I have played 20 minutes of Diablo II, and disliked all of those minutes.

I'm sure there are many people who liked Diablo II, and it was great for it's time, but when someone handed me a copy of it back in 2007 to try out I didn't like it very much. However, at that point it was six years old and from a generation long gone by.

I didn't like the level of graphical detail. I didn't like it as much as I like Neverwinter Nights 2, and I especially didn't like that every character had a "right" way to be played and you had to permanently put points into the right stats from the beginning.

Well It's six years later, and guess what's been released?


Yup, THIS GAME.

 

I didn't play the beta, I hadn't been following any coverage, and I hadn't even pre-ordered Diablo III until the night before, but I was part of the launch nonetheless.

Which brings me to my first point, which is that if you are going to market a game, and try to justify the always-online DRM attached to it, keep your servers up. As many people have said, I don't think Blizzard could have possibly underestimated how popular the game was, so there's a good chance that some kind of colossal accidental failure happened.

As it stands, unless Blizzard gives official word on the reason for the particularly rocky launch, all that can be done is to try and guess what really happened…while playing the game of course.

I've played around with a few classes, by the main class I've been playing the game with is the Monk

The monk is a combination of your holy, damage taking, self-healing paladin and a damage dealing rogue class. I'm enjoying running up to various undead,and demons and then punching them in order to heal myself. A lot of the monk's abilities feel very instant and satisfying to use on the enemies.

In general the combat feels very responsive and satisfying, and once you turn on elective mode there's a lot of customization in terms of what groups of skills you use in order to fight.

Gone are the talent-trees of yore, and now it's less about where you put your ability and talent points, and more about what gear you have and what skills you are using.

What Diablo III seems to do best is take the formula it introduced long ago, which has been iterated on by the likes of Torchlight and Titan Quest, and add a level of refinement and polish that other games in the genre haven't been able to match.

There's no need for town portal or identify scrolls, you can freely change around abilities, and the usability of each classes abilities all make for a very smooth experience when mixed together.

The story doesn't particularly standout, it's mostly the typical, overdramatic, "Oh no, demons are coming! Time to fight them with the power of truth, justice, and the American way!" type of dribble, but the voice acting and characters are fun pieces of flavor that add to the polish of the game.

As a loot collecting game Diablo III succeeds in the progression of gear, randomly dropped, and the feeling of satisfaction as you look at an increasingly more awesome looking character as an extension of yourself.

While I've heard a lot of people talking about how the auction house ruins the sense of satisfaction from getting a new piece of gear, I think it improves the game.

Without it you could run into a situation where you can't progress further because of the low quality of your gear. Just because of bad luck it would be extremely difficult to progress. Thankfully, if you run into trouble you can find better items easily, for a price.

The auction house suddenly gives the rare and legendary items, which you would normally toss, or disenchant once you out-leveled them, new value as items to sell on the auction house. In order to prevent inflation there are also many gold sinks such as the blacksmith and gemcrafter, buying additional stash space, and the transaction fees on auctions.

Overall I'd say that while Diablo III doesn't bring anything new to the table, or rock the boat of the genre, it doesn't really need to do so. Diablo III is the essence of what the action-rpg genre is right now, and it puts on its best performance. If you're looking for a game in the genre that changes or revolutionizes conventions, perhaps you should wait for Torchlight II or Grim Dawn and see how those pan out.

But if you are looking for a game that is the very best and most polished offering of the action-rpg genre, then look no further than Diablo III.