Diablo 3 Game Review

This text will be going into a game review video of mine, and I felt I would share it before going into recording. This is an honest look at the game, despite all of the negative posts on the forums, to help individuals on a purchase decision for buying Diablo 3 or not; coming from 20 years of gaming experience. Blizzard can consider this a testimonial and has my permission to use the text of the review.

TL;DR: 82% score as of 1.0.3; improvements to be made, but overall incredibly fun and addicting game

Many fans have been waiting 15 years for this game: and Blizzard has finally delivered. Diablo is a legendary franchise well known for hack and slash and RPG elements. The game features five character classes, of which one is a returner- the Barbarian. Players will be able to choose their class and gender, but that is where visual body customization ends. Featuring four levels of difficulty, the game will coast you into proper mechanics. Towards the end of your destination, a jackhammer will be inserted in “you know where” and turned on. Diablo 3 offers great replayability for the price of the game.

Barbarians are one of two melee classes in the game that benefit from a 30% damage reduction. In your face, tough and brutal, Barbarians chew everything for lunch then spit it back out. Monks are a true utilitarian melee class- they offer buffs, fast combos and healing at the expense of high damage. Witch doctors are the ranged DOT class of the game which can take combat companions along too. Demon hunters lay traps, sentries and use discipline to maneuver around the battlefield, and the classic wizard becomes a low orbit cannon to destroy enemies at range.

Like a real time strategy game, Diablo is a top down and slightly isometric view. Each class has a plethora of abilities to choose from, and those abilities can be further customized by runes. This is an excellent system that encourages experimentation and utility. The frames display the information you need to know- including your health bars, experience to level and your resource pool. The inventory system is a grid, but stops there in its simplicity. If you have played world of warcraft or other diablo games, you will be familiar with where you can place a piece of gear.

Gear is the primary way to boost the power and effectiveness of your character- abilities will revolve around the stats that are on a particular piece.
In this game, you do not need to click on gold to pick it up- simply run over it and it will be collected. All characters on your account share the same pool of money and stash space, allowing you to level one character to a high level, acquire a lot of gold, and have another low level character use that money for gear, potions, etc. The town portal feature is extremely handy when you are overburdened, allowing you to return to town in order to sell stuff, buy potions, make repairs, etc.

You can play single player in this game or multiplayer with three other individuals. Blizzard has allowed public games, so if you don’t have any buddies locally to play with you can host or jump into a game and play. Mobs gain health when you join a game though, but they will still deal the same damage they dealt in single player.

Diablo 3 features four unique bosses and many sub-bosses. You will play through the story in four acts, each one getting slightly shorter than the other with act IV being the shortest. Below sub-bosses are champion packs which sport a unique name with unique affixes. To ramp up the difficulty in the game, elite and champion mobs have affixes, of which there are over 30. For normal difficulties there is one affix, and in inferno, there are four. Normal and Nightmare are extremely easy to clear, while Hell will give you a harder time, and Inferno will chew you up and spit you out.

Elite mobs, which glow blue, give the best loot in the game when they die. You can use magic find or gold find gear to boost respective outputs. When you reach level 60, a buff called nephalem valor kicks in and you have an even better chance of finding good loot. What you use on your character is up to you, but it is highly recommended you begin stacking all resists around act 3 of Hell. The sheer difficulty of the game has challenged many players, has caused many to whine on the forums, and has caused a smaller bunch to rage quit or break their computers. If you are not prepared, certain packs will down your health either instantly in a one shot kill, or within two to three seconds, especially compounding molten and poison pools.

For those that wish to use it, Blizzard included two auction houses in the game. Although not required, you can purchase and sell gear on the auction house for your characters. The economy is player driven with players setting the prices. The RMAH, or Real Money Auction House, allows players to sell in game items and gold for real world currency, of which blizzard takes a cut. The company hopes this will curb 3rd party black market sales, but we have yet to see the effects the RMAH has. Some people are listing items for hundreds of dollars while other items are waiting to be bought at a steal.

For those that are achievement aficionados, Diablo 3 will not disappoint. While not important to the reviewer, some of the achievements are harder to get and can be a lot of fun to attempt. You will not get anything special for achievements other than banners, which rotate around the teleporter and are on the main screen when you log in.

There are quite a few problems with Diablo 3, and thankfully a lot of them can be fixed in future patches. Unfortunately, at this time, there are more negatives weighing in than positives- but if you can live with some of the negatives, then by all means give the game a try. Repair costs are currently high- they need to be adjusted and reduced by about 25-50% of their current value, especially in Inferno.

