The biggest addition in Diablo II are the 5 new classes, an improvement over the original's 3. The player can now take role of Necromancer, Paladin, Barbarian, and Sorceress or Amazon, these new characters differ in their abilities (as with the original), for example the Barbarian is a true close combat fighter but his magic skills are underdeveloped (in favour of blistering biceps to impress the ladies) while the sorceress is more a magician then a close combat fighter. There now also skills that all classes can learn, in Diablo I this was only available to the spell casting class who could learn more advanced spells but the fighter classes like the warrior could only gain more strength and dexterity, now skills range from "defensive auras" to "more damage to specific enemy classes" and "mana replenishing" to "stun attacks" adding to the overall playability of the game. To attain these skills and to generally improve your character through improvement of your character's dexterity, vitality and strength you have to gain experience which involves killing enemies until your experience bar exceeds it's maximum, and you progress to the next level.

Speaking of enemies, they are quite varied through the whole of the game, but become repetitive later when you realise that the only difference between a 'darkling' and a 'troll' is just the colour and name. This is repeated through much of the game which really makes playing boring especially when the AI feels like it's been borrowed right out of Doom 2. Sometimes the monsters have a "boss" who is enchanted with a special ability like 'frost shot' for skeleton archers or 'double speed' for slow moving monsters, killing them usually gives you a enchanted item or weapon but be weary of their servants who usually posses higher damage levels and are in large numbers.

One of Diablo's strange addictions was the anal obsession of getting better items, spells and stats. Blizzard has not forgotten about this, they have added tons of new items to find, everything from maces and swords to axes and javelins, and am not even talking about the number of armour types, boots, belts and all the above items enchanted with specific magic effects. Blizzard has also added a nice graphical touch to the item inventory, now most of the items you equip are actually seen on your character where as this was very restricted to certain items and weapons in the first outing of Diablo. The interface also has been overhauled to make everything smooth; such small additions such as running and continuous clicking to move have been added to smooth the gameplay.

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