single player). The random map generator in this game does a great job creating nice maps - nothing stupid like the next level of the dungeon being 10 feet from where you started.
Before I write a book for a review I want to mention inventory management. Some people may hate this but you are quite limited on inventory space. You have your character and a chest to keep loot in - neither one providing ample space. I personally love this because the game forces you to really think about what you need to survive - it gives the game even more strategy. A few items like chest-keys and certain potions stack and there are a few options to lighten your inventory like scroll tomes that allow you to store many scrolls in one tome. Mid-game you get a nice item that gives you 8 additional squares of space which doesn't seem like much but in this game it's a godsend. Eventually you will be careful about what you loot and you won't just grab everything you see. Some games allow you to carry a rediculous amount of loot making it a chore digging through all of it figuring out what you want to sell. Also worth mentioning is when items drop the labels are color coded based on rarity so it becomes easier to sift over the loot before picking it up. You don't just pick up everything in sight and then spend an hour going through all of it - with this game it becomes easy to know what you really want to pick up.
There are a few small negatives I could mention but they are real nit-picky. There aren't really that many quests as most are geared for the storyline. Also you don't know the value of your loot until you go to sell it. There are probably a few other small things I could whine about too. This is really being nit-picky though and the positives FAR outweigh the negatives.
Look, I could keep going into all the fine details of this game but this review has to end at some point. This game is easy to pick up and learn but at the same time it's very deep and engaging. You aren't bogged down with all the fluff like you are with recent games. I can't believe I didn't play this game years ago but I'm happy I didn't! Now I get to experience all of its greatness! I can safely say that even being 10 years old and me just coming into it recently - this may be one of the best games I've ever played and it's certainly the best ARPG I've played. This game is balanced perfectly between depth and ease of use. The replay value in this game is amazing! No wonder so many people have invested hundreds if not thousands of hours in this game! Be warned though - you may have a lot of tired days at work from staying up so late playing this insanely addictive game. Don't say I didn't warn you!
Oh man! it's already 10:00 at night! If I start now I can get 4 hours of playtime and still get 4 hours of sleep... bye!
Diablo I only runs on classic (2009-05-15)
It says that it runs on OS X 10.4 and 10.5, but this is only true for Diablo II. Diablo I only runs on Classic for Mac, and trying to get an emulator to run it, especially for Intel machines, is a huge pain.
the best (2009-05-09)
Diablo 2 and LOD are the best RPG Games, the game mode is so easy, everyone can play it, the character classes are awesome, the battlechest contains both games plus diablo 1 and a book of strategies, for every diablo fan this is a must.
Brand New Diablo Fan! (2009-05-01)
With all of the games on the market today it is amazing that I can honestly say this is one of the most fun, most playable games I have ever picked up. I had never played the Diablo series of games, but have played other Blizzard games such as Warcraft. I knew that Blizzard was famous for making quality games but this is a true delight. Sure the graphics are dated but so what - the game is as fun as anything out there and the replayability is off the charts. The Battle Chest gives you Diablo, Diablo 2, Diablo 2 expansion, a diablo music cd (cinematics), diablo 2 walkthrough , and so much more. It is well worth the buy and you will quickly be amazed at how much time goes by when you are playing! (a trait that many of Blizzard's games share in common)
Although I missed out on playing the Diablo games when they were first released, I am more than making up for it now! Great job Blizzard, I absolutely cannot wait to see Diablo 3!!!
Only one quick thing to mention on the down side - if you happen to have an Intel based Mac, you may run into trouble with these games or they may not load properly, if at all. Be sure to check your system requirements before purchasing or even better, get Mac OS 9 ready...
Finally, I would recommend the Diablo Battle Chest for anyone who is a fan of the games and wants to play thru them again for a good time, or a RPG/adventure fan who wants a quality series of games. The Diablo series can be played as single player or even on battle.net with other players for free. There are so many options, you will quickly find this game to be one of the best all time PC games. Believe me when I say that no matter what, you won't be disappointed with the Diablo Battle Chest! It has something for gamers of all varieties.
Addictive, very addictive (2009-03-26)
I've been wanting to play this game since a long time ago. Even though it is very old, the quality Blizzard put into it makes it my third favorite game (behind Baldur's Gate and FFVII). If you are a gamer that likes leveling up games, this is for you. Perhaps the graphics are not so impressive nowadays, but by the time it was released the were awesome. Personally I think that every gamer should play this game at least once, since it is a very complete game.
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