Diablo III (2012)

I've never been a huge Diablo fan, and my history with the franchise is pretty limited. Back in the 2000s, I played a little bit of Diablo 2 with a few friends, but I don't really remember much about it. Diablo 3 is my only true deep dive into the series, and I revisited it a while back in anticipation of the upcoming fourth game in the series.

Despite being completely different genres of games, I feel that Diablo 3 scratches the same itch as a Musou/Warriors game: being an all-powerful hero mowing down huge hordes of dim-witted enemy lackeys. Diablo 3 does it well, and the initial grind for better loot and new abilities is addictive as hell.

Unfortunately, the repetitiousness of this formula never fails to lose its shine relatively quickly. Once you settle on an effective rotation of abilities, the incentive to experiment evaporates. The difficulty becomes so trivial that you are forced to adjust it as you go, giving the game a wonky feeling. The labyrinthine dungeons become dull to navigate as you realize they're just different visual flavors of hallways with enemies, without any variation in how you traverse them.

This all contributes to why I have never finished the game. I've made as far as Act 4, but the gameplay becomes so dull that I just have to move on to something else. I'm giving Diablo 4 a chance because the open world approach I experienced in the beta felt pretty compelling. But for now, Diablo 3 remains a treadmill that I respect, but can only enjoy in short bursts.

I waited impatiently for Diablo III to come out, back in 2012, and when it did, I was the first to buy it. Never was I more hyped for a sequel than this one.

Right away, I was hooked up and played many hours in a row and almost finished it in one setting.

The story goes on where Diablo II ended and it follows the plot really well. Diablo has broken free from the Soulstone with the help of his Demon Lord buddies and roams the earth again. You need to stop him once again to save humanity and need to fight your way through all his minions and luitenants. It is kind of the same story as Diablo II but for this series, that is perfectly fine.

You visit the old, destroyed town of Tristram, come across characters and lore from the previous games and meet some new and original NPC’s. You roam the desserts, the cold plains of Bastion Keep and visit heaven itself.

The newly added characters, like the Witch Doctor, Monk and Demon Hunter are all great and every character is balanced. I could not find problems with any of them being more overpowered than the other. My personal favorite will always be the With Doctor. Raising zombies and attacking with foul voodoo is just so satisfying.

Diablo III is a big game and offers much content for moneys worth. It also has many improved features from the previous installments, like more inventory space, a re-loadable health potion and a town portal that you can always use, instead of a big bible in your inventory that stores town portals. The game controls fluently and you are in total control of the situation.

Although I enjoyed the game and played the crap out of it, I have some personal complaints about Diablo III.

First of all, the game feels a little too cartoonish and the dark, grim atmosphere from the first two installments is not present. This is mainly because of the 3D graphics of course, but it is just to colorful and bright in my opinion.

Secondly, the introduction of the Auction House back in the day, almost broke the game for me. People could buy and sell ridiculously powerful items and blast their way to the game without any effort. And worst of all, you paid real money for it. The game became a business model and people became gambling addicts. It was even worse than the lootbox system in many other games and it made me very sad. Luckily, this feature has been removed because of the many complaints but it is worth noting. If people did not complain, this would have gone on forever. And because Blizzard is doing the same scam these days for Diablo Immortal (which is already banned in my country because of this), I wanted to point it out.

Lastly, Diablo III has become a mindless game where the only thing that matters, is how fast you can complete a “greater rift”. It is starting to look a lot like League of Legends, in terms of doing the same thing over and over again and try to be the fastest. People must do what they like of course, but for me, the whole magic of Diablo, like experienced at the start of this game is dead. The story does not matter anymore and the game got too commercial, if that makes any sense. The seasons, greater rifts and events are cool, but also makes you feel that you can never complete this game.

Still, I get it. The game needs to stay interesting to keep people playing so the developers need to make some changes in order to achieve this.

But enough complaining. I play greater rifts too and participate in the seasons, but only because of the nice rewards you get from them and to build a new character, and making him stronger than the previous one. And although this is still enjoyable, many times I forget that I’m playing Diablo.

Overall, Diablo III is a good game and although nobody gives a crap anymore, it follows Diablo 1 and 2 quite well and has a ton of content, regular updating and new features. In my opinion it is somewhat targeted at “the next generation”, who did not experience the previous games back in the day, but now I’m starting to sound like a grandpa and I am not even 30 yet.

