If elites weren’t bad enough, the game also features champions; super-powerful single units that just don’t like it when you look at them that way. They’re every bit as terrifying as groups of elites, and they can have minions of their own with similar powers.
The bosses themselves are spread out throughout the course of the game and are usually a little more than just learning patterns, with some of them having unique features or abilities that aren’t replicated anywhere else. This is difficult to describe without spoiling parts of the game, so I’ll just say that the bosses can be more engaging than just looking for the flags that signal an incoming attack and hitting it until it dies (though that’s certainly still a part of it).
Of course, with difficult monsters comes better loot and that makes it all worth it. The loot system is different in Diablo III compared to its prequels in that legendary items are not necessarily more powerful than rare or magical items, but instead are named and, as such, worth quite a bit to collectors.
Rare items and even normal magical items can surpass legendaries in damage and other stats. The reason for this is to avoid everyone eventually using the same items. Instead, any item could be the best you find, which serves to make the loot system far more interesting. Items are completely random, right down to their stats. The idea that literally anything you pick up could be your next go-to item is far more interesting than farming purely for legendary drops.
Perhaps hand in hand with the loot system comes the auction houses. Any item you find in game can be sold either for in-game gold or real money (which is sent to a Paypal account). This is where the always-online DRM explanation comes from: in order to keep the game’s economy and auction house system fair, hacking items into inventories had to be completely eliminated, especially since they could be sold for real money (this was a problem rife in Diablo II’s community, which didn’t have any built-in auction houses). Exactly why there couldn’t be a completely separate single player mode with locally stored characters is a mystery, but it’s likely that piracy has something to do with it.
The auction house is pretty similar to real world online auction sites, like eBay. When you select an item to sell, you can set a minimum price and a buy out price, the equivalent of eBay’s ‘Buy It Now’ function. Once you’ve decided on these factors, you have five minutes in which to change your mind before the auction becomes searchable.
Contrary to complaints from some areas of the internet, the auction houses are not in any way forced upon you. By the end of my first run through of the game (it took 22 hours) I had a fully decked out character that hadn’t used a single auction house item – if you’re struggling and need an item upgrade, you can craft some using the blacksmith. Buying some items may make the game easier if you choose to do so but it’s not at all essential.
Now that enemies, items and storylines are out of the way, we can deal with perhaps the biggest change in the game; levelling up. As you’ve no doubt heard, you do not place points into either skills or attributes when you level up in Diablo III, instead attributes are increased automatically and skills are unlocked at designated levels.
As strange as this may sound, it’s actually quite a brilliant system. It helps to make the game considerably more accessible by eliminating any chances of just messing your character up by placing points in the wrong skills or attributes, whilst also letting you change your play style on the fly. When you unlock a new skill, you can switch to it and try it out for a while. If you don’t like it, just use something else; it’s that simple.
[drop]It’s probably worth enabling Elective Mode in the options though, which allows you to place any skill into any skill slot. Whilst you’re there, enable advanced tooltips, which will give you more information on your items.You’ll also unlock runes for these skills, which can have effects that range from increasing damage or effect radius to completely transforming the skill into something else. As an example, one rune for the wizard’s shock pulse signature spell changes it from its original form of bolts that travel unpredictably across the ground to a ball of lightning that hits everything in front of you. There are five runes per skill, each having a different effect, that are unlocked on specific levels and all of them are side-grades (except perhaps using no rune) so any choices between them you make can be completely down to your own preference pertaining to your playing style.
When it comes to attribute customisation it’s all down to the gems. You will begin to find gems that can be placed into socketed items during the second act and, when used well in conjunction with the jeweller, they are incredibly potent tools with which to boost your stats. As a wizard, I filled pretty much all of my socketable items with gems that boost my intelligence and vitality, plus increasing the damage dealt by my weapons. Intelligence increases a wizard’s (and witch doctor’s) damage, whilst vitality will increase your health regardless of class.
Gems have different effects based on the type of item; a ruby for example, will increase damage in a weapon, add to your chance to block in a helm or increase strength in anything else. Constantly using gems to increase the stats that are important to your class is the way to customise your character and, should you make a mistake, the jeweller can remove gems from an item (leaving the item and gem intact) for a small fee. This is another tweak that, much like the new levelling system, helps to make the game feel much more accessible than its predecessors.
Pros
- Good looking; not earth-shattering, but pretty and atmospheric as far as aesthetics go. Again, the CGI cutscenes are utterly gorgeous.
- Classes all play completely differently thanks to each using a different, unique resource.
- Eliminates the possibility of messing up a character, vastly increasing accessibility whilst the gem system maintains a lot of the previous depth of builds.
- The loot system ensures that you can always find better items and eliminates everyone wearing all the same weapons and armour at the end game.
- Boss farming is now not necessarily the optimal way to find loot.
- Elites are immensely challenging and add real depth and challenge to the game, especially on later difficulties.
- Refreshingly free of bugs.
- The auction houses add both a way to profit from loot and a way to boost your character if you’re in trouble.
Cons
- Always online DRM may be a turn off for some.
- The main storyline and dialogue are predictable, though the companion storylines are interesting.
- A few server problems in the first week, though it seems to have calmed down now.
