Diablo 3 Review:
So I just finished D3 (normal) and I have to say that I’ve got mixed feelings about this game. Let’s break this up a bit and talk about graphics, gameplay, story, and the 500lb elephant… hmm, think I did that wrong.
Anyways, graphics; they’re good. Man, and they say game reviewing is hard! Ok, to be more specific, the graphics are darn good for what they are. Diablo 3 is a 3-D isometric hack and slasher… so like Zelda but with more blood. Granted it can’t be anything along the lines of Skyrim because of the multiplayer bit, the graphics are rich and very appealing. I think the environment is so well done that it can just pull you into the game. Personally, I have a hard time with the whole “camera 10 miles hovering over you” type games; it creates this barrier between player and character. Which is why first person type games have such an easy time with immersion, and is utterly disturbing (like a clown sharpening knives outside your house at midnight disturbing) when any FP type game fails at it. None the less, having the right visuals can draw you in, so the D3 graphics are like the shiny keys you jangle in front of an ADHD kid hopped up on 5hr energy shots. Also, I’d like to throw in there that Blizzard is notorious for making their games not only look pretty nice (all things considered), but also letting them run on terrible systems! I ran D3 on my laptop without any issue (on lowest settings of course)… I still have problems with SWTOR though.
Gameplay is an interesting thing in dungeon crawlers. I’m kind of a noob to the genre so I guess it’s hard for an outsider to really see the appeal in it, but that said, objectively speaking, it’s pretty good. The character builds seem pretty solid, though I mostly played a mage (wizard? magician? man, I already forgot what they’re called!)… err, Coffinshaker of course, and didn’t have much issues going through the leveling process. It seems like there are many builds that are quite effective, so it mainly comes down to your play style. I haven’t tried the other classes yet, so I’m going to go out on a limb and say they’re, for the most part, similar in this sense. But while working on my character build, I couldn’t help but make the connection to their (Blizz) new approach to WoW’s skill/talent trees… wonder if that’s where they borrowed it from.
Anyways, what can I say about the combat? It’s a hack and slasher. If you like that kind of combat, then you’re in for a ride! If not, well… you suck. JK! But really, who doesn’t like a good slash and hack every now and then? Sure, I guess some stages need a bit of strategy, but for the most part you get into a groove and can blast away half the stage while half paying attention to Jersey Shore, or whatever you kids watch these days. >) I will say that some situations are extremely unbalanced. For instance, there’s a boss at the end (like second to last) that WILL own you! It just will! My mage guy died probably 20+ times before having to google the event and look up the proper build to kill him. My other build worked just fine prior, and after, that boss, but he does some nasty stuff so in that case I chock it up to poor progression design.
Other than that, D3 is Pokemon but with gear. It’s like all that gear progression you get from WoW raiding, but totally randomized and infuriatingly repetitive. You will throw so much magic gear into the trash compactor that you’ll wonder how in the world the global population isn’t completely suited up for invasion. I mean, at first I was trying to stash it in the bank or sell it on the auction house, but after a while, I just didn’t even care. I got more than enough crafting essences an so I just sold it all to the merchants… Heck, towards the end my bags would be so full of junk that I stopped porting back to the town to sell stuff… I’d just toss it back on the ground. I’m sure there’s a guy in an Indian suit somewhere shedding a tear right now…
Now, as for story… um, how can I say it nicely? It plays out like something a 9yr old wrote while on the bus ride home from school. The Cliff Notes version can literally be written on a fortune cookie paper. The plot is exceedingly obvious and the storytelling is so self referencing (to the past games) that if you are new to the series, you’ll pretty much be just nodding and grinning while holding out your hat for more spare gear drops. TLDR, the story is bland and it makes me sad. While folks argue that games like Skyrim have short main questlines, I would agree but also say that the sidequests offer more than 100 hours of pure exploratory fun! D3 however is pretty linear and dry, while the bulk of the gameplay is done spelunking through dungeons for another epic hat, but with 1 extra point of damage. Maybe this isn’t the genre for me, but this certainly hit my sore spot. I would have really loved to see some intercharacter development, maybe a romance or two, or even some amount of side quests (other than the 5 seconds to kill 20 monsters attacking you). I guess what I’d really want is the gameplay of D3 with the story depth of Dragon Age games. Maybe next time… not like it took em long enough to develop it…
So let’s talk about elephants, shall we? D3 had one of the roughest launches gamers have seen in a while. Granted, most PC games don’t ever go so well for the first few days, but man oh man, D3 was very frustrating! Now, like I said, this is nothing new for PC gamers (yeah yeah, laugh it up ya console junkies! >) but what compounds the issue with D3 is the fact that it’s an online game, whether you play solo or not. Because of this, you get hit with crashes, lag, reboots, or you just can’t log in at all. I got one of those famous errors while in the middle of a boss battle. Sufficed to say, I died. Had I been playing Hardcore mode, I would be one angry shaker! (hardcore mode deletes your character if you die) In fact, in the state the game is in now, I don’t see how it would be possible to effectively play in hardcore mode through the finish without incident. Maybe if you have good luck… I don’t so that won’t be happening. Point is, major ball droppage with this one, though much of the major issues have been fixed. I still get character killing lag sometimes, but that’s what SWTOR is for! >D
Overall… good game! I’d recommend it to a friend, though it might not be too high up on that list. I’d say the driving force of this game type is the gear drops which forces replayability, which isn’t a bad thing! I see it sucking people back in for hours and hours of more time, especially for achievement hunters! But if you were looking for some story with substance, this isn’t the game you were looking for. Again, all things considered, not a bad purchase so if you have some loose change, it’s something to consider.