I already saw the trailers for Diablo IV and it looks like they go back to the roots of Diablo II with darker graphics and a nice story. Cannot wait to try it when it comes out.

Still recommend Diablo III it for its fluent mechanics, fast paced gameplay and its content for the buck.

I really liked Diablo II when I played it earlier this year, but beyond completing the campaign and expansion, I felt little pull to go back besides watching others play on YouTube. It was an amazing game full of possibilities, but bogged down with major inconveniences that I could only tolerate for so long.

Diablo III does not capture everything that was so good about its predecessor, but by streamlining the hassle out of the core formula, it creates one of those rare gaming experiences that has me excited to go back for more after credits rolled.

A few things this game excels at:

Custom power fantasy - The variety of options I felt as a ranged Demon Hunter was far greater than I expected. It's all on-theme for the character, it all feels great to use and has a tangible impact on gameplay, and it's all sooo much easier to achieve and more free to experiment with than what Diablo II offered. The specific character I created, almost a tank who endlessly heals and deals passive damage as she plants her feet and slings infinite chakram blades is something really fun that I've not really been able to put together in other RPGs. The postgame promises some neat new ways to cap out my character and try a different style if I want, which is great.

Efficiency as a primary motivation - The story campaign is not hard, and you're given 1 quadrillion different difficulty options for postgame to tune it how you want. The game is not testing if you can finish its content as much as it's creating fun in seeing how efficiently and explosively you can do it, an ask that's reinforced by damage/XP bonuses for killing many enemies in quick succession and gear traits that refund HP and mana for successful kills and hits. The tools the game gives you to create ultra-survivable and powerful characters are easy to understand and implement, with enough complexity to give you moments of creativity to synergize things together in an OP way. The micromanagement of gear traits and stats to make this happen is a constant flow of fun without ever feeling like busywork.

Expansion content - The base game has nice environments, but loses a lot of the incredible dark atmosphere you get in the first two games, is a bit simplistic at times, and paces itself out weirdly. The Act V "Reaper of Souls" expansion pushes the game forward on all fronts. It offers memorable, challenging boss battles only matched by the excellent Diablo fight in Act IV; really cool setpiece moments; better dungeons; a variety of awesome areas that don't overstay their welcome; better writing (the bar was extremely low!); and the most interesting loot I saw all game.

From what I've read, this game as a whole dramatically improved in many ways after its original release, so I'm glad I'm playing it now. Still, there are some very clear areas of improvement for a sequel, bridging the gap between #2-3 and moving forward in other areas. The story is just not good. The base game campaign really needs more of a sense of exploration and "the unknown" like you get in #2. And they need to find a way to increase difficulty without just increasing stats, to make the base combat experience a bit more high-stakes. Diablo II was memorable because of some of the hardcore aspects that got ironed out here.

While its predecessor helped me "get" this style of game, this game helped me "get" why people keep playing it for hundreds of hours. Very enjoyable experience that makes me totally lose track of time while playing. Looking forward to seeing how far I can go in the postgame, which I've already started messing with.

Intro

Diablo 3 is an ARPG. You pick one of six characters (7 with DLC) and kill monsters in isometric perspective. Along the way you learn new skills and find new items to use.

The Good

Most of these points are in comparison to Diablo 2.

• Killing stuff is fun.
• Free on-the-fly respeccing.
• Twenty (!) difficulty levels.
• Easy difficulty level (called 'Normal' :-P).
• No runewords or tons of sockets.
• Levelling is way faster.
• Paragon (bonus) levels help new characters.
• Same goes for Kanai's Cube boni.
• Environmental interactions.
• Imps are a fun addition.
• Most skills are fun to use and viable.
• No Boss runs.
• Completely free unsocketing that doesn't destroy anything.
• Focus on PVE instead of PVP.
• Silly stuff like Whimsydale and The Vault.
• Vastly improved crafting, including craftable sets.
• No Stamina-limited running.
• Shared stash.
• Quest objectives highlighted on map.
• No charms filling up your inventory.
• Retalliation aura isn't an instakill like it used to be.

