Diablo 2 goes at two different speeds. You can either mercilessly slash through hordes of undead, watch their bones shatter into pieces, and gulp down health potions with unrestrained abandon, or you can take the fork in the road with taut reluctance, patting the little red puddle in the lower left corner of the screen and hoping you don't invite another demoralizing death. It's a good thing that games like "Torchlight," "Grim Dawn," and "Path of Exile" have optimized the genre to its mirrored brilliance. What I appreciated most about Blizzard's return to the classic was the way it made me fear the dark again, without a checkpoint on my side to save me.

Diablo 2 was released in 2000, and Diablo 2: Resurrected singlehandedly kept the original's design, layering new high-resolution graphics over the old ones (the old and new looks can be swapped at will) and adding new technical features. You control a lone warrior of seven different classes, wandering Blizzard's arid Old Testament wastelands, completing quests, looting treasure chests, and sending countless hoofed demons to their deaths with a click.

The real Diablo 2 grognards persist long after the credits roll to max multiple characters to the staggering upper limit of level 99. The game ruled countless lives at the turn of the millennium and still has the power to rule your time in 2021. With the right group of friends, you may find yourself running through multiple dungeons over and over again, frantically excavating the deepest nooks and crannies of the loot table. This is perhaps what I like best about [Diablo 2: Resurrected]. The modern gaming industry often imposes depressing stat grind on all the fun parts of the game. When you log in, you are blindsided by timed in-store discounts, cutthroat cosmetic markets, and a plethora of currencies and statuses that crowd the home screen. But this remaster prides itself on being a dinosaur, and no monetary renovations have been made to bring it even closer to the 21st century. Here we are, slaying zombies, seriously comparing the blue trident on the floor to the trident currently on the character sheet. Neither the auction house economy nor the crafting matrix gets in the way. Frankly, compared to the incessant sales pitches that suck the joy out of every other experience that can be played on a live server, this is downright revolutionary.

Every single change in "Resurrected" is so smart and subtle. No longer are you forced to create sad, brutal characters that serve only as inventory mules for your main. Player inventories are shared across accounts, and weapons are passed between druids, necromancers, and barbarians without burden. Sick of shoveling piles of gold from corpses, Diablo 2 adventurers have come to automatically absorb them, adding a faint idle-game efficiency to the sanctuary. Enjoy Resurrected on your gamepad, Grandpa, after decades of back pain since high school.

Blizzard has reupholstered much of its back catalog to varying degrees (Warcraft 3: Reforged), but this new version of Diablo 2 has a gentle attention to detail not found in those others. Players can tap the "G" key at any time to return to the original graphics and see them airbrushed with more detailed artwork and lighting effects. I was often amazed; the artwork was so detailed that it was almost impossible to see the original. I was amazed to see the putrid water flow in the sewers of Lut Gorain, something that did not exist in the game back in 2000. It is amazing what is possible when everything is not rendered at 800 x 600.

The updates go beyond the beautiful devastation of Sanctuary. I spent most of my time in Resurrected playing a stout Amazon named Arlene. Although she is now dressed in a steel battle suit, previous depictions of her guise were much more revealing; Blizzard is currently in the midst of a chain of legal situations following allegations of widespread sexism and harassment at the studio, and given such circumstances, de-emphasizing one of its oldest heroes objectification is unlikely to win any great acclaim. But it is a nice gesture.

But despite these tweaks and innovations, there is a voice in the back of my mind that would like to see the "revival" go a few steps further. I love and respect all the hardcore Diablo 2-lovers who want to formalinize their dungeon crawls, but ...... I wonder if the inventory should be so small.

I forgot that Diablo 2 came out before the action bar revolution. Two abilities could be mapped to both left and right clicks, and the rest of the spellbook was relegated to standby with the F1-F8 keys. Just four years later, Blizzard would release World of Warcraft and completely revolutionize the way RPGs are designed. We now had a robust set of icons within reach. Certainly, that is preferable to the chronic maintenance of the last 2000 years of clumsily trying to remember exactly where you put the poison arrow.

But again, I'm not an avid fan of "Diablo 2," and that's who "Resurrected" is beckoning. This is not a video game designed to create a new generation of Tristram survivors. Instead, the players gathered here are all people who have been playing "Diablo 2" for years and are now enjoying a cleaner, smoother, more accessible, and slightly less arcane version. Newcomers may learn the same fear of the dark that I rediscovered and come to love the game in the same way, but only if they are willing to accept the year 2000 conditions, no matter how archaic they seem.