The Necromancer is certainly the nastiest character available to play in Diablo II. Rather than fighting with swords of spells, he gets the dead to do his dirty work for him instead, raising corpses to fight for him. Initially you can only raise skeletons although as the Necromancer increases in level he can also summon powerful Golems to fight for him. As if raising the dead wasn't twisted enough, the Necromancer can also place various curses on monsters to reduce their effectiveness or just fire off a bone or poison oriented spell, including one that makes dead bodies explode in a burst of poisonous gas!

To be honest, we got tired of the gameplay in the first Diablo quicker than most people. While it was visually impressive for the time and undeniably fun at first, it just got a bit too repetitive. However, somehow Diablo II is completely different. After a few weeks with it playing the different characters we're still hooked because Diablo II offers so much more than its predecessor. Its strongest point is easily that it adds a lot more strategy to the gameplay. Granted, it isn't going to give Starcraft a run for its money by a long shot and it still involves a lot of repeated clicking, but you certainly have to put more thought into using any of the characters than in the original.

The various skills characters gain often take up mana so, to use the example of the Barbarian, you can't just go around continually using the Bash skill on creatures; you have to be sparing. We also found that the Amazon wasn't best suited to sticking with one weapon, and instead usually ran around with a Spear and some Javelins, switching between them depending on the situation. And of course picking which Aura the Paladin should have active is usually tricky at the best of times. In multiplayer, this addition of some thought-requiring RPG elements to Diablo II becomes more apparent since party members have to co-operate. If the Barbarian tries to dig a potion from a dead enemy that means the Necromancer subsequently can't raise that skeleton, so unless an agreement is reached one or the other will tend to go without. The Paladin also has an even tougher time with his Auras as he has to pick the best one for a given situation depending on which character classes are in the party.