Should you play Diablo 2: Resurrected on console or PC?

When we ask a question in the headline of a post, we’re expected to answer it — so when we ask Should you play Diablo 2: Resurrected on console or PC? you’d be forgiven for being frustrated with answers like yes or it depends or whichever, it really doesn’t matter.

And while the “best” platform to play Diablo 2: Resurrected on depends on a few different factors, there are reasons you might prefer one over the other, and they do matter.

Why you might prefer to play Diablo 2: Resurrected on PC

First up, the good of choosing PC for D2R is that you can play either with a mouse or a controller. That gives you a lot of flexibility in choosing which one is best for you, and lets you switch between them whenever you what. Also, it’s much easier to use the keyboard and keybinds to manage the various UI elements of the game, such as the inventory menu.

And if you’re going for the nostalgia hit of playing a game from 2000 in 2021, nothing is ever going to beat the feeling of wildly clicking your mouse around the map to attack and move from place to place. As long as you have a reasonably good computer — one that could run Shadowlands, for example — you’ll get really good performance out of D2R on the PC.

What’s the bad? Well, not much — people do end up using their computers for other things besides gaming, so you may feel that your gameplay time on your PC is constrained. Also, there’s no cross-platform play for D2R, only cross-progression allowing you to play the same character on your PC or console of choice. If you want to play Diablo 2: Resurrected with your friends and they’re all on PC, then you’ll want to play on your PC as well.

Why you might prefer to play Diablo 2: Resurrected console

Consoles are generally not used for work or email or web browsing — they’re gaming machines first and foremost, and as such choosing to play on console is often a far less complicated affair. It can also be fun to play video games in your living room on a big TV instead of in your home office or bedroom on a smaller monitor (particularly those remastered cinematics). And if you’re worried about losing the mouse and keyboard, don’t be: the console controller is pretty great for playing D2R, and it actually does an excellent job of replacing the traditional PC keyboard setup.

However, while it is fairly good, it does miss a few things — you can’t target abilities like Leap as well with the controller, compared to the ease of using it with a mouse. Menus and other UI elements can also be a little hit or miss because they were designed with a mouse in mind, so you’re simply moving the cursor around with a stick on your controller, which can feel awkward. Still, it’s functional, and gameplay on a controller feels good.

But, just like with PC, there’s a potential dealbreaker: if all your friends are playing on console and you want to play with them, you’ll need to play on the same console as them. If they’re playing on PC, you’ll have to play on PC as well.

The real answer is a frustrating it depends

The game works, and works well, either on a console or a PC. I played it on both and didn’t greatly prefer one over the other — I’ll likely get it on PC just because most of my game playing friends use PCs, but that’s not to say it’s bad on consoles. The key will really be who you want to play with — or if you want to play multiplayer at all — because you’ll need to be on the same platform they’re on.

Diablo 2: Resurrected comes out on September 23, so you still have a little time left to make up your mind.