So Diablo 3 has been out for a while and I was crazy enough to preorder the game about.... a year in advance before any one else ( my friend worked there and confirmed this ). Now I'm gonna go out on a limb and let the lot of you know, I NEVER pre-order anything. I think it's a stupid waste of time, it's going to be there and having a piece of paper that says you're entitled to it just seems like some unneeded self-satisfying busywork. So for me to pre-order this tells you how excited I was to play this game.
Now what's funny about Diablo 3 is, considering how excited I was for it... I KNEW there was no way that it could ever compare to Diablo 2. Diablo 2 was THE perfect RPG. It was pristine upon release and just got better with version updates and expansion release. I remember the days when you could buy an inventory full of Hex Small Charms and duo Amazon and Barbarians; this was what make Diablo great. So I had to come into this game with little expectations; I already had perfect. For anyone to disagree with this, you either got into Diablo 2 VERY late or you just don't like RPGs.
So what was my reaction to finally playing this game?
Bitter.
I mean, I knew what I was getting myself into. I can get over the removal of stats, I can get over the lack of skill trees, I can even get over the lack of Rune Words.... but for how long this game was on the stove, it could not feel any less finished, like I couldn't tell you what took so long for this game to come out considering how half-assed everything seems. And what's funny was it wasn't even released complete. But let's not jump right into my opinion.
My first impression of Diablo 3 were actually pretty good. You start off in a town next to the old Tristram and investigate a meteor crashing right on top of the old Sanctuary from the first Diablo game. The graphics were pretty good, the gameplay is spectacular with its phsyics; each swing feels powerful and it never gets old when attacking monsters. And the interface of the game is far superior to the older games. So yes this game DOES have it's higher points to it.
Act 1 was probably the best act though. as it felt the most finished... but it's "finished" parts are kind of what bugs me about Act 1. Let me explain, Tristam and the Sanctuary were kind of redesigned, and by kind of I mean... completely. Like the walk to Adria's hut was, rather than a small bridge past a small river was changed to a 2 mile hike past a huge river and into this cave system which was FAR out of Tristam. Tristam no longer looks the same, the only similarities are the well and.... well that's about it.
I mean, I can kind of understand why they would do this but it also contradicts your source material, even Diablo 2 was faithful to the source material for the most part. Now it looks like a completely different town with a completely different Sanctuary; the original had a blue tint to it... now it's dark red and looks NOTHING like the original. It's a small gripe, but I excused it.
Okay so now we have the stats and bonuses to weapons. This is something that kind of prevented me from getting attached to the game. You see in Diablo 2, I ALWAYS played as the Sorceress. She was always my favorite to play as, she teleported with little cost, did great AoE. So clearly I'd choose the Wizard in ths game.... THE PROBLEM is the Wizard's only stat is INT and damage+, which is fairly boring. Hell, in Diablo 2 I had Sorc Skill+, Faster Cast Rate, Mana regen, Resistances, Lower enemy resistances....
Yeah, a few of those are present in this game, but it's no where on the same level as 2. It feels like Im forced to just take the INT and HOPE that a second stat is attached to it. Which is kind of easy to find because you also have the Auction House, which in my opinion was a great addition and a huge flaw to the game. I think the Auction House actually might contradict the entire point of Diablo 3 which is to FIND loot. But anyways, I digress on that point... Finding loot in this game was Too Easy and Too Hard all at the same time.
You see, when leveling my Wizard I notice that on bosses I was doing SEVERELY low damage and dying pretty hard and this is because of my previous point; there are next to no stats on these weapons and armor you find. And with the lack of stats to put into whatever you want, you cannot alter the damage you do on the base. So what does this mean? I can either: Kill the same few enemies and hope for something or I can pay a piddly amount of gold for something with the level capped amount of Intelligence. Yeah, this is where the Too Easy comes in, because there are PLENTY of these items available which all benefit you the same.
The problem with this is... Diablo as a series is kind of like a casino. You kill the enemies and get a chance at getting the jackpot ( Uniques or Rares ). But in this game, I don't think I EVER found a piece of armor or anything that benefited me because I always found better at the Auction House. This lottery has become much harder to work because Blizzard made it next to impossible to find anything so their Auction House works in their favor; they WANT you to abuse it because it eventually means more REAL money Transactions later on. So stat scaling is unfair, drop rates are unfair, and even the gold is hard to come by.
1. Tyrael: Okay, so that meteor I was talking about? That was Tyrael. And I thought this was actually pretty badass. Tyrael's back after the Worldstone was destroyed. What happened to him? Where has he been all this time?
Well... I'm not sure if this was even answered because.... well, I was so bored with the guy I kinda stopped caring. You see, what made Tyrael so badass in Diablo 2 was just how we spoke and how looked. He LOOKED like you don't wanna fuck with him. He was an Angel with Wings bigger than Boeing 777, he glowed white and his voice echoed like he couldn't give a shit to speak to a puny mortal like you.
Now he's some black guy who doesn't really do anything but stand there and tell you what needs to be done. I don't know if this guy is suppose to replace Cain ( I kind of think Adria is actually ) but my god he just is out of place now. His entire purpose was just to warn us. Got it. Warned. Why are you still here?
2. The Black Soulstone: So this random sorcerer like guy just so happens to have an Anti-Soulstone which just so happens to absorb evil souls, contain them, and destroy them and all evil all at once.
Is this... not just the laziest writing? I really don't have much to say about this except this is stupidest thing in Diablo history.
 |
| Image of Belial |
3. Belial/Azmodean: So these two were supposed to be the biggest badasses in Hell. You see these two tricked Diablo, Mephisto, and Baal all out of hell and waged war on all of Hell to be rulers. These guys were amazing. This guy was suppose to rule this desert nation with an iron fist... people were scared of him, towns were all on fire because of these guys. They were in the heart of the storm.
I killed Belial in SECONDS. I'm not even sure this guy touched me, he was so pathetic. And my god did he look stupid.
Jared from ScrewAttack said it the best: "Is there a way to turn this game off of Baby difficulty?"
The story is just so stupid. It feels so rushed and forced. I wish I could throw some metaphor and elaborate just how I came to this conclusion but... no, the story is just flat out stupid. I mean, it was like Blizzard worked on act 1 for the first 5 years of development and finally said "Oh shit, this game needs to come out sometime this year, we gotta do the remaining acts!"
In my opinion, all this game did was make me want to play Diablo 2 more.
No comments:
Post a Comment