The Falcon's Diablo III review

This Diablo III review comes from a friend of mine, The Falcon, who wanted to piggyback on my blog. After a massive 5-minute worth of work, it's finally ready.

Damn his nickname sounds slightly cooler than mine.

I'm sexy and I KNOW it.

Ah, Diablo. I am not going to warn you about spoilers, because if you have managed to avoid all spoilers till now, then you are going to avoid reading this as well. Cain dies and Diablo is Cain's niece.

In this review, I am going to focus on the visual/design experience, and the fun/not fun aspects of Diablo's four acts, and not so much the gameplay or balance or whatnot. Why? Because about a trillion other reviews have covered those issues already.

Now I have not played all classes (main is a Barb), nor have I finished Inferno yet (still in Act1). I also started the game late (in 1.0.3) and only hit 60 after 1.0.4, so my experience with the game is significantly better than people who started playing on launch. 

Bear this in mind, as I have read tonnes and tonnes of criticism of the game before playing it, which had already been fixed by the time I started. It is strange that people who only started playing the game a couple of months after release are getting a much better experience, but that is the nature of things.

Game overview

You choose one of five classes: Barbarian, a wise-savage hulk-smash tank. Wizard, a laser-fire-ice spellcaster. Witch doctor, the curses and pets swiss-army-knife. Monk, the aura and speed master. Demon hunter, the DPS-specialist who can wield... dual crossbows. 

Cuteness overload.

How does one wield two crossbows at the same time? Do you require a third arm to reload, or do you stop fighting and reload both crossbows then fire? Does that not double your reload time? I can understand a wizard casting a laser: They are wizards. But how do demon hunters use TWO crossbows at the same time? You would need some serious dexterity to do that! (Ephyon: That's why their primary stat is Dexterity!! :D)

As with most RPGs, you start almost naked and very weak, and kill monsters for loot and experience. You get stronger with levels and loot, but honestly the best part of the 1-to-60 leveling is the new skills you unlock. Blizz did a cool thing where you unlock a skill or a rune every level, so there is something new to try with each level up. 

The monsters are awesome, with a huge variety of easy to near-impossible combination of possible affixes. You never know what you are going to fight next, and some fights are very intense. The acts/levels are varied, with some being nicely designed and with some randomization, and some not-so-nicely designed. I will get more into each act in a moment.

Something old, something new:

While this is still a hack-and-slash, some things have changed from the old Diablos. For the better? Hmm...

• No more exp and gold loss on death
• Multiplayer limited to 4 players per game
• Loot is not shared in multiplayer. This is a particularly welcome change: Your loot is your own, so there can be no ninja-ing of loot. You can still drop it yourself for others or trade it, if you want.
• No stat allocation. A big departure from previous Diablos.
• Items take a maximum of 2 squares in your stash.
• Shared stash between characters.
• Harder Inferno difficulty beyond Hell
• Blues/yellows can be salvaged for crafting material

The acts

Act 1: 

An excellent act, all around, but not without a few flaws. You begin the act at new Tristram, and you explore the countryside, which is a foggy dark-y night-time place. You revisit old Tristram, go to the cathedral (yes, it IS Diablo 1 revisited), rescue Tyrael there and kill Leoric again. How many times has Leoric gotten himself killed? 3? You visit an autumn-y area later on, as well as a spider lair and several underground dungeons, both the cold type and the fire-lava type. 

The very high diversity of locations and "moods" of this act is both appreciated... and heart-breaking. You never get to have that experience again in later levels, and that really sucks, since this act is just beautiful. This act has the best "random dungeons" of the entire game, as well as being the act in which you try out several of your new skills as a starting player. 

The good:

• You get to rescue Cain
• You get to talk to Cain
• You get to hear Leah say: "Not more of your crazy stories" to Cain
• You rescue Tyrael
• You meet Maghda, an interesting and colourful character
• The big steel cutting contraptions that try to kill you in some of the dungeons
• Following the trails of blood and torture in some of the dungeons
• Very high variety of atmospheres and locations for one act

The bad:

• Cain dies
• Cain dies
• Cain dies
• The butcher is a sucky end-of-act boss. Should have been Maghda
• Cain dies

One of the worst parts of this entire game is in this act: Cain's death. There is absolutely no reason for it whatsoever. 

