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After a long wait Diablo 3 was finally released May 15, 2012. Before the release I took part in the open beta weekend, a weekend that made me to buy the game. When the game was released there were numerous problems with the servers and connections so I decided to wait a bit longer so that these problems could be solved. So now that I have been playing the game about three weeks, taking two characters through the game in normal difficulty and one character through the Inferno difficulty, it's time to write this review.

This review is based on three characters, a monk which was ran through the normal difficulty, wizard that ran through the normal difficulty with hardcore mode turned on and barbarian which, my main character, which is currently going through the game in Hell difficulty. I have also played the both earlier Diablo games, though I have only some vague memories about the first one.

Visuals

Before the release there was, and in some extent still is, debates whether the graphical representation is too bright and colorful. In my opinion this is not the case. Sure the graphics are more colorful than in Diablo 2 but to me it wasn't that big deal.

The world is quite detailed in visuals, especially the background. It actually feels like you are exploring only a small portion of bigger area, especially in certain dungeons. In most extreme cases I was even able to see a monsters fighting other humans in the background, in area that I could never reach myself.

Character and monster animations have been improved since Diablo 2, though that's only expected. In fact, I would have been very, very disappointed if such progress hadn't happened. Of course, in most cases, I was too busy killing the monsters to actually pay attention to their visual representation but in those cases when I did I found nothing to complain.

Audio


The music of Diablo 3 is good though nothing exceptional. Most cases I turned the music volume lower but only because I wanted to hear the effects and dialogues better. And here lies one problem; the relative volume of music was way too loud compared to other sound effects. A minor thing but still I was forced to lower the music down somewhat. And since the type of music you hear in Diablo 3 is something I usually like to listen a bit louder the general quality of it fell down a bit for me. But otherwise the composers have made a good job.

The general sound effects of the game, like sound of dying creatures and weapons making contact, is actually rather mediocre. In fact I was several times wondering if the developers just reused some of the effects from earlier games? Still I decided to keep the volume high as some effects were affecting the actual game play. For example, the sound of creature could reveal the type of the creature even if I wasn't able to see it yet. Or the sound of arrow being released told me that something is attacking me with bows, again even if I didn't see the creature in question. So, mediocre sound effects which had at least some purpose, though in my opinion those could have been far better.

The voice acting falls somewhere between good and very good. The critical characters were voice acted very well. But when talking about those random NPCs you see in town, well, I think there just wasn't enough variation. Of course Diablo 3 is not about dialogues but if you want to give all those peasants voiced comments then it would be a good idea to make it so that you get bored after talking to two or three different characters.

The World and Story


This section contains some minor spoilers!

The story of Diablo 3 begins in Tristram where the player has arrived to search a fallen star, a meteor that has been seen to hit the ground somewhere nearby. The search of the falling site takes the player to a long journey across the world, finally ending in the battle against the Diablo himself.

The story is actually good one, at least good enough to keep my attention until I finished the game the first time. As before, the game is divided in four different acts, each act taking place in different location in the world and thus having own small side story as well. The main story of each act is divided between several quests, completing one opens the next quest and next part of the story. There are also some small side quests, or events, that fill the world a bit more.

The real improvement in Diablo 3 is that now there is huge amount of lore included in the game. These bits of lore are available to player either through dialogues which aren't related to the current quest as well as books, letters and diaries you can find in random locations. Some of these bits of lore can describe the demon attacks or how a guard ended up killing his king and so on. And finally, each time you kill a new type of creature, a short description of that creature is added to the lore archive, fully voiced of course. And these descriptions are made in character, usually written by some notable NPC of the world, like our old friend Deckard Cain. Even though I, after finishing the game the first time, I begun to skip most of the lore sections I found I was always looking for the containers that were dropping these books just to make sure that I find those I hadn't seen before.

While the lore adds a lot to the background of the game the actual world is also more dynamic. While in Diablo 2 you could destroy only specific things, like urns and barrels, in Diablo 3 most of the objects you see can be destroyed. Tables, chairs, sections of broken wall, you name it. The developers have even gone so far as making it possible to use some of these objects to kill monsters. For example I could destroy a section of wall, which would cause huge collapse damaging and even killing the nearby enemies.

The Classes


The first change visible to the player is right at the character creation. Well, actually there are several changes there. First of all there is a limit in the number of characters one account can hold at the same time. While I can understand those who got annoyed by this I don't see that big problem in it since the number of characters is more than available classes. In fact, as there are five different classes and ten character slots per server, one player could have normal and hardcore version of each class in one server at the same time.

Second change in character creation is that each class now has both male and female version available. There is no real difference between male and female versions excluding the cosmetics so there is no reason to create two characters of the same class with different gender just because it's possible.

Of the five classes, two of them were in previous game; Barbarian and Wizard, though Wizard was called sorceress. The three other classes are Demon Hunter, a ranged class that uses bows and crossbows, Witch Doctor, which is some kind of hybrid of necromancer and shaman, and Monk, a martial art class. Each one have their own resource type which is used to skills, ranging from generic mana to rage and so on. Each one of these resources behave differently, for example Barbarian uses fury which is gained through combat and using certain skills and which lowers down if not in combat, while wizard uses mana that restores itself very quickly. A nice little change that affects the gameplay of each class differently.

