Diablo III Review

You' ve been too lenient with this game, to say the least, almost misleading, and I can't help of wonder why. If you wanted your review to have a more subjective touch, you should have argued about all these Diablo 3 could be, comparing to what finally is. Diablo 3 isn't worthy to be Diablo 2's descendant.

Sorry, I meant "objective", not subjective..

Should you pay for this game? NO!

Remember kids, the more you fund shitty business practices, the more common they become.

As a Diablo noob I didn't have any preconceived ideas about the game but I truly wish I hadn't bought it. It was expensive (£44.99 is not cheap) and to my eyes/mind it's not very good...at all. Having played Skyrim recently I think I was hoping for something similar(ish) but I feel I've gone back 10+ years in game play terrms. By that I mean:

- Top down view sucks. I expect games to be first or third person view these days. There's little sense of immersion in the world that you're viewing.
- Very predictable and repetitive game play...wander about a bit....oh no! nasty undead are emerging from the scenery...bish, bash, bosh....wander about a bit more.....repeat ad nauseum.
- I can't see where I'm going half the time as the surrounding area only 'reveals itself' and lights up once I'm there...but frankly it doesn't really matter anyway.
- Voice acting is samey, tame and poor.
- It just feels like a terrible waste of time. I don't care if my character pegs it or if he has nice thick pants to wear whereas I did in Skyrim. In Skyrim I was involved in the world and storyline, I cared what happened but here I feel an almost complete sense of disconnect. What's the point?

If you feel differently then I'd love to know what I'm missing. Please enlighten me.

This comment made my day

I have 4 PC's at home I was going too purchase it for up until I saw the always online to play, even single player.

I would have also bought or had my brother buy 2 copies for his sons and had many friends enticed into it I would say they lost about 14 sales alone from me and I know of other ppl who ahve also said no to supporting such a DRM of always being online too play a game, it is only fair that we vote with our wallets and as much as Blizzard or reviewers want to beg the differ they know that sales have been lost due to the chaotic anture of always online DRM.

As fr the review it is dry and predictable almost verbatim of other "reviews" posted about but of course we cannot expect a rela review froma leading source or they might get blacklisted by the publishers who sell the games.

At least they had the sense to add potion cooldowns so you can't just spam the potion key to survive any battle. Saying that, by level 10 I don't think I'd used any health potions. I imagine the higher difficulty levels may change that. With that said, this is no evolution of the Diablo series. For older gamers who played the previous ones it's a nice touch of nostalgia, and I'll enjoy playing it for a while co-op with some friends, but don't think it will hold any long term replay value.

I hear what BabyFaceLee is saying, but when you get into big groups of monsters first person wouldn't really do it justice, but fixed isometric view does seem to be quite dated. This game would have been good at £25.99, but at £44.99 it does feel somewhat lacking in the value department. Maybe the high cost was for the online all the time system they've build into it...

I played both diablo 1 and 2, and yes this is a more "dumbed" down experience at the beggining. As you start leveling up and get more skills to choose from to make an adequate skill build (Instead of talent tree) for your taste (And not only you get more skills, you get "runes" which are another way to use that skill), the mobs start getting tougher and the fights start challenging you more. Of course this is meant for online play, you also need to achieve a higher lvl of difficulty by actually ending the game so you dont get everything out of the box.

For me it has been a pretty good game lots of hours to play. For the guy who has never played diablo and complaints about the top down view... you are amazing dude... not even a single f was given reading your review, you just cant...

I dont understand how you could write this with 2 fists full of blizzard man meat. It has to be the biggest let down of the century. Cant believe what they did to this fantastic series. I will never buy another game made by blizzard again.

Diablo II was my son's portal into pc gaming in 2005 and it kicked off what would be a great phase of his life. Seems to be tapering off now...

I was hoping Diablo III might work the same magic on the current gen of novice gamers.

I love the game. Single player or multiplayer. And yes, Normal/Nightmare are a joke. Come try Inferno with me, K?

Also, if you are complaining about the "grind", you clearly have no clue what Diablo is about. The ENTIRE point of the game is to grind in hopes of getting "the best" drop possible so you can kill more stuff faster and easier.

Given that only one group of 4 people with the support of corporate sponsors and 200+ people feeding them gear/money have beat the game (I.e., killed Diablo on Inferno), and even with that it took them 5 days, I suspect this game will be long-lived. After-all, there is still the hardcore inferno left to go before anyone truely "beats" the game.

