Oh shit, he's here. Evacuate this thread!
>: )
not played it. that's why i'm asking.
i only played Diablo 3 which i liked
I'll keep myself short, for the purpose of satisfying everyone.
There is a reason why people are, to this day (20 years later), still playing D2. The game was the apex of ARPG and the definition of what the majority of ARPGs wanted to achieve. It combines a tight and great, yet very simple story line. The music by Matt Uelmen (look his work up on Youtube, search for Torchlight and Diablo 2) will make you shit your pants and the sound effects from picking up items were so iconic that some companies even copy and pasted those exact sfx in their own ARPGs.
Now that we've got that out of the way. How's the gameplay?
It's an imbalanced, meta-finalized mess and it's exactly how it has always been and it is one of the reasons why the game is to this date still loved by thousands. Play the game "your own way" by putting stat- and skillpoints the way you see fit and you'll get absolutely hammered when you reach hell-content (which is the highest difficulty level in D2). If you want to enjoy the casual gameplay, which is normal and nightmare difficulty, then you can pretty much play however you like. But if you're even remotely interested in doing end game content and farming the extremely rare and powerful items then you need to start digging up information from 20+ year old sites and follow the "meta".
It's an incredible game in every way, but you have to realize that this is
not the bread'n'butter experience like Diablo 3. You can't simply dedicate skill points to your character and regret it (well, you can - but you're very limited to the amounts of times you can respec and you want to be careful with how you distribute these).
TLDR: Don't play the game if you're in it for the Diablo 3 experience. Play it if you want to play the game that led the ARPG industry forward.