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While roaming around the acts, you’ll discover items and pieces of treasure. In one morbidly bizarre feature of the game, you can even eviscerate body parts from monsters you’ve killed and convert them into objects, or trade the unconverted parts for goods or currency. Sometimes you’ll need to find items to complete a quest. Some items help you gain power, and some you can trade for other things you need. And here’s an example of how the mystery comes in — when you find an item, you’ll need to deduce what it’s for, how it should be used, and how it best can benefit your character.
The game includes a rich physical environment, with wildernesses and four inhabited towns. Each town has an assortment of dramatic buildings, crypts, caverns and dungeons to explore. Towns are also safe havens, where you can chat with other players (if you’re playing in multiplayer mode) or with NPCs, store your items in a stash area, sell or barter items with NPCs — or even get help if you’ve been poisoned. (Most notably, towns are great places to safely rest your character when you need to take a real-world trip to the john, or get something to munch on.)
Don’t Fear the Reaper
During the course of the game, your character will die many times, only to be regenerated. But when you come back again, you won’t have the items you possessed when you were killed. Your regenerated character will also have a slightly lower experience level. This provides an incentive not to get killed, but in fact, sometimes you need to die at least once to learn how to stay alive the next time you meet a similar threat. It sounds crazy, but dying repeatedly is one way you learn.
When you eventually finish the game as your first hero, you’ll want to play Diablo II again, assuming the identity of each of the other heroes. Because the environments are randomly generated, and because each hero has a very different set of skills, the game will be slightly different every time.
What’s New in the Sequel
Conceptually, Diablo II is similar to the original game, with a few important changes: It has some smart interface improvements as well as the expected eye-candy enhancements that come with advanced computer technology. But veteran players are most excited about the new and expanded content, in Diablo II,with a whole new set of challenges, character identities, quests and completely new environments to explore and conquer.
In addition to its terrific single-player mode, Diablo is well known as a great multiplayer game played over the Internet. But the original Diablo multiplayer mode didn’t include all the quests from the single-player game. Diablo II, however, includes single-player and multiplayer mode, making team-playing over the Internet a blast.
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System Requirements
Single-Player System Requirements  Mac OS 8.1 or higher PowerPC G3 processor or higher 64MB of Memory with Virtual Memory turned on 650MB of hard disk space 4X CD-ROM drive or faster Video support for 256 color display at 800x600 Resolution or higherMultiplayer System Requirements 64MB of Memory with Virtual Memory turned on 950MB of hard disk space 28.8Kbps modem or faster Up to 8 Players over TCP/IP Network or Battle.net (Requires low-latency Internet connection with support for 32-bit applications)Optional Mac 3D Acceleration Supports Glide, OpenGL (v.1.1.2 or higher), or RAVE
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Sorceress. With great magical power at higher levels, the Sorceress is the
mistress offire, lightning, and meteors. Her Blaze spell and Fire Wall leave a trail of flame wherever she walks, and her Hydra spell creates a multi-headed beast that shoots fireballs at enemies.
Barbarian. The Barbarian has the most brute
force of any hero, but lacks the magical skills of some of the others. His howl alone can cause monsters to retreat. This is your hero if you want sheer physical brutality.
Amazon. Amazons can do many
clever things by balancing magical skills with physical force. They’re especially adept with arrows made of fire or ice, poison javelins, and lightning bolts.
Paladin. To achieve his goals a Paladin
uses divine energy as well as physical force. Many of his strongest skills are psychological and defensive. He can, however, convert monsters to fight for him.
Necromancer. The Necromancer is known
for his ability to work wonders with the dead. Among numerous other skills, he can raise skeleton or monster warriors to fight for him, and can turn a corpse into either a fragment bomb or gas bomb.