The Bad

• Story is the worst Bible fanfiction since Mormonism.
• Basically no reason to visit side-areas in Campaign Mode.
• Some quest objectives take too long to find.
• Many areas are too linear.
• Obnoxious scripted events that take away control.
• No respeccing in boss areas, even before combat.
• Crafting has a pointless timer.
• Upgrading gems takes too many steps.
• Attack/defense balance seems off at lowest difficulties (i've never used a potion).
• Pointless blood shard cap.
• Default movement speed is extremely slow.

The Ugly

• Still uses a terrible picture inventory system
• Stash has far too little space, even with all DLC.
• Only 12 character slots, not even enough for 2 characters per class.
• Top-tier crafting requires doing too many bounties (that are often dull).
• Items having levels and class-related stats is obnoxious.
• All the really cool stuff (legendary gems, powerful sets) is locked behind doing Greater Rifts and Torment difficulty.
• Even then set items are far too rare.
• Super-grindy bullshit with upgrading legendary gems, "ancient" sets and augmenting.

Conclusion

Diablo 3 is really fun. I completed the campaign with all seven classes and got all of them to level 70. It is also so much better than D2 that i cannot imagine why anyone would want to play the remaster of that game. Who wants to go back to always using the same 1-2 skills?

There is still a lot of room for improvement. I really wish ARPG designers would make their games far less linear, which would improve replayability. Inventories where items are represented by pictures without text on/near them also have to go. Really all inventory nonsense just needs to die. I want to kill monsters, not engage in warehouse management. Just have a single limitless text-based inventory with various sorting options like KOTOR or Bethesda RPGs.

Finally, ARPGs shouldn't focus on the 1% of players who see their game as a raison d'être and spend hundreds of hours on them. Let "normal" people also have super-cool sets and legendaries. They make the game so much more fun.

TL;DR: Diablo 3 - twenty steps forward, ten steps back.

Diablo III was a massively underrated game. When it first came out most people enjoyed it up to 30 hours through the campaign, then dropped it due to an immense lack of end game content and virutally zero drops because of the stupid auction house. They took it out after a certain time and after a few seasons introduced the Nephalem portals, which is still not as much end game content as in POE but definitely allows you to enjoy your fully armored character while mapping for more loot.

I really like the art style and colour grading of Diablo III. It's not as atmospheric and unique as Diablo II or I, but it was a sensible progression. The character design is outstanding and better than in Diablo II, the Demon Hunter, Witch Doctor, Monk, all of them feel more unique than the almost typical archetypes in Diablo II.

And sorry @ all you haters of D3, but I have to say it:

Of all Hack 'n' Slays Diablo 2 had the best atmosphere / music, POE has the best complexity and end game content, but Diablo III has the best combat feel and THAT is the single most important thing in this genre.

Diablo 3 is the best Hack 'n' Slay up to this day. Combat in D3 feels so nice, I virtually started it to just kill monsters to relax because it induces such a nice meditative flow. It's hard to describe how and why it does that - it's a combination of dynamic surroundings (destroying physical objects makes you quicker), rewards for quickly and continuosly killing demons (it gives extra exp and money if you don't break the flow), and ofc the monster dying and spell effect animations.

I hope Diablo 4 will have a nice atmosphere as D2, better storyline, more unique multiplayer feeling in the open world and so forth but I tell you - mark my words - in 10 years, Diablo 3 will still be the Hack 'N' Slay with the best combat feel and in general maybe the Action RPG with the best combat feel in general.

So I finally completed it: the one, the only, the legendary Diablo III! But, did it live up to all the hype?

I've always been more of a turn-based tactical man, planning my moves carefully and skillfully in X-Com (1995), Baldur's Gate or Fallout 2. I always frowned upon ARPGs as being a lesser kind of game, arcade-style without thought or skill, closer to one of those "cookie clicker" games than an RPG. But I was wrong. Last year I somehow ended up giving Path of Exile a shot, and it blew my mind (I should write a review for it). Now I'm hopelessly addicted to the ARPG genre and I've been searching for another one to sate my appetite.

