FA+
Shop
Diablo III Review Thingy *SPOILERS*
13 years ago
Its hard to review a game such as Diablo III so early into its release as there will certainly be many changes to core game play in the near future, yet i feel compelled to do so anyways so my reader base (no one), can agree/disagree/discuss matters of interest!
Anyways, you start your quest in the world of sanctuary, 20 years after the events of Diablo II have passed. Your goal is to pick one of the valorous heroes and charge into endless hordes of countless demons, hacking and slashing your way through the games plot as you eventually make your way to Diablo himself to send him back to hell in a hand basket. (Almost quite literally)
The first subject i want to bring up is the combat system. As skeptical as one may be about how the new system will meld into the game as opposed to the Diablo II combat system, after about 10 minutes of play, it feels almost natural as it blends in well and is very easy to learn/use. The major flaw of this system isnt actually in the system its self, but rather the games difficulty later on.
I was very pleased to see that the barbarian class used a fury resource to use his abilities instead of mana, which was a really bad concept from the games predecessor, although i have to scratch my head and wonder what the difference is between the witch doctor's mana, and the wizard's arcane power, as both function almost completely identically except for the regeneration rate.
Early into the game, the skill system offers a lot of variety, letting you switch abilities at will without any negative impact into your game play. But as you progress into the later game, the difficulty demands almost a completely singular skill build in order to progress. You will see a lot of fun skills sitting around collecting dust in your spell book as you load your action bar with survival and AI breaking spells.
As if that werent bad enough, at max level you get a stackable buff for killing elite monsters, which increases your chance to find magical items, giving people with no + to magic find gear an opportunity to find stuff, which is an awesome idea, yet once you have the buff, if you change skills (or even the rune on a skill), you lose the buff completely. It really raises the question of why blizzard would present the skill system as being completely customizable, and then pull a complete 180 and force such a singular linear skill set to be completely necessary in order to accomplish anything.
In short, the skill system is both new and fun, and relatively unique for terms of diablo games, but becomes very singular and disappointing late game as you have to sacrifice many of your spells for necessary ones in order to progress anywhere in the later difficulties.
I mentioned the games difficulty affecting various aspects of the game, which i will now explain. If you have played any diablo game ever, you would know that once you beat the game, you unlock a new difficulty level, and then another, and a fourth difficulty if youre playing D3. The higher difficulty levels are the exact same game, just with tougher monsters and better items.
The game plays almost completely linear from difficulty from the next, until you hit inferno. The game suddenly rises from challenging, to impossible. You hit a wall, unable to progress any farther without pausing to either grind, or buy gear from the auction house constantly.
The difficulty of individual monsters in inferno varies greatly, as you will find your self 1 shotting a monster, then getting 1 shotted by the next one you encounter. The groups of champion monsters in inferno are generally close to unkillable, especially in later acts, having 4 special properties, a shit-ton of HP, and enough damage to kill just about any class in a few quick hits. It raises the question of "did blizzard even test inferno before releasing the game?" as the boss monsters are actually easier to kill than the normal monster groups. Simply scaling numbers without testing the results will result in unstable game difficulty, leaving the actual progression through the acts to be tedious and frustrating.
Im all for enjoying a challenge, which the first run through hell difficulty provided almost perfectly, but when a game crosses over from challenging, to frustrating and tedious because of the difficulty, it switches from "tough monster, time to play smart" to "tough monster, time to play find the exploit for 10 minutes". Youl know what i mean when a group of jailer arcane enchanted shielding invulnerable minions comes at you.
Ive never looked too deeply into the story line of diablo games. Ive always had a good idea of whats going on and why, though im not much of a lore nerd for the series its self. (warcraft is a different story for me though!)
Very early into the game, i found my self able to call just about every event that was going to happen, such as the fallen star turning out to be tyrael (which was a really corny aspect of the story in my opinion), cain dying, the emperor turning out to be belial, and so on.
I did enjoy the attempts they made to make the story more appealing, such as the cutscenes, and epic cinematics, though it becomes a bother after your first few runs through, and they made the bosses pop up and talk to you way too many times through out the game. (IM LOOKING AT YOU DIABLO AND AZMODAN!)