Maghda: Cake or death?
Cain: Death!! No, wait, I meant CAKE!!
Maghda: AHA! I HEARD DEATH!!! ITS TOO LATE!!
Cain: X_X

You go back to town after helping Wortham, and suddenly Cain is on the floor being tortured by Maghda. Then Cain assembles Tyrael's sword and dies, just like that. I thought it was quite cheap, and disrespectful to the player who has played D1 and D2. 

What was the point of Cain's death? It did not move the story along: You continue like nothing has happened, by taking Tyrael's sword to him. One line of reasoning is that since you do not need Cain for identification, then he is functionally useless to the player. The same can be said of Leah, Tyrael, AND 2 of your followers! Why could they not have had Cain stand with the followers or talk to Leah and Adria? I felt really disappointed by this part, particularly after what happens in Act 2 (getting revenge on Maghda). 

The butcher also sucks: You never hear of him before you kill him, he is not a Prime evil or a lesser evil... or anything at all. Do not give me any crap that this is the same butcher from D1. I killed that guy already. Maghda says: "Meet... the Butcher!" then you kill the butcher. 

No other lore, or story, or impact. 

(Ephyon: I feel the same about the Butcher. I think he was put in for nostalgic factors, and it sorta worked that way, but as you said, he was a rather piss-poor end-of-act boss. Same thing can be said about Duriel, really. He was one of the Lesser Evils, and there was absolutely no build up to him: you enter the Tomb of Tal Rasha, expecting to fight Baal and suddenly, this fat-arsed Hydralisk comes out of nowhere and opens up a can of whoop-ass.)

Might as well have been a normal mob with extra HP. That is just bad story-telling, and you cannot use "Diablo was about the loot, not the story" as an excuse. You can have a mediocre story, and that is fine. But Cain's meaningless death and the butcher's 27 seconds of fame are not mediocre, it is just terrible.

Best of the act:

• When you first walk around in the autumn area after Leoric's, and one of the trees comes to life.

SURPRISE MOTHAFUCKA!!

Act 1 is a great act, and it also shows both the good and the bad that you can expect from the rest of the game: Great visuals, terrible (often meaningless) story. This is my second favourite act.

Act 2:

Horrid act. From start to finish, this is one of the WORST acts in the entire Diablo series, even worse than the worst parts of D2's Act 2 and 3 COMBINED! (Ephyon: Hey, I like Act 2! Though I agree that Act 3 sucked big time...) Let me elaborate on the suckery:

LETS DO THIS. LEEERRROOOOOYYYYYYYYYYY.....
He never had the chance to finish his warcry.

The bad:

• Featureless sand, everywhere. And you get to travel over miles and MILES of it! Best part is where you are given an enormous area of featureless sand, with no roads or map-markers, and you are asked to go find a small hole in the ground. I DID THIS BEFORE IN D2, I DID NOT LIKE IT THEN, I DO NOT LIKE NOW!
• The bug monster that shoot mini bugs at you, then run away. As a melee character, those are just infuriating.

Pew pew pew pew~~

• Ugh! More sewers! Did we like the sewers in D2? No? Then what is with the extra sewers? 
• You meet Maghda in the previous act, and she is interesting. You kill her in this act, and she is then forgotten forever, along with Cain.
• You meet Zoltun Kulle in this act, and he is much more interesting than Maghda. You kill him, and he is then forgotten forever. 
• AGAIN with the "collect my body parts" quest. Seriously, did we not do this with Khalim in D2? Who liked that quest? Why did they bring it back?

The good (Yeah, it is not ALL bad...):

• You meet an enchanting old woman (Ephyon: OLD!? Well ok, that's not technically wrong, but still....) who directs your attention to more hidden footprints.
• The oasis part gave some life to an otherwise dry act. 
• The underground places (where you collect Kulle's blood), and Kulle's lab were both magnificent. 
• You meet Shen in this act, and he is an interesting character. You do not kill him, and he is not forgotten for the rest of the game, unlike Cain AND Maghda AND Kulle.

This act is really bad, and felt like more of a chore than a fun part of the game. Story-wise, Blizzard hit a really low note here, with the whole act being one bad story. The only exception is Shen.

Hello there!

I liked Shen's story and dialogue, and am grateful he did not suffer Maghda and Kulle's fate. 

Maghda, after killing Cain, deserved a much better ending than what she got. It felt empty and hollow: Ok, I killed her in one short fight... and that is it? I would rather have had Maghda omitted from the game and kept Cain alive. If not, then at least have a monstrous, prolonged and agonizing battle, maybe multi-staged and with much suffering to give the player a sense of vengeance. 

Zoltun Kulle was also a huge disappointment. He was interesting, stayed with you for a good part of the act, talked to you like you were worth more than your own self-estimates. You helped him do a reverse blood donation of sorts, and brought him back to life. You even helped re-activate his laboratory... then killed him immediately after. That is what bugs me the most, that the game had a great story going with Kulle, only to ruin it utterly with a really bad ending. 

AGAIN, I would rather have had no Kulle in the game than Kulle's ending.

Another major letdown in this act is the design. The oasis is cool, and the underground areas that your teleport to from the desert are majestic. Unfortunately, the overwhelming part of the act is in deserts and sewers. Now in D2, you went to the sewers... for a short while. In D3, you really get the full sewage experience, and for quite a long time too.

I do not quite get the mentality of whoever designed those areas: We will force the player to go through a few hours worth of mucky sewer corridors. Yeah, that will be pleasant! And it is not even logical: Caldeum has less than 50 citizens! YOU DO NOT NEED THAT MANY MILES OF SEWERS FOR A CITY OF FIFTY PEOPLE! 50 people do not even make a town, never mind a city. It is a village!

Ephyon: Well Caldeum is actually quite big, but I see your point.

And yet, somehow, I would have preferred that the act be ALL sewers, rather than have BOTH sewers AND featureless deserts. 

The desert areas are just plain awful. 

I do not know WHY large desert areas are included in games: If I wanted boring featureless nothingness, I could stare at a wall. Understandably, games need variation, and deserts can be poetic and nice. Let us have small desert areas, fine, but I do NOT want to get "lost" in an enormous desert in a game. It is not fun at all, and worse than boring, it is frustrating. In other areas, if you did not know where to go, you explored, and there were things to see. 

Interesting things, like burning zombies crawling out of burning holes, or soldiers fighting monsters down below, or a water area with illusionary tiles that solidified when you stepped on them. If you want to put me in a huge featureless desert, then give me my objectives clearly on my map, so I can choose to just skip the desert and move on, or clear the desert if I want. 

But in D3, the objectives in the desert only show up once you are close by, so you can spend about 30 minutes wandering aimlessly in featureless nothingness with NO eye candy. Try pressing "ctrl+f" and search for the number of times I said "featureless." (Ephyon: Seven) You can go to parts of the desert and there will be sand that fills the entirety of your screen. 

I suspect that Diablo's team spent a lot of time and resources making monsters, exploring storylines etc, and at some point, someone decided to take all the shitty monsters and stories and shove them into Act 2, to keep all the other acts clean. Maybe Kulle's death was supposed to be in Act 3? I say this because in addition to all the above bad decisions... The act does not get helped by the monsters that spawn here. You have these large mosquito bugs that shoot small mosquito bugs and run away.

The closest real-life experience that matches this would be to be surrounded by mosquitos.

And then we doubled it -Jay Wilson

Smart mosquitos that always hover out of reach. Smart mosquitos that hover out of reach, and who can somehow shoot their probiscis at you, so they can bite from a distance. Four times in a row. It is more than a nuisance: It is really infuriating.

Another really stupid set of mobs is the "oblivious to your damage" type, like the sand sharks.

Ephyon: I like the design though

You can see them swimming in the sand, you can step on them, you can cast earth slams that split the earth they are swimming in, and you can cause volcanoes to erupt from under them... to no effect. The "invisible" mirage-type of monsters are the same, completely ignoring you when they are invisible. The gameplay goes like this: If it has no health bar, you cannot damage it, even if you can see it and stand on it or near or whatever. This really sucks, particularly on spells with long cooldowns: You cast your spell, expecting the mob to die, but the mob turns invisible or goes underground and thus ignore all damage, even if the ground they were on/in is literally lava. Literally! 

Best of the act:

• The first time you go into an underground labyrinth. It just looks so small at first, that you think: I will clear this in 20 seconds and move on. Then you explore and you get the feeling of "Whoa! How far does this thing go?" and you explore more and the feeling keeps growing! Marvelous!

It is difficult to believe that this Act made it through Blizzard's vetting process, yet here we are. The storyline of this act is pathetic, and I barely explained 2% of it. There are a few nicely (very nicely!) designed areas, but so much of the act is either sewers or deserts. Some of act's mobs are keyboard-smashing-ly bad. All in all, this act is Blizzard at its worst, and my feeling after finishing it was: "Thank God that is over!"

Act 3:

While not my favourite, this is a very well-designed act that is by far the most "player-driven." The first half of the act is mostly in Bastion's Keep, a castle that is (not really) similar to the town of D2:LOD Act 5: Snowy mountain siege?(Ephyon: Well it is the same place, Mount Arreat afterall) Let us destroy some enemy catapults? The second half is just going around in Arreat's crater. 

Perfect weather for wholesome slaughter.

The good:

• You really get to be part of a siege, both defense and offense.
• At one point, the mobs actually enter the castle. Very cool!
• Lots and lots of friendly NPCs to fight alongside you.
• The design of the level (first half) is innovative.
• Sometimes you come across some friendly soldiers, and then they get carried off by flying monsters, never to return. Awesome!
• And sometimes you come across some friendly soldiers, then they get blown to bits. Brilliant!
• And sometimes you come across some friendly soldiers, and they cheer you on! "Hail to you, champion!"-style, but not as sexy.
• The soldier who gets pissed at you when you are bringing up the third trebuchet.
• Azmodan's boss battle is fun.

The bad:

• Azmodan talks too much.

I shall talk you to death.

• The second part of the level is just circles. Too many circles! Listen, there is a limit to how many rounds a player can go!
• At the level's ending, we never see Leah turn into Diablo. That was just lazy, Blizzard. We saw the wanderer transform slowly to Diablo, why not the same with Leah?

The... neutral?

• This act did not have any serious flaws, nor did it have any part that was really exciting. It was quite a balanced act, though to be fair it had much more moderately good things than moderately bad things.

At each and every single event in this Act, Azmodan appears and gives a mini-speech. This was childish, and felt like an Austin Powers villian, not a Diablo-level enemy. (Ephyon: His lip-syncing doesn't even match!)

The spider woman monster thing was not very well fleshed-out, either. Yeah, that was a pun, and yeah, all the previous puns that you noticed were puns too, but now they are not as nice as before since I pointed them out when I did not really need to, right? 

Azmodan does this throughout the ENTIRE act, reduntantly telling you about whatever it was you just did. Maybe it was intended to show that the Lord of Sin suffered from too much pride, but that is not at all the feeling you get when listening to him. Instead, it just came across as: "I, Azmodan, am not a pathetic loser. I am not! I AM NOT!".

Azmodan: Doesn't matter. Had sex!

I did not like the Arreat levels. Often, the door to the next level is about 10 feet away from the starting point, just a long way down. Now I know that this is a Diablo game, but why not have ladders? Why go ALL the way around? And if that was done once or twice, it would have been ok, but it is repeated over and over and over. It felt like the guys designing this part of the act just gave up and decided to do circles. Multiple circles is NOT a valid design!

That being said, the castle/fortress parts of the act more than made up for it, and at least with circles you had a direction to go in which guaranteed that you can find the level exit, so it was not as bad as act 2.

Best of the act:

• The first time the huge vomit-mob comes up the side of the walls and pukes lots of mobs at you.

This act felt a lot like D2:LOD act 5 in many ways, and that is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your view. It did not have many flaws, aside from the overtalkative Azmodan, but it was not as varied as act 1 or as visualing pleasing as act 4.

While no part of the act stood out as being grand, the general design was good, particularly in that you always had pathways to explore and go forward, as opposed to the aimless voids of act 2. Perhaps this is why I found the circles part to still be acceptable, though annoying.