Many gamers view DRM, or Digital Rights Management as anti-consumer. While some of the practices are anti-consumer, requiring online access to a server isn’t necessarily going that far in my opinion. There are good advantages- and blizzard is active in banning cheaters and bots. They may or may not do this for the players, but they have a financial incentive with the in game economy to do so. After all, if they start chipping at the black market, they may influence players to pay in game, where Blizzard makes a cut. Examples, in the reviewer’s opinion, of going too far with DRM include in game commercials, interrupting gameplay experience, disk locked content, charging for cheat codes, etc.

The reviewer has a 25Mbps connection to the internet, and at times I am experiencing some lag, but more so annoying rubber banding. I understand when it happens occasionally, but it is occurring more than I would like. Had the game had an offline mode option, this wouldn’t have happened.

There are also a number of outstanding bugs and exploits out there, including item duping and linking socketed items in chat. They said they fixed it, but the problem is still there. In the video version of this review, which you are probably watching, I experienced a glitch interface, and occasionally, errors that should not pop up.

Another downside is server down times. Most people will not be affected by the downtimes as they are usually in the morning, however, server maintenance can and has extended into half a day to a full 24 hours. This would not have happened with an isolated single player offline mode.

Although the auction house isn’t required, it feels like players need to use it in order to advance. This is caused by drop rates by the RNG generator: I am picking up wizard wands with strength and dexterity or monk daibos with strength and intelligence. To further complicate the issue, the majority of gear that drops “sucks”, but good stuff WILL occasionally drop, just not the best stuff ever seen.

Another negative to the game, although this will not count against it numerically in my analysis, are the large number of morons on the forums. This will occur with many games, but the forums for Diablo 3 are full of b-!@#$% who make potty jokes, joke about body parts, do nothing but offer unconstructive feedback or make terroristic/real-life threats against other gamers and employees. There are some legitimate gripes on the forums however- but it is recommended that you do not go there. Over 90% of the topics in general discussion are hate, off topic, or unconstructive.

Legendries and set bonuses are poor. This ties into the RNG generator, but the legendries and set bonuses in this game feel underpowered.

One thing I HATE in any video game is respawn rewinds. This is where you get X distance to a place, die, then have to run back all over again. This is inexcusable and received a hefty penalty. I should be placed nearby where I died, OR the checkpoints need to be redone. They are some of the most poorly designed parts of the game.

On that note, respawn timers are progressive. Some argue that they shouldn’t exist PERIOD, but I feel the progressive timing is wrong, annoying, and should remain around 10-15 seconds maximum.

That was a lot of negatives, but there are still a lot of positives with this game. 
For many games we expect a patch to fix issues, however Blizzard is putting developmental resources into making sure the game has bugs fixed and additions made. With that said, without spoiling the story, there is room for an expansion, and I eagerly anticipate it. The story was excellent, even for someone like me who is new to the series. If you want to catch up on previous lore, journals and writing exist in the game which provide a lot of context to the current events. As for cheaters and botters, Blizzard is taking advantage of the DRM in place to ban them. Another plus blizzard offers to players is the authenticator system which will assist in protecting accounts from hackers.

The level of skill customization for this game is excellent. I can change runes in and out to suit the situation in addition to ability changes for different acts or boss fights. The game is extremely challenging at higher levels and provides a good challenge with the correct gear. Kills, combos and encounters are incredibly satisfying. The game world isn’t necessarily immersive, but you feel like you are progressing in a story that fits in a world that is affected by the horrors of hell.

Replayabiliy in this game is excellent. I have tons of fun in my play group of buddies, but like world of warcraft, in diablo 3 public games people don’t talk very much. I was pleased to run the game on full graphics settings, but also happy that blizzard designed options for those running less than top performance computers. The game is incredibly addicting and a lot of fun to play. For a casual gamer, I expect that the game will bring anywhere from 100-400 hours of enjoyment, which is king compared to the industry standard of $60 for a video game and 20-30 hours of gameplay.

For the value, Diablo may be money well spent.
The auction house has its downsides, but it sure has some nifty features. I would like to search by more criteria in the future, but you can limit buyouts in order to find gear priced at what you want it to be. The pooled commodities are also excellent, saving on resource and server space while making a “get in, get out with the good” option a reality. For all of the really expensive stuff on the AH, there are some deals to be had, if you are willing to look.

For my final opinion on the matter- if this were a model kit I would unfortunately give it one thumbs down.

HOWEVER, at the end of the day- when you are looking for an incredibly fun experience with friends and good replay value for a game that will keep you occupied, Diablo 3 may deliver, if you can get over some of the negatives. Again, blizzard is constantly updating and patching the game, taking user feedback into account to improve the game. I originally gave the game, at release, a score of 85. With 1.0.3 changes, I would score this game at an 82. Any game over an 80 is worth picking up, and given that Blizzard is updating the game with multiple patches, at the minimum wait a couple of months or wait until the console version. I approve of the game, but it’s just edging in there with the score.