Generally speaking the classes are quite versatile and well balanced, though without the possibility to actually fight against other players it's a bit difficult to compare.

The Skills


Since the skill system has gone through the major changes I decided to handle it as separate section.

Each character has six available active skill slots, one for both mouse buttons and one for each number key from 1 to 4. Each slot has four possible skills, of which only one can be active at the give moment. There is also three skill slots for passive skills, each of the three slots can be assigned from one pool of passive skills. All skills, passive and active, are unlocked through leveling and none of them affect other skills directly. So this means that the old skill tree system is gone, which I think is a good thing since it was so easy to mess up the character by choosing and advancing skills that would end up being useless.

Now, so far the skill system sounds rather dumped down. But there is more in it. Each skill has five specific possible rune stone available, which can be unlocked by leveling and which affect that specific skill. At first, when the skill come available, none of the runes are available but slowly more powerful ones gets unlocked. And these rune stones are the thing that makes the skill system more complicated in a positive way. For example, one rune could increase the speed of the skill, other could increase the damage while third one could add stunning effect or reduce the resource needed to use the skill. The effect is really depending on the skill and the rune.

Also, to make things even more interesting, the game has an option which makes all active skills available to all six slots, you just have to level the character enough to open that specific slot and the skill you want. I didn't know this option existed before I learned about it from the official forum and turning it on made the experience far better. Finally I could get all the six skills I wanted and wasn't forced to use one slot for a skill I never used anyway.

Finally, a thing to take in account; each skill uses the weapon damage to calculate the damage output. This means that the equipped weapon affects all the skills. Not sure if this is actually a good thing, it feels like a bit too much of streamlining to me. On the other hand this makes even the first skills more useful since the damage of the skill is always determined as percent of your weapon damage.

I have heard lots of complaining about the skill system and how it's too simple. Honestly, with the new system, after unlocking all four skills in each six slot, there are over 255000 different combinations, and that's not even counting the runes! Of course, the real amount is lower, something like 42500 since at least one skill has to be one which gives resources to use on other skills. But still, that's a lot, and basically all skills are useful, it just depends on playing style. And then there are those passive skills as well, so there are enough options for everybody to choose from.

Equipment and Loot


Diablo 3, like any good hack 'n slash game, is about killing the monsters. And to do so you need proper equipment. Inside the game there is four different way to get those; looting, buying, crafting and auction house. Looting hasn't changed much since Diablo 2, normal creatures hardly drop anything useful, elite and unique monsters drop better loot and bosses drop the best loot. What I have noticed is that the general quality of drops are not quite good. Yes, sometimes you get lucky, but after reaching the end of first act most of the loot just goes to vendors.

Vendors are quite disappointing in the game. They usually have only few items available, generally few weapons and one item for each armor slot, excluding rings and amulets which aren't available from every vendor. Sure, the quality of items rises when you progress the game, not sure if it's depending on character level or the completed quests or some kind of combination of those, but only new characters usually find something of worth from vendors. Also, the prices you get while selling the loot you got while killing the monsters are quite bad. For example, normal non-magical items are worth only few golds, most magical items something like ten to twenty gold and rare items perhaps as much as one hundred gold pieces. Now, while this itself doesn't sound bad, we must remember that worst magical item bought from vendor usually costs at least one thousand gold pieces, which means I have to sell at least ten rare items to afford one magical item. Sounds backwards to me. And since I usually get about ten to hundred times more gold from gold drops than I get from items the vendors are quite useless.

The third way to get better items is crafting. There is one NPC that, after certain quest has been completed, allows the player to craft new items. To get access to even better items the player must train the crafting skill, which requires money and certain training items after enough training has been done. The interesting thing about crafting is that the player sees the basic damage, or armor if it's armor, the number of magical properties and the quality of the item (magical, rare and so on). When the crafting is completed random magical properties are assigned to crafted item, making it a bit of gambling. To be able to craft new items the player needs materials. These are gained by breaking down magical or rare items at the blacksmith, destroying the item but resulting the materials.

This new crafting system is actually very good, making the looted magical items a bit more useful since those can provide more crafting materials. And there is never enough materials, thanks to the random part of the crafting. There is always a hope that the next version of the item contains even better magical properties.

Auction house is a new addition to the Diablo 3. Basically it works like all the auction houses in the MMOs; you have a item, you put it on the auction house, determine start price and buyout price and wait for someone to buy it. You can also buy items yourself, and the bought items are moved to stash where those are available to all characters. So far it's simple. But what Blizzard also introduced was the ability to use real money to buy items. I don't like it but at least I don't have to use it myself. And if it reduces the amount of selling adverts in chat window I'm okay with it. And yes, you can even sell and buy gold by using real money through the auction house, though I don't really see the point of that, it's already easy enough to get enough gold already by just playing the game. But perhaps somebody wants to have those 50M gold pieces immediately...

