Diablo 3 Review – Ah.. Diablo 3.. many of us have waited for years and years. I still remember playing Diablo 2 with my 2 housemates for hours and hours. We were still using a 56k dial-up modem so I couldn’t be bothered playing it online, no thanks (we played on LAN). Tons of funs killing minions after minions from hell.
Now that Diablo 3 is here, is it worth the wait? Well, stay a while and listen.
If you haven’t played the Diablo series before, it’s basically a role-playing action game where you pick a character class that suits your style, level up to get more skills and become more powerful, while killing literally thousands of monsters.
Unlike the classic/traditional RPGs, there isn’t much conversation in Diablo 3 (or any Diablo series). The game focuses solely on adventuring (getting loots) and killing.. things. The cinematic videos are breath-taking though, kudos to the Blizzard team (watch them on YouTube if you don’t believe me).
In Diablo 3, you can select one of the available classes: Barbarian, Monk, Demon Hunter, Wizard, or Witch Doctor. Each of them plays differently and has different skills from one to the other. There isn’t much customisation apart from picking a gender and a name for your character.
Diablo 3, surprisingly, has to be played online – a surprising move that caused a stir on the day of Diablo 3 launch. Millions of gamers hording in to play Diablo 3 were disappointed to find that their servers couldn’t cope with that crazy amount of stream at once. People got frustrated because they couldn’t wait any longer to play Diablo 3.
On the good side though, cheaters shouldn’t exist and it also enforces you to connect with the other players to roam together. Joining a friend is really easy using the Social window and there is no limitation whether you can join a particular level that you haven’t been into before. This way, you can always play with others anytime you like and level up together. There are also recent players you’ve played on the list so you can hop back in.
On the Normal difficulty (you are forced to play this difficulty level when you start), enemies and bosses are really easy to kill and you should be able to finish the whole game in less than a week (or a few days perhaps). Once you’ve completed the game, you’ll unlock the next difficulty, and so on (Normal->Nightmare->Hell->Inferno).
All these killings will not be fun without the skills and runes. In Diablo 3, you unlock skills when you level up and also runes that can be used on a particular skill (so each skill can have multiple runes – think of it like sub-skills). It’s all about decisions and the game style that you like. Although many people post their best builds in the forums, sometimes you know what you like best.
These skills can be changed whenever you like, unlike Diablo 1 and 2. There are no penalties for changing skills and quick slots around, apart from the short cooldown period. You can only pick 4 skills to play though and assign them in any quick slots (with the keyboard shortcut 1-4).
This is not obvious at first (assigning any Diablo 3 skills to any quick slots) and you need to enable the “Elective Mode” skills from the Options – many Diablo 3 gamers miss this option and get frustrated as a result.
In Diablo games, it’s all about the loot! Killing enemies over and over is fun and gives a sense of hope that you’ll get a good item as a reward. As you play the higher difficulties, you’ll get a better chance of getting really good items. However, even then, it is really hard to get the items you really want or items that suit your character best. Stats on the items are pretty much random (unless for set items and those legendary ones). Not to mention that it’s quite costly to upgrade your Blacksmith to make these yourself.
In the end, I find that it’s much easier and cheaper to find the items you want at the Auction House. The Auction House is a great feature and you can really filter the items into specific stats that you want them to have. Want a weapon that can heal you while dishing out cold damage and improving your Strength stat? Check!
However, this is where the Diablo 3 problem lies (in my opinion). I would rather get gold and search my ultimate item in the Auction House, than wasting hours and hours of adventuring only to get crappy ones. This doesn’t give me enough motivation to keep on playing Diablo 3 over and over, like the previous Diablo series.
In the end, it may not matter much because leveling in Diablo 3 still is fun. The animations, the skills, the different character classes you can pick, the randomness (map, quests, loot) simply make Diablo 3 fun to play for many hours. It’s really addictive and still offers plenty of replayability value.
If these don’t add up, you can always search for legendary items and then sell them in Auction House for real money (yes there is that option too, coming soon).
Don’t forget to get a good mouse because you will be clicking your ways out in no time!
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