Diablo III

Flawed, but genuinely fun experience no matter if you play single player or multiplayer. The first issue I have with the game is the difficulty. I played through the campaign on hard expecting to feel like a mortal fighting through hordes of impossible hellspawn but just ended up being disappointed. I never died in my playthrough and all the regular creatures were so weak that i could stand still for half a minute without dying so I ended up just equipping a dash spell and skipping most of them. I was playing as monk. The multiplayer system was somewhat complicated and took longer than it should have but it was pretty fun and more challenging with multiple people. My favorite boss fight was the butcher because that was the only time I actually came close to dying. Every attack and move he used would combo together perfectly and the fight never dragged on or got boring. Sadly the diablo boss fight is the worst one with the slowest and easiest to dodge abilities, Still fun though. The art really immerses you into the world and the soundtrack pairs with it very well. Overall I think the game is very good and definitely worth playing. 9/10

I believe it hurts more knowing what Diablo I, and Diablo II brought to the table. I have logged countless hours into the third iteration of Diablo and what can I say, even though I know I shouldn't, I enjoy it's slimmed-down take on the ARPG formula. They dumb it down for us, and to most, that sucked. It was a decrease and decline in quality from D2, which is why the outrage is understandable, and warranted. But it doesn't excuse the fact that people blatantly overlook this 'shadow of it's former self', and treat this game as if it's not worth playing at all. This hurts me to my core. This game is what I'd give to someone if their Path of Exile experience wasn't going how they intended. It's the baby-mode ARPG. Is that such a bad thing? It depends. Should every ARPG follow the D2 formula and do nothing to switch it up? It depends. Should we riot against PoE for being the spiritual successor to D2 and proving to the audiences that D3 was nothing but a shit attempt to carry the game forward while cutting off some of the best parts that made Diablo, well, Diablo? It depends.

Truth be told, you're allowed to like this game. You're allowed to play something that's less intensive, less grindy (lol, not really), and less mechanically undecipherable. I enjoy the set system. I enjoy GRs being the end-game. I enjoy the replayability of Seasons and the small thematics they introduce. I enjoy not being overwhelmed with too much information and forcing myself to google guides every five seconds to figure out what the fuck I'm looking at when I open PoE's Skill Tree.

I'm not saying simpler is better. And I'm not saying PoE's a bad ARPG, it might be one of the best of all time, to be frank. But I am saying that I enjoyed the game for what it was. It's simple in design, however I'm fond of that. I believe that's what makes it fun. I don't need it to be too complex. Sometimes I like to switch my brain off and mindlessly mash my keyboard and gain brief senses of dopamine when a primal ancient drops. It's enough for me.

Diablo III may be a basic bitch in comparison to the spiritual successor, but that doesn't stop it from being a good casual entry into the genre.

Diablo 3
this is reaper of souls edition so i don't know if the base campaign is changed too much but whatever, diablo 3 is a total let down. the cartoony childish saturday cartoon graphics are a fucking travesty compared to the diablo legacy. the loot system is completely uninteresting and crap, direct upgrades with items with no real merit. the only items worthwhile in end game is set items. no build diversity. you can unlock every single skill and switch between any at any given time. total casual shit. NOTHING like diablo 2. its almost as bad as torchlight. what the fuck were they thinking? I wish this was good but i'll just have to play diablo 2 over and over and over because this isn't even worth glancing at again. also for the first like 5 hours it was completely brainless easy. you didn't even have to pay attention, could use whatever you wanted, almost impossible to die. diablo 2 is challenging the entire way. for all the small things I can point out that suck, let me say this: They did nothing right.

4/10

Diablo III is a super watered down experience that has more in common with MOBAs than Diablo. Coming from II I was really excited for III, but I got a game that plays more like a mobile game than II. Loot is hard to come by and enemies don't drop much of anything for you to grab. III looks super polished and over clean which it should definitely not. Playing as a demon hunter, I took no damage whatsoever throughout the entirety of the first act. The enemies don't really pose a threat to you when you have unlimited ammo dual wield crossbows and traps. So the game boils down to "walk here, shoot dudes, repeat". Also for some reason there was a crazy amount of lag even though I was playing a solo game. Umm Blizzard why do I need to connect to your server to play a single player game? This game just feels like Baby Diablo for the League of Legends generation. It's not "bad" per se, just not a Diablo game as it should be.