Diablo III is as close to flawless as I’ve ever seen a game get. When the only downsides to a game are the DRM, the server issues after 4.7 million people tried to log in at the same time and a predictable storyline (though one that still resulted in rampant speculation on what’s coming next), I have to pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming.
Blizzard may well have pulled off the seemingly impossible and created a masterpiece that’s a truly worthy sequel to Diablo II. Arguing which is better, Diablo III or its prequel, is asking for trouble, but we can definitely argue that they are on par relative to the state of gaming at their release.
AG2297
This game is pretty much the only game I’m playing right now and I’ve put over 30 hours into it. “Diablo III is as close to flawless as I’ve ever seen a game get.” after my experience playing the game, I have to agree.
Pretty much all my game time consists of co-op with friends jumping in and out while we chat away on Skype exploring areas and constantly finding new loot and levelling up giving us new skills. This has been keeping the game completely fresh throughout as we’re using different spells and abilities all the time. I don’t think I’ve seen a game so perfectly built for co-op, the fact that each player gets their own type if loot is a great way of stopping any arguments over who gets what.
Basically, I cant seem to think of anything I could bring the game down on (early server issues aside, which is nothing to do with the gameplay) and the game seems to only get better and better as you start to advance towards the higher difficulties with more powerful loot.
Worthy of a 10.
P.S. I don’t think I’ve ever seen CGI as good as it is in Diablo III, in any industry.
colmshan1990
Please bring a good port of this to PS3 or Vita.
My laptop couldn’t run this, but other than gaming I have no reason to upgrade it (and that’s a weak reason with PS3, Vita and an iPad in regular use).
brillerment
I’m a little put off with it, it’s very good, but didn’t quite live up to my expectations. Videos are gorgeous, but kinda boring. Game is a little too gear focused, which I guess makes the Auction House a more valuable tool. The sound and music is really good, straight from, or inspired by the prequels. I wasn’t that impressed with the voice acting. Most of it is good, but some of it is quite terrible. And the henchmen repeat themselves far too much. Controls are as close to perfect as they can be, too many action RPG’s are just ruined by clunky controls. Server issues are still a big problem for me, there’s still a lot of server downtime happening. Sunday evening, yesterday morning, last night… They need to really get that sorted out. But otherwise a very solid game.
KeRaSh
I was a little disappointed by D3. It’s a great game but I can’t help but think I’m playing Diablo 2.5. They had so much time but ended up with pretty much the same character classes they had in D2.
ray_gillespie
“Defining a genre much like its prequel”
Just so you know, a prequel is a game (or film etc) that is released after the original but set before it. For example, The Phantom Menace is a prequel. Diablo II on the other hand, is simply a predecessor of Diablo III, not a prequel.
Gamoc
You are technically correct, the best kind of correct.
DJ Judas
It really is a great game. The Auction House is great but it’s a little too easy to get good gear; towards the end of Act 2 on Nightmare and I can upgrade any item every few levels for a few thousand. At the moment I’m guessing this is because they are low-level items, but by the time I’m at the same stage of Hell and Inferno it will be interesting to see how the economy is.
There’s every chance that the prices will remain the same as I progress as more and more people are at the same point and constantly undercutting each other on price to ensure a sale.
FRUIT0FDOOM
Good review dude, hit the nail on the head!
This is soooooo long overdue with only Sacred 2 filling the gap inbetween. But the wait was well worth it
KeRaSh
“Price: £44.99 (via Battle.net) £34.99 (Boxed)”
Have you seen the box prices lately? Due to the game selling out basically everywhere it’s hard to find a copy below the Battle.net price.
Gamoc
Ah, I hadn’t seen that actually, I didn’t realise it was selling out. Still, £35 is the price it’s supposed to be ;-)
AG2297
I tried Amazon, Play, Game, Gamestation, HMV, Tesco, ASDA, Argos and more that I cant remember to try and get the game but everywhere was sold out. Ended up buying it digitally from the upgrade button in the game (I was using a free starter edition) which cost me £45. The game was worth it, but id never normally pay that price for a game. With the huge sales this game has achieved, id be interested to see the revenue or profit as at these prices it’s going to be huge.
KeRaSh
I also got it from Battle.net because it was cheaper than the boxed version and I was able to get it faster (compared to ordering it from the UK or ordering a German version and downloading the English patch afterwards).
Having the ability to choose the language is probably the best thing about this game. Every game needs this feature.
Burgess_101
I got mine for £27 on amazon! Glad I preordered :P
KeRaSh
I had the article page open and they still had the game in stock but then I refreshed the page a few minutes later and the next best offer was a little under 50 Pounds.
OneShotWook
Put 5 hours in on Monday and i was amazed that blizzard have made these games interesting again,more than interesting it was top fun.I log back in that evening only to find my character had evaporated along with all he had acquired (and yes i did make sure i was logged into the euro server).I jog over to the forums only to find this a common complaint.
So it’s on hold,from the ground up it’s designed to be played over and over and i can’t commit to that until the issues long gone.
Kivi95
My Personal score would have been a 8/10. Just don’t find the same magic that I did with the other games and will probably not play this for 10 years.