my two cents: Diablo III
Well, Diablo III, its out for just one day, ONE F***ING DAY, and you can already write a list of main complains about this game. No wonder that many people are dissapointed, it was hyped since it was announced 12 Years ago. They were expecting a masterpiece, but what they got, was a game. So without any more introduction, lets start with my brief D3-experience.
I installed the game and registered it on Battle.net, no problem there. With Steam, Origin and stuff, things like that are already standard. But one thing that bothers me is that you have to be permamently logged in to battle.net to play the game, even if you play alone. Thats something I cannot understand. I bought Rayman Origins lately from steam, which works perfectly in singlepayer, yet still I have to log to steam and stay logged in. Thus it is quiet obnoxious if you loose connection or can’t log in at all because the servers crashed. If I want to play offline, don’t make me to log in to some protal and just let me play! I log in once I want to play in multiplayer for hells sake!
But lets get to the game, shall we? It reminds me of one of my favorite PS2-games: Baldurs Gate-Dark alliance. In fact, they have many similarities in gameplay apart from the overhead-view. Dark Alliance was Awesome, so is Diablo III? Well, yes.
The gameplay is great and the scenery and atmosphere gives you the constant feel of danger. This is realy a good thing, as everything about Diablo is about Death, Doom, Horror and Demons. Blizzard did a good job conveing this feel. However, i must say that for a develpoment time of 12 (11?) years, the graphic as a whole didnt improved alot. At some points, the graphic reminds me alot about WoW, and its balls. I play on a rather low graphic setting (textures high, else off, Anti-alias on), but the graphic coudn’t impress me either when I was watching LPs from people whom I know that they have a way better PC then me. But hey, at least it works! The best thing about the desighn of the game is that the characters actualy look like kick-ass-medieval heroes., even the female ones (for most times). I hate it when, for example, male knights actualy are in a massive armor, where female knights have all kind of armory holes just to show off “fancy parts”. Searously, Concept and game desighners, it looks like shit <.<
And like hell it works. Blizzard made a good job in focusing on the gameplay mechanics instead of fancy graphics (like ALL other games nowerdays). You have five classes to choose from and kickstart the game. Thats how I like it. No fancy-ass customisation, just your character and the game. I heared mayn complains about little to no customisation or statt freedom, but how I understood it, you get a bunch of skills and you are free to use it or not. You can even change them if you want. The game doesnt go for long now, but at the moment I see the skills as a way to customize your gameplay and unlock new skills that are not stronger in particular, but giving you a bigger variety of abilities. I actualy like that, because most RPGs are about leveling up to get the best skills. I work best with the two basic attacks “hungry arrow” and “rapid fire” with penetration- and fire-runes, although I already have alot of fancy stuff to choose from. Unfortunately, its the exact opposite with the armory. You have to choose from magic, rare and what ever comes after that (I DONT CAAARE!!). As most of the drops you get are perfectly fit to your character class, even with boni, you usualy look after the magics, and if possible, the rares. Standart stays out of the way. Then you just look at how big the boni are and equip acordingly. This is normal and gives motivation to venture out and find better stuff, but the only choice of equipment you have is: which weapon do I use? That is kinda poor…
Lets get to the online-gaming. For the multiplayier, it is fun as all hell. What I love about the multiplayer is that enemies become stronger the more players participate in the session. This makes it vital to play with your teammates to…not die…which is a good thing. A thing that realy pisses me off is the auction house. Trading ingame Items for real life currency?! Is it the goal of Blizzard to keep goldfarmers employed or what? Concidering that blizzard even gets a piece from that pie for doing nothing is ridiculous. Seariously, this is somethignt hat shouldn’t be. Easy as that. At least you can still sell and buy items with normal gold.
I preordered Diablo III for two reasons. On one side, I wanted to play this game because it looked like a bunch of fun, and on the other side, I wanted to establish if it is reasonable to follow the hypes. This Game is an ideal specimen, because it even lies in my range of interest, and the hype is BIG. And in that one day of existance, many people love it and many people hate it, usualy because of little customisation and the auction house. I would go so far to say that it is a decent and fun game with minor flaws in gameplay. However,I would also go so far to say that it wasnt worth the hype. People expected the “lost arc+holy grale”-bundle so it is clear that they are disapointed. I expected a half-decent game and I’m all happy with it. And for me it is now cristal-clear that hypes belong ignored. If you hear: “Jea, (insert game name here) comes out soon. Its gonna be SOOO EPIC!!1”, better wait until you saw some gameplay footage, because many hyped games arent half as good as people make it up to be.
Have a good day.
P.S. This review reflects my gameplay experience of 1 day gameplay, so basicaly like everyone else, Im limited to my knowledge of the game. Also I focused on the GAME, not the story.
