DISCLAIMER: I don’t like Diablo or Diablo 2.
Having said that disclaimer, a big part of the reason I don’t like Diablo 3 is because, like its predecessors, I feel the game is a cheap psychological hack that makes players feel like they’re moving ahead and progressing, when in reality, they’re just picking up more and more trinkets and barely increasing their stats incrementally without really increasing a gamer’s fun (the way even super-tedious RPGs do when you at least get to learn some MEGA-DEATH spell that you get to use in combat that does less damage as the enemies get stronger and you eventually find a new LASER-POISON ability that puts the ol’ MEGA-DEATH to shame and so on and so forth). Kind of like an addiction to picking up grains of sand on a beach or an addiction to World of Warcraft.
Anyway, my gripes with the type of game aside, I’m disappointed in the game’s lack of polish. It’s that simple.
You know what I wanted to happen? In all honesty? I wanted to like Diablo 3 the way I never did like the other two. I wanted to give the whole franchise a fresh start. But after 12 years, coming from one of the biggest, best, and wealthiest developers in the entire gaming world, the ol’ Blizzard polish just isn’t there in Diablo 3.
Instead of having a lot of different-feeling and creatively-inspired abilities, you just upgrade four abilities? Four? That doesn’t make for a next-gen feeling game. That’s along the lines of upgrading your whip in Super Castlevania or your cannon in Super Metroid (which was, admittedly, pretty great because it had more than four abilities that you could mix and match at will). Alos, if you’re only giving each class four core abilities, why the hell aren’t they balanced enough at launch for PVP?! And speaking of launch, why require people to be online even for single-player if you aren’t going to allocate enough bandwidth for that decision in the first place? That means when Blizzard’s server goes down or the internet breaks at home, gamers basically are stuck with a $60 Frisbee that they’re too afraid to play catch with. I hope everyone learns a lesson from “Error 37”, not to mention the cost of online-only and DRM. Executives are fools if they think people won’t hack games or have access to hacked games after hackers hack those games. In the meanwhile, those same executives and hackers screw up the experience for all the regular gamers.
You know what else lacks polish? Diablue jeans.
Aside from that, there are other glaring, but less frustrating examples of bad game design with weapons and classes. The barbarian class feels stale compared to other classes, until you learn how to break the game by dual-wielding daggers and perma-stunning every boss you encounter. Using all weapons would be great if they felt different or had unique abilities like in Guild Wars 2. The demon hunter sort of feels like an amaz0n, sort of feels like an assassin, but doesn’t have the strengths of either. Event the demon hunter’s traps aren’t strong enough and don’t feel of much use. Every other time you level up, you’re picking between a stronger version of a skill you don’t like or the weaker skill you do like (because it’s cheaper). Buying awesome weapons makes the game waaay too easy, but only if you can learn how to switch to it through the complicated blah blah blah etc.
That all being said, it’s hilarious to throw jar after jar after jar of spiders at your enemies as the witch doctor. JARS OF F&$#ING SPIDERS. Hilarious.
All in all, if you liked Diablo and Diablo 2, you will either love this game because not much has changed or hate this game because not much has changed. Diablo 3 would have felt amazing five years ago or on Steam today for like twenty bucks. But in 2012 for sixty bucks? You can do better, Blizzard. There are too many other creative, well-polished games with reasonable price points. Like Torchlight (and hopefully Torchlight 2).
In general though, I want to set the bar higher as a gaming community, okay?
It’s simply not okay to ask this much money for this little polish after this long of a time.
This is such a dishonest review, if you don’t like the complexity of the first two games, what makes you think you would like the 3rd in the series? Boo for reviwing a game you are already predisposed to dislike.
What’s “dishonest” about it? He stated right up front that he didn’t like the first two games, but that he wanted to like this game.
This guy if full on retarded…………..
This game is a festering pile of crap. The best part of the game was watching the old school fan-boys have their souls crushed on the general chat as they kept playing.
Honestly, I’ve long considered Blizzard a company on my “bad side”, going as far back as this legal case:
https://www.eff.org/cases/blizzard-v-bnetd
The defendant in that case was a personal friend of mine, who ran a small ISP out of the basement of his house. He lost pretty much everything trying to fight his case for a right to host his own private server for his subscribers to use for small, private gaming sessions.
I have a hatred for World of Warcraft, but have loved just about every other Blizzard offering. The first Diablo game was pioneering as it was an RPG you could play online via Internet very big deal even though most access the net via modems in those days. I agree with your review the game is seriously flawed and unfinished. Don’t believe me try playing as a monk there are no weapon animations for that character only skill ones it makes you look like you are always attacking with your fists.
I liked (not loved, but realy liked) the first and the second opus, but I have to agree with you for Diablo 3. The game falls to ~3fps in multiplayer games on my quite good pc (unlike other modern games), I lost my “Hardcore” character suddenly because of a server error, due to the crappy items, I’m was forced to use the AH, and so on..
As a result, I stop playing few weeks after buying it and started again Diablo 2 and bought Torchlight and Risen 2 (good games btw !).
The first two games were amazing .. D3 at first glance looks promising but once you play thru a few difficulty levels you realize that the drop rate of unique and set items to be a myth.. Ive only found 4 items with about 90 hours of gameplay. Diablo 2 was legendary because it was fun to treasure hunt as you played a great game, this one forces players to buy items with real cash to improve. This project was 95% aimed at making money and 5% to actually make a great game. If you love the diablo series go back to diablo 2 ..
diablo 3 is bad because the whole time i want a lightsaber drop it never did!!!