Diablo 3 Beta
So opposite of the SWToR beta I was in this weekend, I was actually excited for this one. I loved the Diablo and Diablo 2. I still play Diablo 2 and I jump on any clone games that come out for it.
Well a mud hole was stomped in my excitement for this game fairly quickly.
I’m going to go ahead and get the good things out of the way, and then hit the neutral, and then the bad.
Good:
Each class does play differently and has a unique feel to it.
Graphics were nice.
Sounds were pretty awesome.
They kept the random terrain and random dungeon layout.
You get a Horadric Cube wannabe that breaks down crap gear into crafting materials, this way you can avoid heading back to town every few minutes to offload loot.
Neutral (Yes we are here that fast):
Crafting, I have no idea why this was added to the game. I made a few items (mainly daggers and armor for my Witch Doctor), and then promptly forgot about it.
Auction House, I have no idea why this was there, but hey, whatever! Folks were using it, and I bought something to test it out
Breakable/ collapsible terrain- I found myself trying, hard, to use this to my advantage, most often the mobs would wander out of range of falling walls before I could crush them with it. I eventually started destroying it purely for the XP bonus it was giving me and that’s it
Storyline, I might just be nitpicking here but the first chapter revolves around killing the undead prince of a fallen kingdom that’s raising undead hordes to burn your town. (Sound familiar?)
Achievements
Quest tracking
Bad:
Talents, Diablo 3 should serve as a warning to everyone willing to put money down for any future Blizzard products. You have no choice other than do I use X spell at this time. You can’t create unique characters, because all characters get the same abilities at the same level. The talent tree is purely there for you to mark what level you have made.
This is horrible in my opinion, what if I want super huge angry Zombie dogs? Too bad, gone are the days of dropping more points into an ability to make it better more powerful
Why am I fighting regurgitated Diablo 2 mobs? Yes Blizzard in a few cases you gave them new names….. but that doesn’t change a thing and you know it
Zero competitiveness – I entered a few group sections and was underwhelmed, with all of us being cookie cutter examples of each other it was simple a Q&A session of “I’ll run X if you run Y” and then Bam! everything dies. There is no more tweaking of ridiculous builds, or talent trees to create the perfect Necro/ paladin combo duo (My favorite duo from D2)
It felt like I was doing the exact same thing as I did in the previous Diablo’s, there was nothing new.
UI – why can I only use 1-5 and then my mouse buttons for abilities, spells, potions, etc… And why do they each unlock at different levels? (Yes that’s right you have to level up to unlock them….) Was this an attempt to cover up the shitty skill progression?
TL; DR version:
If the final product looks anything like what I tested, everyone would be better served dropping $20 on Torchlight 2 and enjoying a vastly superior game.
Additional thoughts since I wrote this:
(Just general thoughts, you can view than as positive, neutral, or negative)
More so than any other the others, this version caters to Ranged combat, in a big way.
With the Witch Doctor I was able to use Zombie Dogs, and the With Doctors version of the Death Knights “Death And Decay” (Called Grasp of the Dead)ability to kill everything. Note: I didn’t use any other abilities purely summoned my dogs and then cast Grasp of the dead everywhere.
Once I got the Cleric/ paladin dude following me around, then I stopped casting Grasp, set the pallie to heal and just looted everything
Monks are far better starting out than Barbarians
the “Talent Tree” is here for each class:
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian