Diablo III review (PC)

A friend recently asked me what I think of Diablo III. I was a bit stuck for an answer, because I’m torn. Part of me feels quite satisfied with the experience, while part of me is annoyed and disappointed. That’s because there is a lot to love about Diablo III, but there is also a lot to hate – which makes Diablo III a difficult game to review.

I’d like to start by getting the obvious out of the way and complaining about the online connectivity issues. The game stuttered at launch, with millions of gamers not being able to play due to Blizzard’s servers simply not coping with the task of handling such a massive concurrent player base. This is ridiculous when you consider that they have been running the largest MMO in the world for almost 10 years.

Things steadily improved, and I personally have not had any trouble connecting to the game for the past week or so. However, those connectivity issues extend beyond simply not being able to get online. Whether you’re playing co-op with a friend or playing the game alone, you can expect to experience Diablo III as if it were an MMO. That’s to say, sitting here in South Africa, you will be lucky to play Diablo III at a consistent latency of 250ms. Often this number shoots up to over 450ms; it seems to be dependent on server load and time of day.

Also, even when you are enjoying relatively low latency, lag spikes are frequent and can detract immensely from the gameplay experience. Then of course, there’s the fact that your enjoyment of Diablo III will forever be contingent on Blizzard’s servers being up and running , and you having a working internet connection.

In short, it blows. Blizzard has effectively flipped the bird at every single gamer without a solid and reliable internet connection – and if you live in South Africa, that might mean you.

I’ve been playing Diablo III on a 4Mbps uncapped ADSL account from MWEB. I’ll concede that an uncapped account is not necessarily ideal for playing games on international servers, but it’s what I use, and I’m not buying separate shaped data just to play a game. I would be wary of playing it on anything less than a 1Mbps ADSL line, although I did have some success playing it over a solid 3G connection.

Despite the aforementioned connectively issues being a total drag, I was able to enjoy Diablo III immensely. The developer has scored 10/10 for nailing the feel of the game. Combat is incredibly kinetic and satisfying, and you can almost feel your mouse vibrating as you hack and slash your way through the endless hordes of monsters on offer. This was what struck me first when I started playing the game, and I was emphatically hooked on it.

That “just one more level up” compulsion is there as strong as ever, and this is largely down to the game simply handling really well. The sound design is also immaculate, and to a large extent powers the energy which seems to explode out of your monitor as you play.

At its heart, Diablo III, like its predecessors, is a stripped down, top-down, action RPG. The core gameplay can be boiled down to running around clicking excessively on endless waves of enemies, and as the game progresses, combining a handful of spells/abilities to defeat them. It lacks the immersion of less action-orientated RPGs such as Skyrim or Demon’s Souls, but in its place it provides enjoyable compulsion to keep playing.

When thinking about what made Diablo II such a beloved game, we think primarily of two things: loot hunting, and levelling up. The thrill of both these things has to a degree been spoiled in Diablo III.

Sure you will find plenty of great items as you quest, but the introduction of the auction house to a large degree spoils the fun. No matter how great that axe you found at level 27 you will find a better one in the auction house that you can afford quite easily.

When it comes to levelling up, none of your decisions are permanent. On one hand, this is cool because you can continuously re-spec your hero, but on the other, it takes the finality out of choosing a skill, and makes doing so less of an epic prospect. Both of these changes have an up- and a down-side. I’m not sure if they are for the best in the end, but they do make Diablo III a different game to Diablo II, which I guess in itself is a good thing.

I was happy to roll with a lot of Blizzard’s changes, and even sort of forgive the downfalls of the online requirement, but one thing that still irks me about it is the scale. It just seems too small and far too short.

A single run through will take you between 10 and 15 hours, and I rarely struggled with the difficulty level. After completing the game on the Normal difficulty setting in just a few days, I was invited to play it on Nightmare mode. Don’t be fooled by the name though – Nightmare mode is no more difficult that your first play through, it just has higher level enemies, which after completing the game once, your character will be able to defeat quite easily.

I also find the invitation to replay the game on a higher difficulty level a little insulting. Maybe because I see it as an excuse to make the game too short in the first place. It’s expected that you replay the game, which bothers me because after having completed the story I didn’t feel compelled to play it through again. I’m not a hamster in one of those silly running wheels, and I won’t play a game mindlessly for the sake of it. Perhaps if I were building up my character for some new challenge, I would do it, but currently that is not the case.

Of course there is also the option to play with different characters, which does offer its own value, admittedly. Each character is unique, and offers a different gameplay experience altogether. But you’ll still be playing through the same storyline, same enemies, and same locations.

One of my favourite things about Diablo III is the Hardcore mode. In this mode, when your character dies, it’s game over. The finality of dying really does inject a welcome sense of weight to the whole experience, and the thrill of playing is increased dramatically.

At the end of the day, I really did enjoy Diablo III. The gameplay mechanisms are beautifully designed and realized, although Blizzard has admitted that certain characters are too strong, and that they intended for the game to be more difficult. This is expected to be sorted out with incoming patches.

Still, my will to click on tiny pixelated monsters has not been as strong as this for years, and you can’t help but have fun when playing Diablo III. If it was double the length and scope, and you didn’t have to play it with latency, it would have been my perfect Diablo II sequel. As it is, it’s still a cool game.