They made the mercenary people much more interesting in D3 as opposed to D2, each having a little back story, and give dialogue quite frequently as you adventure based on your current quest and what not. They are incredibly weak compared to D2 mercs, which im not too upset about as they were waaaaay too powerful in D2.
The auction house seems like a good concept. It relieves the hassle of spamming chats with attempts to make trades for the items you want, and makes gold actually somewhat valuable this time around. The real-money auction house seems like a silly idea to me, as i generally am against game breaking features that let you completely skip a vital step of the game and progress past it. But blizzard will be blizzard, who apparently havent milked enough money out of the pockets of the die-hard WoW playerbase.
Diablo III is by no means a bad game, its just riddled with problems the previous games suffered from which i was really hoping they would address, along with newer problems that spawned with the new features of D3.
I guess at its best, Diablo III is the pinacle of hack and slash games, and will leave you sleep deprived for many nights to come as you stay up well into the morning hours snorting your daily dose of monster-slaughtering cocaine. (You will have fun with this addictive game is the just of it)
At its worst, Diablo III can be frustrating and tedious at higher difficulties, repeating many of the errors made by its predecessors.
Ide give the game either a 6.5 or 7 out of 10. While it is fun, there are many errors blizzard could have easily prevented with a bit more time spent on the games development.
I realize you folks at blizzard didnt want to delay the game any longer, but for such a major game title like the diablo series, it would have been worth the wait. When you go to any fast food joint, would you rather take the stale fries that have been sitting out for an hour, or wait a bit for fresh ones to be made?
Once more, the game hasnt been out for very long, and im sure many things are going to change in the near future. Anywho, thanks @ all of you (nobody!) for reading!
Anyways, you start your quest in the world of sanctuary, 20 years after the events of Diablo II have passed. Your goal is to pick one of the valorous heroes and charge into endless hordes of countless demons, hacking and slashing your way through the games plot as you eventually make your way to Diablo himself to send him back to hell in a hand basket. (Almost quite literally)
The first subject i want to bring up is the combat system. As skeptical as one may be about how the new system will meld into the game as opposed to the Diablo II combat system, after about 10 minutes of play, it feels almost natural as it blends in well and is very easy to learn/use. The major flaw of this system isnt actually in the system its self, but rather the games difficulty later on.
I was very pleased to see that the barbarian class used a fury resource to use his abilities instead of mana, which was a really bad concept from the games predecessor, although i have to scratch my head and wonder what the difference is between the witch doctor's mana, and the wizard's arcane power, as both function almost completely identically except for the regeneration rate.
Early into the game, the skill system offers a lot of variety, letting you switch abilities at will without any negative impact into your game play. But as you progress into the later game, the difficulty demands almost a completely singular skill build in order to progress. You will see a lot of fun skills sitting around collecting dust in your spell book as you load your action bar with survival and AI breaking spells.
As if that werent bad enough, at max level you get a stackable buff for killing elite monsters, which increases your chance to find magical items, giving people with no + to magic find gear an opportunity to find stuff, which is an awesome idea, yet once you have the buff, if you change skills (or even the rune on a skill), you lose the buff completely. It really raises the question of why blizzard would present the skill system as being completely customizable, and then pull a complete 180 and force such a singular linear skill set to be completely necessary in order to accomplish anything.
In short, the skill system is both new and fun, and relatively unique for terms of diablo games, but becomes very singular and disappointing late game as you have to sacrifice many of your spells for necessary ones in order to progress anywhere in the later difficulties.
I mentioned the games difficulty affecting various aspects of the game, which i will now explain. If you have played any diablo game ever, you would know that once you beat the game, you unlock a new difficulty level, and then another, and a fourth difficulty if youre playing D3. The higher difficulty levels are the exact same game, just with tougher monsters and better items.
The game plays almost completely linear from difficulty from the next, until you hit inferno. The game suddenly rises from challenging, to impossible. You hit a wall, unable to progress any farther without pausing to either grind, or buy gear from the auction house constantly.
