Diablo 3 strikes back with more fluid satisfying combat, but its a tad too streamlined, and the loot less lustful.

User Rating: 8.5 | Diablo III PC
By lil_zelda_dude | Review Date:
There were 3 main components of D1 and D2, that was fast paced combat, loot, and feeling powerful. The combat has been nicely tuned, but the rune system is in its own way limiting. Sure you can switch them out on the fly but its much less a novelty when they are unlocked by simply leveling, and theres much less maneuverability between class skills as there was in D2 with each class having the ability to use the sorceress's teleport and things of that sort. The loot is also much less sought after because none of it is overpowered in all honesty. Its a very gradual move forward in terms of loot, so your character hits a plateu never really feeling especially more powerful than before. I dearly miss the armor and rings that gave me +1 to all skills, the loot here thats mostly dependent on your main characters stat and vitality, is much less appealing. You don't feel the same eagerness to reach that top tier of armor and loot because its merely a reskinned version of what you have now with a larger number in front of its stat boosts.
And so I was a bit dissapointed with Diablo 3. And yes the game aesthetically looks great, and ensures that alot of people can play this on a lot of crappy or not so crappy machines, but its a bit too cutesy and bright for me. I miss the high goth feeling of the originals, the sharp edges, and darkened corridors. Here corridors are illuminated a light blue light, and Hell by a warm red. The enemies are rounder, cuter, and less frightening. Sure theres alot of blood and such, but its much more playful. Never did I cringe or feel the same way I did with the chilling atmospherics of the older games.
But at its core it does alot right, combat is very punchy and satisfying, the leveling progression is done cleverly, and the loot is still satisfying to watch spurt out in showers from difficult enemies/bosses.

However, I can't see this game having the same staying quality as the others, I don't think there's much in terms of builds that you can form here, its a bit too flexible that it keeps the experience kind of vague and general. Matchmaking is merely a quick join of a chapter, so you wont be able to arrange any runs for bosses like you could before unless of course you have friends to assemble around your level and story progress, and your character so far cannot become so powerful that they can solo Inferno difficulty. Its all a team effort now, so your never going to feel like that all powerful bad@$$ you once did when you were flying through mobs like they were nothing. They tried to balance a game, where balance was a bit irrelevant. You need to play with the difficulty, let us be powerful, then challenge us, not hit us with this plateu. So the game seems to just gradually slide along, rather than hit any high or low marks, making it a tad less exciting and engaging.
All this sounds extremely negative, but overall the game delivers because Blizzard knows how to craft and polish a game to a shimmering sheen. The combat is right on, the graphics and art do a fantastic job in balancing the technical and artistic aspect, and the online component is slick and simple albeit with its obvious issues. Overall Diablo 3 amounts to a great polished game, but with the monumental expectations I came going in I left dissapointed. It appeals too much to the casual gamer, and I feel they made some crucial wrong decisions that hold the game back from what it couldve been. These were the fatal decisions, the streamlined leveling, rune system, uninteresting loot, and the focus on teamplay, was what almost killed it for me. But for now, its an exceptional A-RPG, hopefully it evolves overtime into a game that can comfortably share shelf room with Diablo 2.

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