You spin me right round, baby, right round~

I enjoyed killing Azmodan, if only to shut him up. Heh, I kid, I kid! The Azmodan boss battle had these growing black puddle things that made the fight quite different from what I am used to, and I have to mention that the efforts of those who designed Azmodan as a boss are very appreciated. If only his mini-speeches had been as fun as his boss battle...

Act 4:

Definitely one of the best designed and most visually pleasing levels in any game I have played. Diablo invades heaven, and Blizzard went out of its way to make this level... well, heavenly. The theme is marble-on-gold, with lots of light blue thrown in, and it is beautiful. The act is full to the brim with eye candy: Glowing fountains, floating water walkways, arches everywhere! There are even sparkly blue trees that serve no purpose whatsoever other than to give you a pretty thing to look, and I love it!

They put in a lot of love for this level.

The good:

• Beautiful artstyle. And I do mean really gorgeous
• Extreme attention to detail in this level. Every floor, every wall, every door, every pillar is done with love
• At one point, hope is actually lost. You then bring hope back to heaven
• Level design is a good mix of corridors and open areas, making this level the best one to play (map-wise)
• Several mini-bosses, including the very intense Izual
• Epic boss battle at the end.

The bad:

• The act is very short, particularly when compared with act 1
• Too little randomness. Much of the act is set, so you will not enjoy repeating this act as much as repeating others
• Diablo is a little Azmodan-y. Or maybe a little of Azmodan peeks through the amalgamation of the "Prime Evil" that is Diablo?
• Severe lack of mobs. This, by far, is the worst part of this act
• Inconsistent ending, with NPCs popping up next to you from... where? (Ephyon: I always assumed the archangels flew in, they have wings afterall. How the others got there is a mystery though. Magic!!)

This last act is the exact opposite of the last acts/levels of D1 and D2, where you went to either a dark bloody hell, or a bright fiery hell. The intro to this act (or the ending of act 3), shows Leah appearing at the gates of heaven (no idea how she got there), then Imperius burns her, and Diablo somehow emerges from the fire.

Diablo then starts going on a rampage in Heaven, and it is then that you come in to the act. You get to enjoy fighting demons, helping angels fight demons, watching angels and demons fight in lower levels. Things fly here and there, and there are pristine, untouched areas of heaven you can explore, and some fully corrupted areas that are much closer to hell. Some angels are imprisoned, and it is quite satisfying to free them, particularly when your character comments on this.

You get to meet the ghosts of characters killed in previous acts, and enjoy quite a large number of mini-boss fights, Izual's being particularly memorable.

He may have been a coward, but his speech against Tyrael is justified.

The final boss fight against Diablo is great, with Diablo being a serious challenge. This act is definitely the best of Diablo 3 in terms of visuals, and you really have to play it to enjoy it, as a text description does not do it justice.

Unfortunately, and while this is my favourite act, there are still some nagging flaws. One issue with this act is that it was like an appetizer: There just was not enough of it! The act's length is roughly 20% of act 1. I read that this was a design decision by Blizzard, to give the player a sense of urgency, but I would much rather spend about 3 or 4 times the amount of game-time in this act, rather than act 2.

FOOTPRINTZZ!!!

Another issue is that roughly 3/4 of the act is set pieces, so it is not as fun to play this act over and over, since very little will change from game to game, as opposed to act 3. The act also has lots of mini-bosses, but it balances this by having less mobs in general, which is a shame. I had hoped to be facing hordes upon hordes of demons, but sadly the mob density is roughly equal to act 1.

Two smaller issues that are still worth pointing out: Diablo pops up and tells you stuff about herimself (spelling intended) from time to time, which is a stark change from D1 and D2, where Diablo was the scary quiet monster who only talked to you just before killing you. I do not want to have conversations with Diablo!

This is supposed to be the scary Lord of All Evil And Particularly Terror, but you cannot be terrified of a creature you are chit-chatting with on a regular basis.

So, erm...wanna go out sometime?

To be fair, it is not as bad as Azmodan, but it was still quite jarring. At the end of the act when you kill Diablo, everyone suddenly appears right beside you for some unfathomable reason. The game makes a point of your follower being unable to follow you, and for some reason Tyrael prefers to chill at the entrance insteading of helping you kill Diablo, so when everyone suddenly appear next to you, then just as quickly disappear in the following cutscene... yeah, it does not make much sense.

