As Niche Gamer’s resident Diablo guy, it seems like a no-brainer that the moment new DLC was announced for the 25-year-old Diablo II, I’d be thrilled to jump right on it. Perhaps throughout my life, there’s no game that I’ve went back and played just for some comfort like I have Diablo II. Unfortunately, Reign of the Warlock only added a new playable class, some new gear, and a new pinnacle challenge for the tippy top of end game progression, so asking for $25 felt like a bit of a steep request. Was my hesitation justified? Find out in our review!

Diablo II: Resurrected – Reign of the Warlock
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment
Platforms: PC (Reviewed), PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series S|X, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
Release Date: February 11, 2026
Price: $24.99 ($39.99 on Steam)

First off, it’s important to know that if you’re buying Diablo II: Resurrected – Reign of the Warlock on Steam, be aware that it’s $15 extra because the game is new to the platform. If you buy on Battle.net or the consoles, it’s only $24.99 but requires ownership of the base game. That said, it’s nice to finally have Diablo II on Steam natively, since it plays well on the Steam Deck.

Jumping into Reign of the Warlock is a pretty straight forward task. The Warlock starts off with a dagger that gives +1 to Miasma Bolt, so if you’ve ever played a Sorceress or Necromancer, the early levels feel immediately familiar. Collectively, the Warlock serves as a “best of” mashup that combines the abilities of several of Diablo II‘s base classes and turns the game into a straight up cake walk with multiple different pathways to work your way through the base game.

You want to be a tanky melee warrior? Roll Eldritch skills and use your shield and mirrored weapon. Want to blow through Normal/Nightmare super quick? Run Chaos and level massive swarms of mobs with with Flame Wave and Apocalypse. You can even supplement both trees by running with some utility spec into Demon and not only charm an elite champion to do your bidding, but summon your Goatman and then consume it for additional damage bonuses. The Warlock is unbalanced, hilariously broken, and a ton of fun to play around with.

I got through Hell with my Warlock after about 20 hours of gameplay, but I’m pretty rusty and I can’t help but clear every inch of every map despite knowing it’s bad form to kill everything instead of only stopping for elite packs. Fire skills such as Ring of Fire and Flame Wave serve you well until the end of Nightmare where you’ll start running into fire resistant and immune mobs, but that’s easily sorted out by carrying a debuff weapon or bringing a mercenary who can help decrease enemy resistances. Once I reached Hell, I swapped over and started running the Echoing Strike build that’s been talked about quite a bit by Diablo Youtubers and Speedrunners.

Once reaching Hell difficulty, I was able to find a Hel rune and built an Authority chest plate, which has been a lot of fun to play around with. Eventually, I’d like to try another Miasma build with a Void, but those Zod runes are pretty tough to come by in my experience. After some farming and hitting level 80, it was time to farm Ubers for an Anni and a HFC, eventually leading to the point where you can farm statues to attempt the ultimate challenge Diablo II: Resurrected – Reign of the Warlock has to offer: The Uber Ancients. I was able to get one burned down before I got stomped thoroughly, taking a Champion Pit Lord that’s immune to almost everything in as a tank, but ultimately not being able to keep up with the tornado spam and the constant leaps due to not being 95+.

There’s also quite a few Quality of Life changes that were added, including finally having stash tabs and material/gem specific tabs, though they are almost wholly ripped off from inspired by the Diablo II RMM modding community. A shout out to those creators at the very least would have been a nice touch. Worldstone shards allowing you to terrorize an entire act makes farming a lot more interesting, and summoning a herald for a statue drop gives you an end goal to work toward, removing a bit of the tedium out of constant farming. Unfortunately, there’s nothing new to experience in the baseline content for the actual “game” part of running through the story and unlocking each difficulty.

So with a new class, some great QoL changes, a few new items, and a new pinnacle challenge, is Reign of the Warlock worth $25? That’s debatable and entirely dependent on how casually you play D2R. The Warlock class is a lot of fun, but I fear it’s going to serve as the new baseline and the other classes will get reworked to match how overtuned the Warlock is. If you don’t play Diablo far enough to fight the super unique monsters, I’m not entirely sure the Warlock class will be enough to make you feel like you got your money’s worth. Being able to be played a few different ways certainly makes the class appealing, but it takes a bit of planning and practice to play as a “hybrid” style class until it feels natural. If you do enjoy the end game challenges and doing some theorycrafting, I think there’s just barely enough here to justify the $25 price tag – but I fully admit that it’s possibly nostalgia speaking because I’m happy to see a 25 year old game receive new content.

With that said, the Warlock in Diablo II makes me look forward to his arrival in Diablo IV, and I’ll be watching closely to see if he’s as hilariously broken in that realm as well.

Diablo II: Resurrected Reign of the Warlock was reviewed on PC using a code provided by Blizzard Entertainment. Additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy is here. Diablo II: Resurrected Reign of the Warlock is now available on Steam/Battle.net, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series S|X, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.