Review: Diablo 3 (2012)

By Michael A

It isn’t often players wait around twelve years for a sequel to a game.  Even rarer is for those games to endure, still touted as high quality and played almost religiously. Diablo 2 was one of those games that players would find themselves replaying: A frenzied binge leading to a new hell mode paladin or a gimmicky druid. After over a decade, though, Blizzard delivers upon another of its old franchises, giving us Diablo 3, and I for one am not disappointed.
Graphics
While hardly the most visually intensive game ever, Diablo 3 hardly disappointed. Upon very close inspection, a handful of minor details suffer, yet the models for characters, enemies and even equipment and weapons are interesting and well designed. Landscapes are different for each chapter, offering a strong nostalgia to the second game, from the first chapters dark woods to the familiar dungeon interiors of the other chapters. Spoiler free, the fourth act has some beautiful designs, though every act has at least one awesome sight, if not more. An easy game to enjoy looking at, really, with some fancy graphical effects here and there, but nothing that really jumps out as cutting edge. I will say, the sheer number of effects and models on screen at one time is impressive, considering the lack of slowdown.
Story
In my opinion, the Diablo series has always been a bit silly in terms of plot, but by this point it has been painted as its own unique setting. Fans of fantasy that is over the top will like the setting a lot, as well as diehards to blizzard. The plot hooks and script leave a little to be desired, with at least 3 separate occasions of a ‘twist’ coming that was so easy to see I couldn’t help but wonder how it came to be. Combine this with the fact that every main antagonist basically says “HAH! That wasn’t my REAL secret weapon! You are doomed!” with every completed mission, and you can see why I would call Diablo 3’s plot a pretty shoddy construction, especially in the fourth act. I am borderline offended at how stupid the ‘allies’ actions are in the fourth act, and the ending left me a little disapointed. A shame as, in my opinion, there are a lot of excellent ideas that were just written too poorly to really impress. But, lets face it: we came for the next category...
Gameplay
Diablo 3 delivers exactly what you would think: Hack and slash excellence. Varied monsters,ravening hordes, super bosses and cool loot drops: What more do you want from a hack and slash? The enemy system and loot system is virtually unchanged from Diablo 2 or its many progeny (Such as Titan Quest, Torchlight, or Dungeon Siege), maintaining the standard ‘blue for magic, yellow for rare, green for super rare’ patterns to both, more or less. Where Diablo 3 tries to be innovative is by breaking away from the traditional skill trees.
The skill system in Diablo 3 is a robust unlocking system. Every barbarian that hits level 30 unlocks the same skills. Same for every monk and every wizard and so on. By level 60, all characters have all skills unlocked.  “But, Michael,” you ask, “Where is the customization? Doesn’t that mean we are all identical?” Technically, yes, but where other games, including Diablo 2, had the illusion of a huge number of skills in the tree format, ultimately it seemed only  a handful of skills were viable past the first playthrough or the beginning sections, depending on the game. Heck, in D2, planning skill points was a freaking science, because any wasted points meant a massive disadvantage. In Diablo 3, you pick up to 6 ‘active’ skills, mapped to keys 1-4 and the right and left mouse buttons.
Then, every skill, by level 60, has 5 ‘runes’ to unlock, which significantly change the skill. My favorite example, the barbarians cleave. Basic skill is a wide, aoe swing of the weapon. With rupture rune, kills now explode, causing damage. With another rune, crit hits have a chance of knocking enemies back! A separate run causes a slow effect to targets, and, well... You get the idea. My barbarian build, for example, is about stunning and mobility, where my friends build, while similar in base skills, relies more on critical strikes. This system is incredibly robust, and only seems to get more interesting as the game gets harder. Not only that, but the lack of investing skill points ultimately means you can try out skills as you earn them and continue to tailor a unique combat style.
Sound
Smiting evil has rarely sounded so cool. The sounds that monsters, attacks and effects make are pretty cool over all, often giving the sensation that you are indeed fighting through hordes of enemies, or being bombed by fiery death. The music is pretty ambient, but overall not terribly memorable. The voice acting is painfully irregular. Some of the voice actors, including most of the player characters, are solid, but many NPC’s and villains have awful voice acting. I’m certain part of it is the simple fact that jerkbag demons have to trash talk you like a high school bully, but most of the voice acting was, indeed, painful. Some of it was literally unintelligible, mostly on the part of demons, both great and small.
Overall
Having never been a big fan of this kind of game, I have to say I thought Diablo 3 was fun. The character classes have unique play styles, the enemies interesting, and the grind as a whole enjoyable. The risk Blizzard took making the skill system an automatic unlock method as opposed to a points based unlock is something I greatly appreciate, considering how well it was done. Overall, I am very pleased with the fact Blizzard tried to find a few new ways to breathe life into a fairly mindless genre, instead of just make ‘Diablo 2+more.” It is a very fun game, but if you don’t like hack-n-slash, you aren’t missing out on a must-play.

Diablo 3 gets a 7.5/10