Oh! And for that comic… well… saying “spoilers” would imply that the plot wasn’t superficial, so let’s say the spirit of Diablo resides in one of the female main characters, or something like that, so when “he” pops out at the end, he kinda has some nice curves in all the right spots. (though some say it’s because he absorbed some of the other bosses’ powers, one of which was a lady) So big ol birthing hips, a thin waist, and some nice large chest armor (which have a striking similarity to… err… nevermind)… I think Sir Mixolot would approve!
wha?
ok I have never played diablo before plz explain?
lol, sorry… forgot what day it was! added description! >D
so yeah… the model for diablo kinda looks like he’s got boobs, but it’s kinda just a bad design at the wrong angle… then again, he’s got a nice hourglass figure so…
If you like hax and slash torchlight 2 is coming out for $20 on steam and the orgional torchlight is $15 on steam
grahics: I dont judge graphics
story: kinda unorgonal but what dp you exect from a 20-15 game
gameplay: this is where torchlight shines…. The combat is very smooth, explosive and all-around fun!
Multilayer: only in tprchlight 2 (along with charter custimation)
verdict: for such a cheap game it is very great combat and LOADS of content and side quests! (also fishing system, pets for all-which can also sell junk, and spec trees!)
Spoiler: It was discovered that the mother was infact raising the girl Leah as a resurrected Diablo. After using the Black Soulstone to awaken Diablo inside of her the original Leah was no more and instead.. she was Diablo born and raised female.
kinda sad about Leah though… seems like a lot of that stuff just kind of ended without resolution. >/
I beat normal with a wizard and am slowly trucking through nightmare, mainly because I am story driven and having seen the main plot my drive to complete hardmodes is severely low.
On normal, Belial is the one that killed me the most, that stupid platform is so small I had a really annoying time avoiding things.
yeah, that’s the guy! the basic strat is to have the templar run around and grab enough aggro to let you zip away. ice armor and blizzard are also nice. though I think it’s a tossup between the frostnova thing and teleport
Yeah it´s probably worst fight since in every other there is enough space to dodge attacks… Wizzard speaking too…
I can play the game fine on my 3,5 years old laptop only at 800×600 which brings some nostalgia…
I always prefered teleport-wormhole and shockwave (not really time to switch it) energy armor (I prefer having defence and extended suply of arcane power through rune) archon as burst dmg and electrocute (chain lighning) and double beam disintegrate.
Prefer running and taking out large amount of mobs… well I am not really single target kind of guy.
I got to say that the game is very easy on normal mode but the game with smash you down once you get to hell mode.
true. the only probs I had in normal were with that one boss and lag spikes killing me. trying nightmare, but idk… might reroll.
It is a good game for those who enjoy this genre but I am kinda burnt out with the grindingfest with little to no meaning. I would say D3 didn’t live up to it’s hype in most cases ( like many games ….sadly ) but it is still a solid game with VERY Questionable decisions ( Can’t play singleplayer without Internet ?! WTF ?! That is what SWTOR is for ! :D )
As for your poll question….well it is a freaking ROLE-PLAYING GAME ! How can you expect to role-play in a weak story that would bore you or doesn’t impact you enough to care ? Sure you may choose to do it but as I said , it won’t be meaninful. Gameplay etc can come later as long as we get to see a story that hits us deeply.
