Diablo III - Review

I've been able to spend the last week fighting my way through Diablo 3 monsters and servers alike, and have started coming to some conclusions about Blizzard's latest release.  While I'm only on Act 2 of Nightmare difficulty, I can reasonably say that Blizzard has given us a great reason to explore the new world of Sanctuary with randomly generated areas and items, but can the rest of the game hold up to what makes a Diablo game a Diablo game?

The story starts with your character investigating a fallen star that has crashed through the Tristram Church from the original Diablo.  You will eventually find out what it is and why it's causing the undead to stir, but the story doesn't feel super fleshed out.  Many of the story points feel forced, and maybe a little too convenient to actually happen.  A common example being quoted is that a warrior who has lost his memory and his sword needs to start remembering fast, so the conclusion is drawn that since he also lost his sword, if we find his sword, we'll find his memory.  Yeah.  The story is not compelling, as much as it wants to be with all of the optional dialog that you can experience in the game.

But we're not here for the story, right?  That's what we're telling ourselves to say that this is all ok?

Diablo isn't really about the story, though.  It's about exploring an area and running into random monsters with random abilities, and earning random items that may or may not be better than the last random item you got (spoiler - it probably isn't).  There's some talk and complaint that the item drops aren't very good so far, and that the Act bosses, who provided the majority of the best loot in the previous games, now purposefully drop items that are under leveled.  This is meant to stop people from farming bosses over and over and instead go out into the world and hunt down the randomly created elite bosses.

The actual game play shines.  The outdoor areas are interesting and varied, the indoor areas are cramped and maze like.  This is a huge improvement over Diablo II, in which the outdoor areas were horrible, and the indoor areas too far apart to be remembered.  Each time I play an area, I know that there's some static bits that will appear, but where they are and what's populating them are exciting to find out and interact with.

There is also a feeling of genuine power while playing, something that I did not experience in previous Diablo games.  I rolled a Witch Doctor as I had the most fun with him in the Beta, and feel as though I can not only take on the hordes of monsters, but feel very confident in doing so.  This has changed briefly as I run into Nightmare level monsters with Vampiric and Shielding, but the fights are enjoyable and feel fair.  The end of act Boss Fights, in particular, feel epic and MMO-y, even without the improved loot drops.

In all seriousness, enjoy the Dire Bats while you can, I feel like they're going to get nerfed

The game requires an active internet connection, but no subscription.  Blizzard is having you plan on their servers for free.  What this means is that you have to be always connected to the internet with a decent connection, and that if their servers go down, you won't be able to play your game. 

But what are the odds of th... oh.

The servers were very unstable for the first few days.  Some players were not able to login for extended periods of time, and others were not able to earn in game achievements as they played.  Blizzard is working on these issues, and assures players that everything will be fine and thank them for their feedback.  While these types of issues are annoying, they are necessary for the Real Money Auction House that Blizzard is putting up in the next couple weeks.  The RMAH will allow players to post their in-game items and money on an Auction House that will sell them for actual currency.  There's speculation as to how this will have an impact on the game, but we'll see as that happens.  It's an interesting system, and I'd personally love to be able to supplement my income by playing a game.

In the end though, there's only two companies that I would trust to do something like this:  Valve and Blizzard.  So while the launch was a bit rocky, things are already stabilized and soon we'll have tweaks to the game.

The game doesn't end on a cliff hanger, but leaves lots of doors open for a sequel.  There's things that don't get addressed in the story that really should have been, and it's my thinking that we'll see these in a Diablo III Expansion in the next couple years.  There's one or two very prolific zones that the players do not visit in the game that I can think of that can be used, and at least one character we'll need to hunt down to face.  Maybe the Templar can finally find his books, too.

All in all, I'm a big fan of the Diablo series, and this one is going to keep my interest going for a long time.   If you're new to the game, you're not missing out by not experiencing the other games.  If you're a long time player, there's subtleties to interactions that will mean more to you.  I'd recommend picking this one up, for sure.