When it comes to the controls, your mouse is your on–screen persona’s extension. Through use of this I/O device’s left and right buttons you control your major actions, such as fighting and magic maneuverings. By moving your mouse in any direction and then clicking your left mouse button, you cause your character to move in that direction. The integrated Action Icon allows you to set various actions to your mouse. The left Action Icon affords you the opportunity to prepare for melee or ranged combat. For example, first you select a hostile opponent, hold your cursor atop the egregious enemy, and simultaneously hold down the shift key. As you were intelligent enough to ensure you had selected a weapon from your inventory that could be thrown, your character will then engage in the ranged attack — the more experience you have, the better your odds of striking your enemy with killing blows. This could be anything from using a throwing knife to a deadly javelin. Don’t expect huge success with this attack effort early in the game, however — usually it makes sense to develop your continuous attack experience by ensuring you have a melee weapon selected and then hold down your left mouse button as you target your opponent using the mouse cursor. This ensures a continuous attack upon the body of the one you would slice and dice. Nice and simple, both methods, not requiring a massive amount of practice to gain such expertise and control in this offering.

The right Action Icon is the selection area for your magics and skill use. This is a most important region to understand. As you gain experience, you will also gain the ability to increase various skills. Let’s see how this works with our favorite character, the Paladin. Not only is this character able to use all manner of weapons, but he can also employ the magics of Light. His Combat skills range from: Sacrifice (increase combat efficiency through the use of his own blood to sanctify his weapons) to Fist of the Heavens (Holy Bolts issue from the sky to slay and separate); Offensive Auras from Might (the damage dealt by the Paladin and his associates is increased) to Conviction (all enemies find their defense and resistances lowered); and Defensive Auras from Prayer (heals the entire party) to Salvation (party members find their resistance to Elementals increased). This is one, mean, praying machine. We particularly liked the Prayer aspect — as long as the Paladin has mana available, he effuses an aura that bathes allies in its power. Even horrible wounds can be healed through use of this aura, given time. Through use of this menu, you can simply select the skill you wish to employ by clicking on its icon. An animation then surrounds your character onscreen so you know that the skill you had selected is now employed and in effect. Many skills require higher and higher levels of experience before you can attain them — however, some of the skills available early in the game are certainly worth your character’s development of them — they can save lives and win quests for you if employed correctly!

You can run, as long as you have enough stamina to do so — this is accomplished by moving your mouse in the direction you wish to move and simultaneously holding down the CTRL key. You can also instigate faster movement through the selection of the Run/Walk button on the game’s interface bar or by use of the game’s hotkey assignment, "R". The use of an easily displayed or removed mini–panel allows you access to such critical information as your inventory, character attributes, the skill tree, Automap (extremely well–designed and incorporated into the game), a message and quest log plus the main game menu selections for various game options. Instead of an overly complex inventory system, you basically will find your character’s body designated on this "page". You place items of weaponry, armor, clothing, rings, amulets and so on directly onto the various body parts (arms, legs, head, and so on). Such a graphic representation of a game character has become fairly standard throughout the industry.

You may "store" a few items as well in the inventory area, but you should become fairly adept at creating "stashes" for yourself, for you will uncover many treasures as you face death at every corner. Additionally, you will soon exhaust your ability to carry everything you find, meaning you must either refrain from acquiring new goodies or holding them for later retrieval. Depending upon which of the five characters you decide to play, many items will also be unusable, but such treats could fetch a fair price if sold at one of the towns. By ensuring your extra items are held for you in various areas, you can always pack them up later at various stages of the game and trade or sell these goodies for other weaponry, cash, potions, spells and the like.

The Automap is a significant improvement for D2 as this technology allows you to see where you are, and where you’ve been, in the game. All manner of additional information is relayed to you via this interface, as well, from your current location as to where non–player characters are located. Red markers, of course, indicate a hostile presence. Various "doorways", "shrines", "wells" and other landmarks remain noted on the Automap once you’ve initially located them.

And it’s the wise character that always keeps in mind the location of the nearest Portal during their journeys — you never know when you’re going to need to get somewhere other than where you are, and rather quickly, at that. When engaged in Multiplayer games, you’ll see added to the Automap light and dark green markers — these are indicative of characters who have joined your adventuring party (former) and others who have allied themselves with your purposes (latter). The transparent nature of the Automap allows this map to sit atop your actual game world, as it is transparent in nature. (You can even set the level of transparency with the FADE command — F10.) With some Automaps features in other games, you must switch between screens, enter data for your progress, and so on. The D2 Automap is the best such device we’ve experienced in any RPG to date and is a tremendous boon to the game’s total playability.

There is certainly more of an "adventure" feel to D2 — more towns, more quests and mini–quests. And there’s more combat, and the beasties that populate D2 are not idiots, fellow gamers. You can save your game at any time you wish. Your Automap’s information is saved as well as your character’s data, waypoints, quests and the world layout. However, when you restart your saved game, you will find yourself starting once again back in town and all of the nasties awaiting for you — as well as their treasures — are reset. You can certainly use this to your advantage when first playing the game. Find an area where you can obtain various, bounteous treasures with little effort. Simply gather and move back to the town, sell, enhance your monetary position, then save your game. Restart the game using the same character and repeat as often as necessary until you have acquired some better–than–average weapons, armor, and the like.

