Diablo 3 Review

I did a beta review of Diablo 3 at the end of April, so I cut and pasted some things that stayed the same.

You know the drill about Diablo.  Throw out the story, ignore the NPCs which have the personality of an ant, forget the fact everyone in town stands in the same spot 24/7 and get ready for the possibility of buying a new mouse, since you’ll be pressing the buttons a million times.

It’s all about action, hack and slash and loot.

My set-up:

• 17″ laptop
• i7 Q740 @1.73 ghz
• 4 gb ram
• 4 gb GT445M

Using FRAPS, my set up has wildly fluctuating frame rates.  Depending on what’s going on it swings anywhere from the high teens to 58 fps.  Mostly hovering in the 30-50 range.  The settings I chose are generally low, so my system is just underpowered I guess.  Still very playable as the game is a button masher and doesn’t need precise controls like a racer or first person shooter.

Character:  Male Barbarian.  I used a Monk in the beta, but he seemed boring so I switched to Barbie

Style and Key Skills:  I’m not a fancy hack and slasher, so I concentrated on a few main skills.  Mainly Cleave, Whirlwind and I used Call of the Ancients when I need extra help.  During big fights, my finger is ready for pressing Q (healing potion).  I focused on a 1-handed weapon, plus a shield, and gear that gives me strength, vitality, dexterity and life regeneration

Difficulty:  Normal, plus I just messed around with about 5 minutes of Nightmare

Hardcore Mode:  No

Completion:  Completed Normal.  Cleared every nook and cranny except for one section I avoided (Spire Level 1 in the final act).  As I cleared out the base level, I saw Spire Level 1 and Level 2 stairs, so I just bolted for Level 2

Connecting to Battle.net:  In the beta, it was a mess.  I couldn’t log in the first few days.  But in the final game, I didn’t have trouble once.  Got in every time!

Graphics

• Diablo 3 is a good looking game, but nothing groundbreaking.  It’s got good atmosphere and art assets, but technically is not going to win any awards
• The dungeons have solid detail and also try to give scope.  You can’t dive into the water, pits or crevices, but dungeons feel bigger because of this, though they really are not
• The game has collapsing bookshelves, falling chandeliers, rocks crumbling and stuff like that.  Looks good, but you character just walks through it
• You can adjust all kinds of options like v-sync, frame rate caps, detail, resolution, physics etc…
• The game has lots of splattering effects and blood gushing.  Killing enemies results in different animations depending how you kill it.  As a Barbarian, my kills were mostly bloodbaths with limbs and monster weapons flying everywhere.  If you’re on a bridge or near a cliff, enemies can be pounded over them.  A cool kill is chopping off the heads of the demon snakes that pop up from the ground.  They leave a big meaty stump!
• There are cinema clips sprinkled throughout the game.  All can be skipped by pressing ESC!  The clips are actually pretty grainy like its FMV from the PS1 or PS2 days

Sound

• Nothing spectacular
• The voice acting is good as always, but considering characters are getting mashed by monsters, you’d think there would be more emotion than stoic lines of dialogue
• You’ll be hearing the same lines over and over again.  I used the Templar follower all game.  The number of times my character and follower talked about family and what an honour it is to fight along side me was too many to count

Gameplay

• You pick up gold automatically running over it
• After killing monsters, they sometimes release health orbs.  Pick them up to heal.  You also have standard potions, which require a bit of time before you can quaff the next one
• No more Identify Scrolls or getting Cain to do it.  Right click to identify a “? item”
• You can portal to town pressing the blue button at the bottom menu.  A nice menu that shows you key shortcuts

• Left and right button clicks do different attacks.  I focused on Cleave which takes a big swipe at enemies hitting many at once, plus the classic Whirlwind to rip up enemies surrounding me
• I played on Normal skill and died about 12 times.  Only a few times in Acts 1 and 2, the rest in Acts 3 and 4.  Almost all deaths were from me trying to be Rambo and charging into mobs of enemies.  If I played more conservative, I probably would have died 3-4 times
• Ridiculously easy bosses.  I died once fighting a boss.  Diablo himself.  Fighting him for the first time, I got caught by one of his boney cage things which holds and stun you, then Diablo grabs and bites you
• You’ll die more times just fighting monsters with your biggest risk being mobs of regular white creatures, with blue and yellow enemies all hitting you at once
• Diablo 2 was much harder.  I remember getting killed by yellow monsters and Duriel much more often
• You can upgrade the blacksmith by paying money.  I must have contributed 20-30k gold and the resulting blue and yellow items available were junk compared to ones I found on my own.  It got to a point where I needed to find blacksmith blueprints or something in order to keep upgrading him.  Maybe the higher difficulties have much more useful gear, but on Normal don’t bother upgrading him.  Waste of money
• An annoying thing about the blacksmith is he doesn’t repair your items!  You have to go to the other merchants to get them fixed.  Weird.  So blacksmith buddy doesn’t fix them, but potion selling guy will fix your sword and shield.  LOL
• I didn’t bother trying the Auction House
• I found a ton of yellow rare items.  Found way more than in an old Diablo 2 playthrough
• I kept the Templar follower all game and gave him the best gear I didn’t want.  He’s useless for fighting enemies, but does have a few very handy features.  He attracts some attention from monsters, has a ton of hit points so he never dies (he has more than my character!), and I chose his skills to cast healing spells.  Many times his healing antics saved my ass.  Followers never die.  When knocked down to 0 hit points they will just kneel down.  He’ll get back up shortly after
• The followers basically level up with you so don’t worry that you kill 50 times more monsters.  You can see by my character profile and the Templar profile we are both around the same level.  You don’t find the Templar till a bit into the game too

• I didn’t play Hardcore.  What’s the penalty for dying in non-hardcore?  10% of your item durability.  That’s it.  So basically zero penalty.  If your gear is that dinged up, just pay 300 gold and get it repaired at a merchant.  Since dying is a non-factor, you will eventually pass the point you got killed no problem as you revive at the last checkpoint.  Unless it’s a boss battle with a mini-cinema clip, the enemies will still be there with their current health.  If it’s a boss battle, you have to start the battle from scratch with the enemies at full health
• As usual, the game has random dungeons and monsters, but the game has a very limited and predictable set-up.  Most outdoor maps have a pretty open area to explore with 1-2 side dungeons to explore.  They vary in size from cellars with a few rooms to multi-level dungeons.  The maps which are dungeons or involve structures (like the act where you are running around a castle) are more linear.  Just keep on going and you’ll find the exit sooner or later
• Like an Xbox game, there’s a ton of Achievement Points to get

The Old Guy in Me Says

A decent game.  Worth $60?  Probably not, but I had $100 worth of Best Buy and Future Shop gift cards on me.  I don’t see many games to get on the horizon, so I took the plunge.

I suggest not using the Auction House.  The purpose of playing Diablo games is to find the gear yourself.  What’s the point of playing Diablo if you just buy rare items from people for gold?

The game is a good playing and polished up Diablo 2.  The graphics are better, but it’s the same gameplay and idiotic enemy AI as old Diablos.  If you love clickfest lootfest games, you’ll like it.  I was expecting more from a game 10 years in the making, but Blizzard took the easy route and played it safe.  If you dumbed down the graphics to 10 years ago, there isn’t much difference in Diablo 2 and 3.