Just to give you some background on myself, I am a veteran LOD player coming off of my first attempt at CE. At first impression this game is extremely tough in comparison to Blizzard's version. I tried soloing the den of evil, which was quite a job if you ask me. Maybe it was the fact that I didn't know what to do, such as which items did what and what were those eggs being dropped all over the place. I'd say the learning curve of this mod would have to be about an hour, seeing as most of the dynamics of the original have been warped around some way or another. Slogging through the first bit was a test of patience and frustrating at times. Maybe steps can be taken to toning the difficulty of these bits down?
It didn't take me long to find another person to quest with, and here's where the real game begins. First of all, this is one of the nicest and most mature communities I have ever come across, especially having to do with anything Diablo. Trust me, those blizzard servers are chock full of really annoying people. It's quite refreshing to have a patient person on the other end, asnwering your onslaught of questions. I commend the mod makers and all of their branching friends for this.
What I notice immediately about this mod is the absolute destruction of rushing seen so much in the original. I got a shock when I saw Andariel's chamber for the first time (after going through that maze) and finding that it was empty. In addition, theres the whole bread aspect of the horadric staff quest. It seems tedious, but It forces you to really explore the world and to take your time, especially to get to know your teamates. In the end it came to the point that we were following each others orders wordlessly, actually acting as a unit. This is in stark contrast to the "OK whos teleing baal" that I really got sick of in the Blizzard servers. My only complaint is that the catacombs level four was overly confusing, seeing as you have to sometimes travel narrow corridors in between rooms, and its hard on the eyes to track this on the map.
There are other really nice touches to this game. I'm in love with the egg and doll collecting aspect. To describe it in a single word: genious. It just gives you a reason to spend more time killing things other than Mephisto and Baal.
To summarize, this is Diablo II, forcing you to play it as it was meant to be played. I thought Diablo sucked, and it did in comparison to this.
See you online.