Best of the act:

• That angel who angrily shouts: "How dare you breach the sanctity of heaven?" before attacking the demons.

All in all, this act was a quality finish to a game that had its ups and downs. Blizzard made sure that the game's ending was as strong as its introductary act, and the high quality and attention to detail shows. If only they told us what happened to Adria...

General awesomeness

Some points that I liked that are not tied to any specific act:

• Generally cool skills. Many skills are really nice, particularly the first time you get to use them. Wizard level 2: LASER BEAMS EVERYWHERE!!!

Ephyon: I agree.

• Seriously well-designed monsters. Monsters that climb over the sides of the walls, or crawl out of pits, or circle overhead
• Spectacular locations, particularly Heaven
• Breathtaking scenery, with something to explore everywhere
• Exhilarating boss fights

The suckery

Some things in the game that people criticized about Diablo 3:

• Destructible environments... you become oblivious to them in a few moments
• Sucky internet means sucky gameplay. I have the misfortune of 300ms-1500ms ping internet, and often I just give up on playing altogether
• Monster affixes can sometimes be a pain. Particularly when monsters take turns in freezing you, then jailing you, then walling you in while they fire lasers at you and keep a poison pool bubbling below you and a pool of lava spewing burning flames at you
• High end gems suck, big time. They scale nicely in the first 20 or so level, but gems generally lose their value once you hit level 30-40
• Storyline sucks mostly, with some very good moments lifting your hopes up...only to dash them in later.

Suggestions (by request)

• A gold sink. Your gold is pretty much going to go to the auction house, and that sucks. The auction house is something you have no control over, and there must in-game alternative for you to spend gold. I suggest re-doing gems and allowing item re-rolls, as explained below
• Gems need to be redone. 3 or 4 new gem types must be introduced (diamond for all-resistance, opals for crit chance, etc etc), and new gem levels need to be added. High level gems currently just do not cut it: A gem can give you an extra 20-40 damage when it is laughably easy to get a 1200 DPS 2-hander. Whoopie
• Item re-rolling can be an excellent gold-sink. Let us say you get an item with 5 affixes, 4 of which are good, and the fifth is useless to you. It would be nice if you could bring the item to Shen, along with 4 gems and maybe 100K gold, and Shen freezes the 4 attributes you want, and re-rolls the fifth one. It might be re-rolled into another useless stat, or it might be re-rolled into a good stat! If you have enough gold, you can keep re-rolling till you get what you want, and that is the function of a gold sink: To make gold a viable commodity.
• Crafting currently sucks. When you craft, ANYTHING can roll. A sword can have any mix of useful to useless stats. I suggest that a system be devised to allow you to control at least a little of the randomness, in the same way that D2 crafting allowed a little control. Perhaps at paragon level 40, you can choose a single stat: This 6-stat sword will roll strength, and 5 randoms. At level 80, this can be increased to 2 guaranteed stats and 4 random ones.

Predictions

One last thing before I end. Diablo 3 sets itself up for a sequel pretty hard, and I predict one of the following to happen in the expansion:

• Adria becomes Diablo, or a Diablo-level boss (like LOD)
• Malthael, the lost angel of wisdom, becomes Diablo. Possibly with Adria help/lure.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 

Conclusion

When Diablo 2 came out, I would have rated it at 4/10. After patch 1.07, maybe 6/10. After LOD: 8/10, and after the 1.10 synergy patch 9/10. 

Ephyon: "Less-than-average"? That's putting it lightly...

Similarly, on-launch Diablo 3 has been rated as being less-than-average, but many things got fixed in 1.0.3, and at 1.0.4, I would rate it as 6.5/10. With the addition of PVP, and maybe some of tweaks (new gems, item re-rolling, better crafting), the game can easily hit 9.5/10. 

It is up to Blizzard to decide whether the $60 I spent should net me a game worth a few months of my time, or a few years. As it stands, I like the game quite a lot, but I do not see myself playing it for years. I still have faith in Blizzard, though, and they have shown that they listen to their fans, so I expect that future patches will improve things significantly. 

The game is spectacular in many things, but has many flaws too, though those flaws seem fixable. So here is a cheer to Blizzard for a job (almost) excellently done!

That is all from me. Thanks for reading!