The sounds are there, the animations are great, the lore is immersive (as long as you actually listen to the lore). Frankly, I like not choosing stats and using scrolls. In reality, who did? They were just meaningless inventory-space takers that slowed down the game for no purpose other than to stretch out a lack of content. As for stats - tell me you actually chose your stats in D2 and didn't just google the best builds?

As for the identify with click in D3 - the reason it's in there (as stated many times in the D3 forums) is for that "OMG OMG OMG Please be something good!" feeling you get as the 3s cast time goes by. If it didn't, they would feel just like blue drops - open inventory, oh you're a sucky item, drop from inventory, keep moving.

Really, I think the celebrity status of D3 (either cause people from WoW got it or the spread on the internet) has hurt the perception of the game because people who have no idea what the game *IS* supposed to be are complaining about this or that.

This review pretty much reflects how I feel about the game. I am currently half way through Act 1 on nightmare with the Barbarian and absolutely loving it. I also welcome the online only aspect of the game. Despite the frustrations of the connectivity issues It makes for a much better hacker /dupe free game.

"And you know what adds to the experience in a perverse way? It's knowing that at any moment your latency could drop into the red and you could be killed by lag."

First review I've ever read where lag in a game "adds to the experience"...

I found some parts of d3 quite lazily made, they have the same quest rewards for every single quest, boring items, copy pasted a wow heroic fight as the last fight 6 skill action bar, about 20% of the game is mimicked wow scenery and spells.( not sure how much of the spells are wow but my 57 barb is very warrior like, kinda pissed.)

Here are some personal opinion downsides.

4 players per game
arena only pvp (when it comes)
no offline mode at all
only 6 skills usable at once (noobs)
level 60 level limit
wow type potions ( might as well just give it a cd and make it like the new tp if your gonna do that and have it heal more with your level)
dated graphics
Made the barbarian half wow warrior, just make a new class why ruin a classic?

I love the random quests and the background. The gameplay is ok, tamed down by the 6 skill system, makes me feel like I am playing hellokitty adventure land. The fluidity is kicked in the teeth by this feature you can no longer use your fun or survival skills because there is no room for such things as leap or blink on your action bar if you want to have a optimized character. Seems like they put it in place as a easy way to balance the game.

The chaos has been smothered by uncreative balance, you can no longer fly across the screen teleporting reigning down havoc on anything in your wake or hostile players anytime in game and have some fun pvp on your own terms.

Diablo 3's stiff overly balanced blandness and Uber noob friendliness makes me feel like I am a cow in a meat factory being poked and lead through metal gates.

Its not a terrible game, before you realize your not romping around in a open field you have some fun, I give it a 7\10.

@ aris agreed only a little evolution (I really like the side quests so tempted to spoil)

For the record Blizzard reuses their ideas all of the time. In fact, your wow reference is actually a diablo reference. As blizzard based the warrior(from wow) off diablo barb and warcraft for a lot of things. I don't think they'll ever really change that practice.

As for the game itself, I'm on act 1 inferno and I'm having a blast.

Your right they should have made deckard cain a night elf.

I'm sorry I ever bought the game.

I've been playing a single player game and have had to repeat several quests multiple times because of lag. I've also lost quest rewards from defeated bosses which completely 'spoils' the sense of achievement when playing a game.

And I just noticed you can already pirate the game, I should have pirated it.

I've played all Blizzard's games and this one is definitely the worst by far. Forcing us to play online and then offering a shockingly poor online service. I thought they were delaying the game so much so they could perfect it? The auction house lacks usability and is nowhere near as good as the one in WoW, forcing you to wade through hundreds of unwanted items before finding what you're might be interested in. Gem-making and blacksmithing skills are redundant as the items can be purchased for a fraction of the cost in auction house. The graphics are way behind the times. I could go on. Two weeks in a row our Diablo 3 lan nights with friends have been somewhat spoilt by server issues and random shutdowns.

What happened to you Blizzard? You used to be cool. Now you're just a souless corporation that doesn't care how much they screw over their lifers.

Loved the review! I especially liked this comment. It makes me laugh every time I read it:

And the Witch Doctor? The Witch Doctor tosses jars of live spiders. I don't care what the circumstances are; that is never acceptable.

I am really enjoying Diablo III. One thing that I know I will miss is the lack of user supplied mods that the online only interface robs us of. I will probably not be playing this game 10 years after its release like I did with Diablo II just because of this.