Diablo III: Does it suck?
Short Answer: Nope.
Long Answer: Sort of.
What gives with the contradicting explanation? Well if you take the on a short term basis, it's a pretty awesome game, but as you play through the game you begin to see some cracks in the whole of the game.
Do these things ruin the game? Not really, they are mostly small inconveniences and most of them take little from the game over all.
Where do I begin? How about Game Play.
How does the game play? Like you'd expect Diablo to play.
You play your character class, which are no longer gender locked like they were in the previous game, and you have two active attack slots: left and right click. Normally your left click attack builds up your class specific resource (in the case of the monk it's spirit), and your right click spends your resource in the form of a massive AoE attack.
Then you have your action bar, which consists of four special moves you can activate that either act like a massive AoE or (at least for the monk) a passive heal buff.
Gone is the annoying skill tree, no longer do you have to worry about screwing up your character because you don't have enough points in specific skills, they all scale with level, and as you level up you get access to runes that enhance your abilities and you can freely change between them, freeing you up to play your class exactly how you want too.
Not only that, but Diablo III took the whole "get your stats from your gear," idea from WoW, simplifying game play. However, it's not neigh impossible to find gear with the specific stats you need either, they kind of fixed the loot system.
What's the story like? It's okay.
It's engaging enough to make you want to play through the game, and interesting enough to make you kind of care. Thankfully most of the story centers around killing lots and lots of monsters and recovering sweet, sweet loot all at the same time. The companion characters you meet along the way, from your craftsmen, to your followers, are not completely bland and come complete with their own back stories and motivations to help you along your journey. For me I ended up only using the Templar mostly because of his passive heal buff and active heal buff, and because all the gear I found for the Scoundrel and Enchantress really just sucked.
There are enough witty jokes to keep you interested really.
What's my over all impression of the game?
Wait for it to go on sale for $20 again and take advantage of all the things the expansion brought to the game without actually buying it. That's not to say you should not buy it, because I eventually will, just, take your time in Diablo III and when you get bored with it, move on to the expansion and grind out ten more levels and see what other awesome loot you can find.
Final Verdict: on a scale one to ten? It's about an eight and a half.
It's a good time sink, especially if you're tired of playing WoW. I rarely log into WoW since getting Diablo III.
Here's a video of me reviewing Diablo III. Let me know what you guys think. Follow @benlaakkonen