Are we among the publications who have, therefore, managed to whip ourselves into a frenzy to get our review of D2 published? We honestly don’t care if we are or are not — we simply wished a great game experience. IF we were able to "voice" our opinions before or after other publications, so be it. At least our review looks at this offering from the vantage point of gamers who play as the game is designed. No cheats, no hacks, just pure and simple production–version D2 involvement. We certainly haven’t played through the entire game nor have we had the occasion to try D2 out online in MMOG mode, either. That’s due to the fact the D2 is so engrossing and so huge we would have had to wait a week or two before we could report on all of the game’s details. Yes, D2 is that deep. To be honest with everyone, we truly hated to halt gameplay to write this initial look at the game.

The game graphics are terrific — the isometric 3D look and feel allows you to become immersed in your surroundings. The darkness of the dank underworlds, the ripple of rain falling into puddles and rivers, the amazing lighting effects as you traverse through murkiness, the burning structures, flowing rivers, magics — all are indicative of great care and thought given to the finer details of the adventure. Super soundfx are used when necessary, and we can happily report that the voice actors ARE worth their salt. Obviously Blizzard Entertainment took immense care in selecting appropriate voice actors for the various NPCs that appear throughout the game. Their lines are acted well, not simply read, and the voice actors employ emotion to help deliver critical messages and "gossip" to you throughout the game. The beasties certainly carry with them vocals that are occasionally enough to turn your blood to stone, that’s for sure.

The world within which D2 occurs is vast. You will do well to ensure you have a number of scrolls available for your use, including Town Portal and Identify Item. The former is quite useful when you are leagues from your town and need to return to the area to either garner a reward for completing a mission, to sell and replenish your supplies, or to escape certain death. The latter can help you obtain goodies that are useful to you. Many times what you locate while adventuring is unidentified. You cannot equip unidentified items. What may appear to be most insignificant suit of armor may, in fact, be protection you so earnestly require. Through use of the Identify Item scroll, you’ll be informed immediately as to whether or not this item should replace what you are currently wearing to further protect or enhance your character in the field.

Another rule of thumb for you should be this — timidity furthers naught. Aggressive behavior on your character’s part seems to be the best way to play the game. Take on your enemies’ first, constantly — get in those first slashes or fire those bolts. By quickly learning how to slash at your opponents, you can run circles around them, as they miss, and you hit. Even an entire slew of scummy, scabrous sentient creatures can be sent packing by attacking them immediately. One element in your favor is that what area of the land you happen to be traveling through controls the level of your enemy. In the first missions of the game, as you struggle to gain higher levels, the monsters seem to be a little less equal in capabilities than you. Which is good, for there are minions upon minions you must deal with. And this is why we also recommend obtaining for yourself a belt, for you will find slots for potions in your belt. Into these slots should be placed healing potions and mana (if you use magics). Then, when a variety of goatmen, corrupt rogues, and various demonic denizens of the underworld surround you, you can wield and whack to your heart’s content. And you’ll know that, even as your health diminishes, all it takes is the simple press of your 1 through 4 keys to imbibe the refreshing liquid of health. Your 1 through 4 keys correspond to the slots of your belt, giving you instant access to these life and magic giving refreshments whenever you need them.

As you gain in stature and experience, you will find you can hire others to join you in your journeys. Basically, these are ranged weapon experts, whose arrows carry either a plus fire or plus cold damage damage force with their shafts. These folk are smart — they’ll even do their best to protect you as you rummage around gold pieces and other accouterment you find lying about. Their arrow firing will always alert you that an enemy of some ilk is approaching, whether in the deepest of the darkest subterranean holes, or in thick forests. To say they’ll lay down their lives for you is not an understatement. In fact, one of the early quests would be impossible without such aid at your side.

Our initial look at D2 finds us truly able to commend Blizzard Entertainment on a super job. Imagine how we’ll feel in a month or so after we’ve really gained experience, both in single– and multiplayer game modes. No question — D2 has earned our GRAND GAME AWARD for its simple, yet highly effective, game control methods, superb graphics and sound effects, and a depth of gameplay that will keep you entertained for hundreds of hours. A high bang–for–the–buck metaphor rings true for this offering.

Many graphic adventure games require hours of play before any sort of comfort level can be realized. Not so with D2 — within 10 minutes, you should be enjoying this grand game, which will soon be seasoned with more adventures and combat than you could have thought possible. What causes D2 to offer that something extra is the fact that you’ll look back upon your experience with relish — you’ll wonder aloud at how you managed to succeed against such fearsome odds. And you’ll realize that, just as the game grants your character experience, so, too, have you gained experience from the game in besting the forces confronting you. There is nothing shallow about this game, other than perhaps an enormous predilection for combat. Occasionally it may seem to you that many of the hair–raising encounters are far too numerous and without purpose. Think again, fellow gamers, for the only way you can win through and beat Diablo is to gain the experience necessary to improve your statistics. And combat certainly proves your mettle in this regard.