Diablo III (2012)

I waited impatiently for Diablo III to come out, back in 2012, and when it did, I was the first to buy it. Never was I more hyped for a sequel than this one.

Right away, I was hooked up and played many hours in a row and almost finished it in one setting.

The story goes on where Diablo II ended and it follows the plot really well. Diablo has broken free from the Soulstone with the help of his Demon Lord buddies and roams the earth again. You need to stop him once again to save humanity and need to fight your way through all his minions and luitenants. It is kind of the same story as Diablo II but for this series, that is perfectly fine.

You visit the old, destroyed town of Tristram, come across characters and lore from the previous games and meet some new and original NPC’s. You roam the desserts, the cold plains of Bastion Keep and visit heaven itself.

The newly added characters, like the Witch Doctor, Monk and Demon Hunter and all great and every character is balanced. I could not find problems with any of them being more overpowered than the other. My personal favorite will always be the With Doctor. Raising zombies and attacking with foul voodoo is just so satisfying.

Diablo III is a big game and offers much content for moneys worth. It also has many improved features from the previous installments, like more inventory space, a re-loadable health potion and a town portal that you can always use, instead of a big bible in your inventory that stores town portals.
The game controls fluently and you are in total control of the situation.

Although I enjoyed the game and played the crap out of it, I have some personal complaints about Diablo III.

First of all, the game feels a little too cartoonish and the dark, grim atmosphere from the first two installments is not present. This is mainly because of the 3D graphics of course, but it is just to colorful and bright in my opinion.

Secondly, the introduction of the Auction House back in the day, almost broke the game for me. People could buy and sell ridiculously powerful items and blast their way to the game without any effort. And worst of all, you paid real money for it. The game became a business model and people became gambling addicts. It was even worse than the lootbox system in many other games and it made me very sad. Luckily, this feature has been removed because of the many complaints but it is worth noting. If people did not complain, this would have gone on forever. And because Blizzard is doing the same scam these days for Diablo Immortal (which is already banned in my country because of this), I wanted to point it out.

Lastly, Diablo III has become a mindless game where the only thing that matters, is how fast you can complete a “greater rift”. It is starting to look a lot like League of Legends, in terms of doing the same thing over and over again and try to be the fastest. People must do what they like of course, but for me, the whole magic of Diablo, like experienced at the start of this game is dead. The story does not matter anymore and the game got too commercial, if that makes any sense. The seasons, greater rifts and events are cool, but also makes you feel that you can never complete this game.

Still, I get it. The game needs to stay interesting to keep people playing so the developers need to make some changes in order to achieve this.

But enough complaining. I play greater rifts too and participate in the seasons, but only because of the nice rewards you get from them and to build a new character, and making him stronger than the previous one. And although this is still enjoyable, many times I forget that I’m playing Diablo.

Overall, Diablo III is a good game and although nobody gives a crap anymore, it follows Diablo 1 and 2 quite well and has a ton of content, regular updating and new features. In my opinion it is somewhat targeted at “the next generation”, who did not experience the previous games back in the day, but now I’m starting to sound like a grandpa and I am not even 30 yet.

I already saw the trailers for Diablo IV and it looks like they go back to the roots of Diablo II with darker graphics and a nice story. Cannot wait to try it when it comes out.

Still recommend Diablo III it for its fluent mechanics, fast paced gameplay and its content for the buck.