A good example ? Just look at TERA… the combat is god damn FUN , story and grinding….boring and frustrating…..so you have to play in certain spurts or you might get burnt out real quick. On the other hand of the scale there is Dragon Age : Origins , which is one of my favorites , where people complained about the staggering combat but I felt it was , although being a slow paced one , appropriate to the game and it’s world along with its heavy hitting story and companions. I can hear you say ” But TERA is an MMO and DA:O is a singleplayer . How can you compare them ?! ” Well…I can if they call themselves RPGs. Without a base to build-upon..you cannot expect to use cheap excuses and sweep your problems under the rug. Personal opinion ; if you won’t give me a good reason why should I murder thousand of people in this game, the fun aspect of killing them will only last so much. That is what SWTOR did great. It was a great lvling experience where the quests and storylines you did was Meaningful. It progressed you and your character’s status other than being ” Just another random hero ” . I fell flat on other cases but I got what I wanted from the game. That can show you that a strong story experience can hold attention even with flaws while combat will burn you out quite quickly…
Hope that answers the question a little.
You know, I really liked DAO’s story! what killed me was the gameplay, as you said, but still, overall not bad. and story can be a HUGE part of an MMO! just look at games like SWTOR or even WOW, they both have massive stories (though I’d argue the swtor has the upper hand with individualized stories…) and both are wildly successful in mixing the two. the problem I had with D3 was that I couldn’t connect with anyone. meaning, I didn’t have a sense of immersion. like you said, why should I be killing thousands of people and zombies? to get gear? yeah, tell that one to the judge! idk, that aspect was a huge let down and kind of kills the replayability for me.
probably even the “cant customize your character’s look” hurt too… I’m not a fan of the player select sort of gaming. I think we’ve come far enough to allow even a slight bit of customization… then again, it feels like playing a game on google maps so maybe it doesn’t matter how my cluster of 10 pixels looks anyways…
still, I wouldn’t call it a bad game. Blizz has a way of making addictive games and I can really see the appeal, but I don’t think I’ll be grinding dungeons just to get a new sword with an extra vitality point. but hey, to each their own, right?
I truly miss the days of the “80+ hour story” rpgs. remember those? they even marketed them as such! now it’s all glitter and glam, but at the expense of substance. still, D3 isn’t as bad as one other I played… think it was Rainbow6; my friend and I beat it in an afternoon… it was very disappointing.
I think the first question when talking about Diablo 3 should be “What kind of game is it trying to be”. A storydriven classical RPG or MMO with many unexpected twists and your choices actually having impact on the gameworld? I dont think so. If you expect that I can agree that you will be disappointed.
For me and many I played with and / or talked to (off course thats a very very small percentage of the player base) its an action game, a dungeon crawler with some rpg elements. Comparing the Story of Diablo 1 and 2 to Part 3 the last is a huge improvement. Where in the first game you were mostly just tossed into the gameworld with a simple basic weapon and told “go kill stuff” and in Part 2 the same, with spoken text and a few videos, now you have something that accompanies you through the whole game. Sure, if you played the first games you had the occasional moment of recognition when someone familiar was mentioned or showed up. In my opinion though that was not required to follow the plot, simple as it is. There are also plenty of dialogues with various npc or books you can find and read, but as I said. Its for flavor not the main drive in this game.
Normal Mode is somewhat the tutorial. Or Easy mode. The thing pretty much everyone can get through with a bit effort and know how about the own class. If you want to play through once, see the story, the enemies and so you can say “I did it”, thats fine too, but for me that was when the real game started. When it got challenging. I have not gotten past the second difficulty level yet but I hope I will, having some friends I can form a party with on a semi-regular base. I cannot say if my enthusiasm - or my skills - will last long enough to get me to the last difficulty, but I will go on as long as its fun, and maybe after a few weeks / months I may get that itch to play it again.
Yes I admit, I am a fan of the series, but not to the degree that I cannot see the flaws, especially the online-only part was very disappointing and so are the server crashes, but for me those are rather small things, I wont despair just because I cannot play a few hours. I got what I wanted to get. Epic adventures, masses of monsters, cool skills.
Just my two cents, not saying your opinions are wrong, just offering a different point of view on it. After all we are all different and have different tastes :)
Truth be told the most owesome part of story was Tyrael ripping his wings away. I truly did not expect that (even if I knew he somehow chose to be mortal)…
Everything else… well I think Tyrael plunging his blade into worldstone in Lord of Destruction came seccond…
And well… it´s Diablo the only real point ofthe game is to make sure you replace your computer mouse frequently (arguably with disintegrate beams there is not much clikfest anyway)
Hey Munkeeman! thanks for writing in! I think you bring up some excellent points!
maybe the big issue I think that’s going on here is with the classification of this game and what it’s trying to do. I’m no stranger to the hack and slash genre, though this is really the first dungeon crawler I’ve tried. that said, I can see a major connection between the two. mainly, if you take game series such as Dynasty Warriors into consideration, then you can see even more connections! I love DW!! it’s just cutting down billions of soldiers with one swing kinda fun! I think the plot at first was somewhat historically accurate, but probably by the 5th game when you can go all supersaiyin, then I start to wonder if they took a few liberties. regardless, the plot of the games is pretty terrible and I’d suspect most people just skip through the dialog to get into the action.
so in that sense, they are the same. story comes secondary to gameplay. and that’s ok. the gameplay of the DW series is amazing! it has character leveling and gear drops and all kinds of fun unlockables. but in contrast to D3, I think it sort of knows what it is, a hack-em-up. sure, you can follow the story, a history of chinese culture according to a 3rd grader, but it’s really about the action. maybe it’s a slight bit hypocritical on my part, but that doesn’t seem to bug me as much. maybe it’s because each stage feels separate, like you’re working through something specific and repeatable, rather than sections of a larger “act”. or maybe it’s the degree of unlockables, which seems to be lacking on the D3 front.
I’m not really sure where my issue springs from on this, but like you said, for what it is (a hackem up adventure with cutting down more monsters than my lifetime count of mowing grass), then story aside, you really have a decent game. and despite my criticisms (because hey, it’s a review, can’t just be all unicorns and rainbows), I did enjoy the gameplay a LOT! and Blizz has my number (closet achievement hunter) so I’ll be working towards getting those, so it’s safe to say I’ll be playing it for a while to come.
Like I said before in the review, when it comes down to it, I had fun. I might not have liked the short story at an intellectual level, but for a few hours of mindless monster mowing, it’s up there with the DW series (which I hold as one of my favorite gaming series of all time). So would I recommend it to a friend? absolutely! would I recommend it over Skyrim? probably not. would I recommend it over New Vegas? hell yeah! >)
anyways, thank you again for your $0.02!! I always enjoy hearing peoples’ counterpoints! being a noob to the genre puts me at a disadvantage, so seeing what a vet has to say certainly puts things in perspective.
Torchlight :) Diablo except if you preorder Torchlight 2 on steam, for $20, you get Torchlight 1 for free. Its graphics are also a bit more…playful, I guess? while still being very high quality. I guess bright may be what I’m looking for…I don’t really know how to describe it. But I like it.
Mind you torchlight 1 has TERRIBLE balancing X_X so better off watching videos on the torchlight 2 beta to get a feel of the game
heh, it actually looks cute on the steam page. might have to check it out.
To me, after you have played through D3 on normal, you know what’s up. After that I guess it is just getting gear, but you can get gear on the gold auction house for super cheap, so running for gear isn’t even all that exciting. I think being able to buy gear, use it, then resell it has something to do with the cheapness of things. Most of the drops I get I have already bought something better anyhow. I also find myself vendoring alot of good stuff because you won’t even sell it for much more. The time you spend selling most things you could have made just as much gold going out and killing stuff.
Maybe at max level gear runs and auction sales will be more worth while but by that time I don’t see myself wanting to keep running the same 4 zones over and over again. Yeah I know they redraw the maps but that doesn’t really make it feel much different to me. Maybe it will be something social to do with my friends if that is what they happen to be playing right then, or trying out different classes, but that is about it.
I guess that’s what hardmode is for (cause you can’t use the AH or something with it? something like that… I’m too afraid to try HM! lol)
I’m in the same boat… I don’t really see much use to buying or grinding gear unless you are max level on max difficulty. maybe I’m wrong and I’ll get steamrolled, but that’s how I sees it.
No, you totally should and that is the point. You can easily tripple your dammage and survivability for only a few thousand gold, which you can make in a few minutes. It trivializes gear hunting until the end game. I don’t really like it.
A little late to this page and didn’t read all the comments so someone else may of mentioned this but when i saw Diablo’s new appearance my first reaction wasn’t “huh she looks like a chick.”, it was “why the hell is a red alien queen in my blizzard game.”
HA!!! I like that!!
and now it can’t be unseen…
Ok REALLY late with a post on this image (going through the archives) but I have to say it. I don’t care what Blizz says. When Diablo walks no scratch that SAUNTERS through the gates of heaven there is NOTHING masculine about the movements or appearance.
ha! saunters is right!
heshe totally struts on in like a runway model! all we need now a fancy corset, wings, and Will I. Am singing in the background.