The difficulty of individual monsters in inferno varies greatly, as you will find your self 1 shotting a monster, then getting 1 shotted by the next one you encounter. The groups of champion monsters in inferno are generally close to unkillable, especially in later acts, having 4 special properties, a shit-ton of HP, and enough damage to kill just about any class in a few quick hits. It raises the question of "did blizzard even test inferno before releasing the game?" as the boss monsters are actually easier to kill than the normal monster groups. Simply scaling numbers without testing the results will result in unstable game difficulty, leaving the actual progression through the acts to be tedious and frustrating.
Im all for enjoying a challenge, which the first run through hell difficulty provided almost perfectly, but when a game crosses over from challenging, to frustrating and tedious because of the difficulty, it switches from "tough monster, time to play smart" to "tough monster, time to play find the exploit for 10 minutes". Youl know what i mean when a group of jailer arcane enchanted shielding invulnerable minions comes at you.
Ive never looked too deeply into the story line of diablo games. Ive always had a good idea of whats going on and why, though im not much of a lore nerd for the series its self. (warcraft is a different story for me though!)
Very early into the game, i found my self able to call just about every event that was going to happen, such as the fallen star turning out to be tyrael (which was a really corny aspect of the story in my opinion), cain dying, the emperor turning out to be belial, and so on.
I did enjoy the attempts they made to make the story more appealing, such as the cutscenes, and epic cinematics, though it becomes a bother after your first few runs through, and they made the bosses pop up and talk to you way too many times through out the game. (IM LOOKING AT YOU DIABLO AND AZMODAN!)
They made the mercenary people much more interesting in D3 as opposed to D2, each having a little back story, and give dialogue quite frequently as you adventure based on your current quest and what not. They are incredibly weak compared to D2 mercs, which im not too upset about as they were waaaaay too powerful in D2.
The auction house seems like a good concept. It relieves the hassle of spamming chats with attempts to make trades for the items you want, and makes gold actually somewhat valuable this time around. The real-money auction house seems like a silly idea to me, as i generally am against game breaking features that let you completely skip a vital step of the game and progress past it. But blizzard will be blizzard, who apparently havent milked enough money out of the pockets of the die-hard WoW playerbase.
Diablo III is by no means a bad game, its just riddled with problems the previous games suffered from which i was really hoping they would address, along with newer problems that spawned with the new features of D3.
I guess at its best, Diablo III is the pinacle of hack and slash games, and will leave you sleep deprived for many nights to come as you stay up well into the morning hours snorting your daily dose of monster-slaughtering cocaine. (You will have fun with this addictive game is the just of it)
At its worst, Diablo III can be frustrating and tedious at higher difficulties, repeating many of the errors made by its predecessors.
Ide give the game either a 6.5 or 7 out of 10. While it is fun, there are many errors blizzard could have easily prevented with a bit more time spent on the games development.
I realize you folks at blizzard didnt want to delay the game any longer, but for such a major game title like the diablo series, it would have been worth the wait. When you go to any fast food joint, would you rather take the stale fries that have been sitting out for an hour, or wait a bit for fresh ones to be made?
Once more, the game hasnt been out for very long, and im sure many things are going to change in the near future. Anywho, thanks @ all of you (nobody!) for reading!
The music doesn't help towards altering the game's mood, and is often there just to be background music- while the score itself is quite nice on its own, it seems to be more of a gimmick.
If anything, Diablo obviously wasn't a game made for its story at all. The dungeon crawling experience isn't totally impeded on by a horrible storyline or anything. But it feels like they had created all those in-game cinematics and commentaries for the sake of decoration, which was a bit disappointing to me.
I might be ignorant of Diablo II's plot, but the story doesn't explain it very well, even in the lore. I might check on it again to see what it is about.)
That all is terrible and an insult to Diablo 2 |3;;;, oh well, nothing to do about it XD, thanks for clearing it out to me x3
Also one of my friends told me about the gameplay aspects and it doesn't sound so appealing |3;;;. Oh well XD
<3
If blizzard does eventually open the real money auction house then they better fix all the hacking first. Otherwise their problems will grow exponentially.