Finally, some of the items can be improved even further by inserting gems to the items. This system hasn't changed much since Diablo 2, though now the gems are combined to better ones by special artisan and the better version of each gem requires training the special skill related to gems. And, unlike in Diablo 2, you can always remove the gem from socket without destroying neither one, for a price of course.

Now that I have discussed about how to get items it's time to talk a bit about inventory management. The inventory is far bigger than in Diablo 2. Or perhaps not bigger but the items take less space. For example, a simple shield could take as much as four to six blocks from inventory in Diablo 2, some weapons and armors even more. In Diablo 3, the maximum number of blocks one item can take is two, allowing much more loot to be carried at once. This is very good change, especially since you end up with lots of crap to sell.

The biggest change in inventory management is related to the personal chest, or stash as it's called. In Diablo 3 the stash is shared among all the characters of that account in the same server. This means that if you find a item that you current character can't use but another one could you could just put it in the stash, log in with the other character and pick it up. This also makes it possible to have only one character able to craft items and jewels. Now, the sharing doesn't only limit to items to gold is affected as well. And in Diablo 3 the gold is not something move between stash and inventory, it's universal number available to all the characters and can't be lost by dying. Now, while this sounds and is a good thing it's also rather balance breaking feature; it's very easy to make overpowered character at the early stages by using the gold your other character(s) have looted.

Now, about the actual items. The one big change, which is mostly visual, is that each weapon now shows the DPS, or damage per second, in the tooltip. Some may call it too MMO stylish but since the number takes account your stats, weapon damage, weapon speed and basically everything that affects the damage, it's now easier to figure out which weapon is better. And since basically every skill uses the weapon damage it's rather good thing to look at the DPS rating when choosing the weapon. Of course, there is one exception; each class has specific stat that affects the damage output. Each point in that stat raises the DPS by certain percent. So far so good but the item tooltip doesn't take in the account the change of DPS caused by the altered stat amount if the weapon has modifier to that stat. So, a good feature which seems like it hasn't been fully implemented.

Otherwise there hasn't been much changes to items, at least nothing worth of mentioning here.

Followers


Diablo 2 introduced the ability to hire followers to aid you. In Diablo 3 the followers return but not the same way as they did in second game. This time you get them through quests and recruiting them doesn't cost anything. They are also immortal in a way that you don't have to spend gold to resurrect them as they will do so by themselves after certain amount of time has passed since death. And that amount of time is actually quite short, in several boss fights my follower has died several times, always returning to battle after short wait.

Since the followers are linked to the character through quests they also have a personality. These personalities are revealed when you talk to them as well as during random banters they can have. You can also affect their skills, there is eight skill for each follower, unlocked by pairs and you must choose one of the two skills, disabling the other one permanently.

You can also equip you follower, but here is the weak link it the system; you can only give them new weapon and/or shield, two rings, amulet and special item which depends on the follower. So the actual customization of the follower through equipment is very limited.



Stability and Technical Things


When the game was released there were lots of problems with the stability of the game, mostly related to the servers. Since I bought the game I haven't experience any connection problems, at least none that wasn't caused by my side of the connection. In fact, Diablo 3 is even more stable than several MMOs I have been playing during the years, like WoW, Golfstar Online and Aion. Of course I have been logged out from the game if I have left the game open for an hour or so without doing anything, but that's only expected.

As for the bugs, in my experience the game is almost completely free of bugs. I say almost since I have encountered one bug; a single creature appeared to exists between life and death. What this means it that it appeared, attacked me and the disappeared. How I know this as a bug is that the monster was normal one, part of bigger group, and I was unable to target it, even if I used skills that doesn't require specific creature as target. The problem was solved by moving further in the map as the creature didn't follow me far away.

Now, about the DRM. I know it annoys people that you must be connected to internet while playing. But seriously, internet connection as requirement is quite common today and if it slows down the hackers and pirates I'm all for it. Especially since the connection in very stable, just like I mentioned above. And now I don't have to worry about moving characters between my laptop and desktop since those are saved on the server side. And now I don't have to worry about serial codes, which is always a plus.

The game itself runs very smoothly, even in my laptop. For system requirements it is demanding very little, while still looking good.

Scoring

So, long wait has ended and we finally have new Diablo game. And it's also time to give the final score. Now, is Diablo 3 a good game? I say definitely yes. Would I recommend it to my friends? Again yes, in fact I have already done so. But is Diablo 3 a masterpiece? No, that it's not. It has lost of real improvements and fresh ideas but then again it has flaws as well. And then there are those aspects that, while not being flaws, could and should have been improved and polished more before release. And then there are things that are completely missing, like PvP, which is coming among patches.

Now, after spending countless hours playing this game I was considering the score between 8 and 9. Eight seems a bit low since there weren't any game breaking problems and most of the flaws were minor ones, but then again was everything in it worth of nine? But when I realized how many hours it has managed to take from my life I think there is something addicting in it that gives the right for nine. Now, to translate the score to GameBanshee score system means that the score would be 4,5. But since the game was so close on getting eight in my system I will go with 4 in GB system.

My score system: 9/10
GameBanshee score system: 4/5