While the satisfaction gained from holding your left mouse button to move, kill monsters and collect loot is the core element of the series and what made it a cult classic, the importance of its atmosphere cannot be stressed enough. Diablo took a very minimalist approach to telling its story with a simple (yet very effective) premise - a hero arriving to Tristram to slay the evil that lurks in the shadows of the town's Cathedral. The sparse dialogues provided some more context but did not steer the player's focus away from his/her main goal. The NPCs were there to offer their advice and assistance but the venture to the heart of darkness was a lone one. Matt Uelmen's groundbreaking music greatly enhanced the game's claustrophobic atmosphere with its layers of dark ambience, loud drums and haunting noises, truly a phenomenon of its age. I have yet to meet a gamer who hasn't been charmed by the iconic Tristram theme, an unforgettable acoustic piece accompanying the only moment of solace in the game. The game's monster designs cannot be praised enough - the bestiary includes the most terrifying hellish creatures you'd expect from being spawned at a satanic ritual, ranging from skeletons and zombies to goatmen, winged demons and fallen knights. The Butcher deserves a separate mention, a demon overlord residing in a room full of mutilated human corpses that charges at the player growling "AH, FRESH MEAT". Death at his hands must have been one of the most traumatic moments of my childhood.

Then came Diablo II. The sequel introduced the world outside the depths of Tristram's cathedral - the change which divided the most faithful fans of the original game. While it's true that the game doesn't take place exclusively in the dark corridors and caves, the atmosphere remained as brooding and gothic as it always was. Stumbling upon corpses, bloodied walls, flame and ruins was not out of ordinary. It was also the sequel that brought changes to the storytelling format - Blizzard North divided the story into 4 acts, each taking place in a different location in the world of Sanctuary, following the footsteps of the Lord of Terror. What didn't change was the minimalist approach with occasional dialogues and a few cinematics driving the story forward. The game brought a more dynamic, fast-paced gameplay, more class variety, skill trees allowing numerous character builds, an expanded bestiary and, of course, an abundance of new gear. The changes also affected Matt Uelmen's compositions - the new soundtrack included world music influences with tracks being more complex and multi-layered than previously. Its expansion, Lord of Destruction, became a benchmark for all video game expansions - it not only brought additional content but also revamped the gameplay of the original. Diablo 2 is, in my eyes, a perfect sequel and a true cult classic in every sense of the word, its addicting gameplay allowed to keep a huge base of devoted players for years. And it was years we've waited for another sequel.

When Blizzard announced Diablo III in 2008 with the Tristram theme being played on the stage my excitement went through the roof. It was the time when I've given up on replaying Diablo 2 for the nth time and my hunger for a new game couldn't be quenched by any Diablo-clone. The over-a-decade long wait was finally over but what I experienced when I got to play the game definitely did not feel like Diablo. The brooding, horror atmosphere of the predecessors has been abandoned in favor of an epic fantasy tale. The power fantasy focus is made clear from the very beginning when the hero arrives at the town of New Tristram just in time to help the guards to defend it against hellspawn. What is also made clear is that the graphic design is far from what we'd expect from a Diablo game - the cartoony environment, models and animations, the color palette, flashy character skills look like taken straight from Warcraft III. Not only does it stray from the identity of the series and harms the atmosphere, but also makes it harder to watch. When in multiplayer game the amount of flashy skills used by the characters (now limited to 4 too) and monsters makes it often hard to figure out what's happening on the screen - a screenshot I made as an example.

What is even more annoying is the constant dialogue and lore being thrown at the player's face. Gone is the minimalism of Diablo and Diablo 2. Now, I could live with a few more dialogue lines being thrown into the mix, the spirit of Diablo is gone anyway, but their amount and quality works is abysmal, the game suffers from uninspired, bland writing. The demise of Deckard Cain, being a weak plot twist, is a great example of that - not only the game makes no attempt at making a personal connection between the player and the character, but it also shows us a sobby funeral cinematic, as if we should feel grief for the loss. How the hell did such a thing end up in a Diablo game?

The monster designs are a major disappointment as well. The game's new art direction makes them look like poor caricatures of their former selves - the once horrifying Butcher will now make you sneer at best. What of the soundtrack then? Matt Uelmen has parted ways with Blizzard years ago after all. It is a loss comparable, nay, greater than the departure of Akira Yamaoka from the Silent Hill series. What we got is a bombastic, orchestral soundtrack that occasionally tries to emulate Uelmen's work but fails miserably. The compositions aren't nearly as multi-layered, dark and foreboding, the pounding drums are nowhere to be found. Even the legendary Tristram theme has been stripped out of its charm.

Now, even though the game is a major disappointment as a new, long-awaited entry in the Diablo series, it is fairly enjoyable for what it is. My biggest gripe with the core game mechanics is the stripped-down character development, being reduced to swapping skills unlocked upon levelling up (the stats are now auto-managed and increased by gear) - it does make levelling up feel much less satisfying, with no planning involved into assigning skill points and watching your hero gradually gain in power. The Reaper of Souls expansion, however, attempts to scratch that itch by allowing the player to allocate Paragon Points into several stats. With the stat points assignment gone the game focuses on improving the player's character by collecting better gear. While I see the Loot 2.0 system as a quick fix rather than a good redesign (rare items become common trash and so called "legandary" gear isn't hard to get at all), looting and gearing up is no less fun than in other Diablo-clones (we need a better term for that genre). Being one of the very few AAA games in the genre, Diablo III production values make killing monsters quite satisfying too - the sound design is excellent with hacking, smashing and slashing weapon sounds and gurgling monsters and the animations look very fluid (however cartoony and non-Diablo they may be), The Adventure Mode, introduced in the expansion pack, made the endgame more interesting than ever in the history of the series - the Nephalem Rifts with their increasing difficulty and the Bounty hunting quests can make for a great mindless break from work or study.

It's very important to preface this by saying that I'm writing this review for Patch 2.4.0 of the Reaper of Souls expansion for the PS4. The last time that I regularly played Diablo III before this was in 2012 when the base game was on Patch 1.0.4. I was ultimately disappointed at the tepid follow-up to Diablo II that Blizzard had delivered (which I will elaborate on and reserve for the Diablo III review), but I still felt that it was an enjoyable-enough game that I stuck with it for several months. These days however, the addiction is real. There is that constant lingering feeling that I need to get home ASAP so that I could further level up my Demon Hunter to Level 70. This, after I've already levelled up a Monk, a Witch Doctor, and a Wizard all to max level and then some.

The level of improvement in the game 3.5 years after - both in terms of gameplay and content - is undeniable. The new Crusader class, for starters, is a fun throwback to the Paladin from Diablo II. It can tank fairly well and deliver boatloads of damage at the same time, with skills and strategy diverse enough from the other classes to distinguish itself among the bunch. The new act, Act V, is huge. It's not something that feels tacked on just for the for sake of calling the product an expansion. It feels grand and immense in terms of scope, art design, and production values. The size of it almost feels like putting Act III and IV from the base game together.

The endgame is also much more fleshed out: Upon reaching Level 70, you stop the normal levelling process and start levelling up "Paragon" levels where each level gives you a paragon point that you can allocate to slightly improve one of several character attributes. While this payoff for paragon levelling might seem significantly less enticing than for normal levelling, one should note that it isn't the main focus during the endgame anyway. At this point, the preoccupation of most players are in doing the following:

Completing Bounties: Once you are finished with Story/Campaign Mode, you unlock Adventure Mode. In this mode, the entire world of Diablo III is opened for exploration for any of your characters, old or new. Along with this, five "bounties" per Act are available for completion, and for every Act where you complete all bounties, Tyrael rewards you with a "Horadric Cache" which may contain everything from gems, crafting materials, crafting plans and designs, magical, rare, legendary, or even set items. Not to mention that as you go along completing the bounty missions, you also rack-up all of these sort of items anyway. Roaming the open world of Sanctuary is like Story Mode on steroids.

Nephalem Rift Runs: "Nephalem Rifts" are a feature of Adventure Mode where you can enter a portal that takes you to a randomly generated map, and you simply run through it, destroying everything in your way. As you beat mobs of minions, including elites and bosses, there is a progress bar that tells you how close to completion you are, and when it hits 100%, a "Rift Guardian" comes out, which you then have to kill to complete the rift. And of course, throughout this pandemonium, you get tons of loot, and experience points. Rift runs are like bounties on steroids.

Greater Rift Runs: Greater Rifts are like Nephalem Rifts on steroids.

Now, as you go about doing all these bounties and rift runs, you also accumulate plans for set items and legendary items that you can craft c/o the Blacksmith, and this is where the appeal of the endgame really lies - in collecting everything that you need to collect so that you can craft the items to build your character to your satisfaction.

Kanai's Cube: This is another aspect of the game that I haven't explored in much details, but it's basically like the Horadric Cube from Diablo II. You can use it with certain "recipes" to gain powers to further boost your character.

Seasons (PC only): This is basically the ladder of the game. Periodically, Blizzard starts seasons for the game where you can start a new character and level it up to make it stronger throughout the season, and you're ranked amongst other players. Unfortunately, this is not available in the console version and I'm bitter about it so that's all I'm going to say about that. Great stuff for the PC players though.

Having said and raved about the great things in the game though, I think that the single best thing that Blizzard has done to improve the game is what they removed from it... and that thing is the "auction house." What this removal has done to make the current incarnation of the game great will have to be reserved for the base game review, but suffice to say that the current incarnation of Diablo III is more than satisfying for someone like me who has been a hardcore Diablo fan for the longest time. sure, it still treats a lot of things differently - you can't allocate your stats and there is no skill tree like in Diablo II - but these things aren't things that turned me off from the base game anyway, so with all the improvements that have been made, I think that the Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls v2.4 we have now is finally the worthy successor to Diablo II.