Diablo 3 is an excellent game, don't get me wrong. It has all of the important bits and pieces that make an ARPG good: smooth and straightforward controls, tons and tons of loot, character customisation and fashion options and a massive world to explore. So in terms of general gameplay it gets full marks. I played as a creature summoner character ('The Witchdoctor') on Expert difficulty and it was a blast. I will note however that the game was extremely boring and pointless until I turned the difficulty all the way up to expert. Not sure if this is intentional... on "normal" setting my health would regen faster than enemies could damage me. I wonder if Blizzard were really dumbing down the game, making things a little bit too easy and simple? Also I noticed that there was no punishment for death at all. When you die, you just immediately respawn and you can run back to where you were. Slain enemies stay dead, procedural levels stay the same, and you don't lose anything.

So, while gameplay was tight and smooth, it was perhaps a little bit too smooth, a little bit too easy. Other customisation options seemed a little dumbed down as well. I hate to compare to Path of Exile but that game gives you so many more options for character development. Just google for "path of exile passive skill tree" to see the ridiculous options available. In PoE you can build literally anything you can think of. All characters are fluid and can branch into any fields they wish. For example, you could make a wizard who shoots out fire, but can also go into berserk mode occasionally with a two-handed axe. Or you could make a tank character with loads of HP, who can also sneak around with a dagger and backstab people. Or a necromancer with a taste for crossbows. Everything is on the table. By comparison Diablo 3 felt very restricted, and as a spell-caster, the available spells felt somewhat limited.

Example: here is my level 60 witchdoctor 'summoner.' The max summons I could do is shown below: 5 zombie dogs, a giant, a spooky skeleton (and one or two little tiki dudes not shown in the screenshot). By comparison, my necromancer character in PoE was able to summon ridiculous amounts, basically even armies when fully buffed. I think I unlocked an achievement for having summoned over 100 creatures at once.

Another complaint I have about Diablo 3 is just the overall world and story. Firstly, as a personal preference, I prefer the more dark and gritty fantasy worlds like Dark Souls. In this respect, PoE fits perfectly, or games like Divine Divinity or Grim Dawn, both of which have subtle horror influences. Diablo 3, by comparison, felt more silly and bland.. violence and horror is toned down, creatures are more predictable like spooky skeletons, arbitrary demons or dinosaur-looking beasts. Not horrifying Lovecraft-inspired creatures here. Along with this, the story didn't really capture my attention either. I was just another grand hero, "the chosen one," here to "save the world" from arbitrary evil giant demon guy. Toward the end the story became even more silly as we enter a battle between hell and heaven and there are literally angels who you've got to assist in fighting back the evil demons. This is what I find to be quite bland and lacking in maturity/complexity. In the more dark/realistic fantasy worlds the lines between good and evil aren't so clearly cut. I never feel immersed in such black & white universes where it's always "good guys" versus "bad guys" because it's just not believable: in reality everyone is complex and has their own reasons for following their course. This is no more apparent than in the Dark Souls universe, where every character whether human/monster/friend/foe has a tragic backstory that makes sense and one can relate to.

So, even though I've just written an essay of whining and complaining about Diablo 3, there's something interesting to note: I actually kept playing and finished the game. The reason for this is simple: I mostly just ignored the story, embraced the simplicity of the game and ultimately enjoyed the experience. The gameplay (particularly the loot system) is superbly designed and quite addictive. Collecting these big piles of loot, hoarding it all, selling some of it, then carefully choosing the right components and gem slots to perfectly min-max all of your stats and your DPS, not to mention all the inventory management. There's something really satisfying in that overall process.. of levelling and getting stronger and better gear.

I should also address all of the problems of the PC release. Thankfully most of the more extreme issues (that caused such controversy at launch) have been corrected. However the ridiculous DRM was completely overboard. The game requires constant internet connection to play: and if your internet slows down for some reason (as often happens in Australia) then the enemies start to glitch out or stop moving. So that's disappointing: the enemies are actually controlled and moved around by some remote server, rather than using the onboard AI software. I'm told I should have played the superior PS4 edition which suffers from none of these issues and can be played fully offline. I figured a mouse would be important, but given the simplicity of the game and UI, it suits a controller perfectly.

So here's where I land on Diablo 3. It's a great game, it's a fun game.. but for me it felt a little bit too simplified or dumbed-down in parts. The narrative and world weren't particularly interesting or engaging. For recommendations I would say go with the console version, or better yet: go with Path of Exile because it's better and it's free. And thus I give this game 3 stars and I shall continue on my quest to find another ARPG to properly scratch that ARPG itch.