Original review is FAR below.
Update to review: After getting into the game after a couple of hundred or more hours of it, I've decided that the game is maddeningly frustrating. Some people obviously have done well with the game (gauged by the fact that they apparently can buy weapons and armor in the auction house that cost millions in game-gold; where as I'm lucky if I can accumulate enough game-gold to buy the occasion 10,000 - 50,000 price range). I have found the game maddening. It's pretty easy to get through the lowest level of the game (it has 4 levels Normal, Nightmare, Hell and Inferno). So Normal is challenging, but doable. You have to pay close attention to what stats matter to your particular character. For example, Monk's main stats are Dexterity and Vitality, where as Barbarian's main stats are Strength and Vitality. (other choices include Wizard, Demon Hunter and Witch Doctor) What this means is as a Monk, you want weapons and armor that have both Dexterity and Vitality scores well into the double digit area if you can find them. Monsters you kill may drop items. Chests, hidden cache, logs, etc may yield items and also gold. The items come in normal and superior (white lettered items); Magic (blue lettered items); Rare (yellow lettered items); Legendary (green OR brown lettered items). The white lettered items are pretty much junk... the blue items are where the value starts, yellow is better yet, and the green & brown ones in theory are the best.
The frustration with the game comes in several flavors. First most, you have to really be adept using your command buttons, the left mouse, right mouse, and number keys 1, 2, 3 & 4. Those are special powers and as you get into the game, you have a huge number of choices to make. The first frustration is figuring out whether a particular power is really any good or not. A lot of trial and error is involved with this.
The next frustration is the actual battles... they are VERY, VERY fast, and you can die super easy. Of course the game resolves this by resurrecting you at the last checkpoint. Later in the game, dying can easily cost you thousands in game gold to repair your weapons & armor. My Monk, in Inferno Mode is my best character. I have reached level 60(3) (the game came with 60 levels but a patch allows level 60, 100 more sub levels. I don't think I will ever get to 60(4), because I cannot survive without getting killed dozens of times, depleting my gold supply. The only way to replenish it is to give up playing on that level and go back and play a lower level all over again.
This leads to the next frustration - the levels are duplicates of each other, only increasing in the toughness of the same old monsters you defeated in the prior level. The little bit of story line is exactly the same through all four levels of difficulty, making the game really boring.
Yet another frustration is the amount of STUFF you find... it's never ending, and the stats on every item seems to be totally unique... like the Forest Gump box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get. The result is, you find stuff and think, "well, I can't use it for my Monk, but this might go with my Wizard (see, all items in the storage chest are totally sharable... including all the game gold you get)". So, you save that item in the chest for when you feel like playing the Wizard. By the time you get around to it, you'll likely fill up that chest and all your backpack carrying capacity, forcing you to sell stuff. The good side, that gives you gold... the bad side, "do I really want to sell that???? maybe my Barbarian can use it". The problem comes in that you have to terminate your current game just to go to see if that Barbarian can actually use it. This could mean you may have to play part of a level over again.
The next frustration comes with the 5 game characters you can choose. What I've found is that the easiest one to play is the Monk, followed by the Wizard, followed by the Barbarian, followed by the Demon Hunter. I never played the Witch Doctor, so I don't know how hard that is to play. To give you some concept by what I mean of comparisons of difficulty with these characters, look at this:
Monk level 60(3) At Inferno difficulty and I've spent 76 hours, 1 minute playing.
Wizard level 43 At Nightmare difficulty, played 36 hours, 5 minutes.
Barbarian level 40 - Nightmare difficulty, played 31 hours, 28 minutes.
Demon Hunter level 41 - Nightmare difficulty, played 58 hours, 45 minutes.
Notice that my Monk I have gotten through Normal, Nightmare, Hell and into Inferno... all 4 levels and I've only spent about twice as many hours as the other three characters which only have gotten through Normal, and now are ALL stuck in Nightmare! See how much easier the Monk is? Now look at the special situation regarding playing the Demon Hunter.... Demon Hunter took nearly twice as many hours as Barbarian and Wizard, to get to the same general spot in the game. So the lesson here is, PLAY THE DEMON HUNTER LAST! The problem for all of these characters is that your one and only follower is so darn weak as to be mostly worthless. Even when you beef up their weapon, rings and amulet (which is beyond me why they didn't allow you to beef up the armor that you can ware yourself (chest, shoulders, gloves, boors, pants, etc).
Yet another frustration comes with two specialist you can train to make better and better stuff. The Jeweler is very worthwhile and he is absolutely needed to improve weapons and armor with better and better gems that can go into the slots of weapons and armor that happen to have slots. The Jeweler is fun and a great part of the game. However, the other specialist is the Armor/Weapon Smith... he turns out to be a TOTAL waste of time because the stuff he can make for you is almost ALWAYS sub par over what you can find in the loot from your battles. Unfortunately, it's only after you've wasted hundreds of thousands in gold and special items that you finally figure out he is worthless. All the game maker would have had to do to make the Smith useful is ALLOW you to SPECIFY that the item you want concentrates on for example, Intelligence and Vitality, along with "find more gold" and/or "find more magic items", which are some of the myriad choices that weapons and armor can have bestowed on them. No, the game DOES NOT DO it that way... rather, it only says the level of the item and (up to) 4 other magic mysteries that will be added. Only when the weapon/armor is made, can you then see the actual stats and the chances are VERY HIGH that what you currently are using will be superior! So you just wasted precious gold and supplemental stuff used to make that item.
The last frustration is the Auction House. There, if you have game gold, you can attempt to buy stuff from other players who are attempting to get more gold that the dealers inside the game will give you for stuff you want to sell. The problem is "it's an auction!" That is, you have to bid to get the items, and of course, all the hot items are bid up so fast it's absolutely impossible for you to compete, as there could be many bidders typing in bids while you are trying to figure out what to increase your offer to... the frustration really is needling because the Auction House DOES NOT UPDATE THE PRICE when other bidders are banging on the same product. If it updated price in real time, it would certainly give you some degree of whether to consider trying more bids or just give up on that item and go on looking for something else. It's not unusual to see a fresh listing, find an item that "looks good" for say 764 gold, and so you bid on it, and just says, "your bid is not high enough". So you try upping the bid to the amount it suggests. And get the same message ALL OVER AGAIN... so then you get mad and bid say, 10,000 for it, because it's only been a minute or so and it surely must be in the 1,000 range right now... but then you get the same message again! So it went from 764 to some number well over 10,000 in a matter of seconds. Frustrating, indeed. A sub-frustration is you can try to sell "good" items yourself, but you can only post up to 10 items. Considering that 90% of the time (and I'm being generous when I say 90%) the item will never get a single bid, and it will sit there until it times out. You're only choice is to cancel the sale of that item or wait for the couple days before it times out and come back to you. The bottom line here is unless you REALLY HAVE SOMETHING GREAT, don't bother posting it on the Auction House... it will not sell and you are wasting your time.
Original review starts here: (note I had originally rated fun at 5 stars, but I dropped it to 3 stars because of the preceding update above)
the prior two versions of the game were okay, but were not memorable experiences for me. That is, the two prior versions, they either were too repetitive, or too hard, or just plain aggravating. (for those who remember, the pigmy attacks were insane)
And then there was the price for this game... starting at $60. I've only paid that much for a single player game once, and that was Skyrim (which is still the very best game, ever, for me). But I can safely say that Diablo III is probably my #2 favorite game of all time. It's hard at times, but simply fun to play when you fell like killing monsters. And there is a goodly flavor of those monsters, from the maddeningly small and fast, to the huge and cumbersome, but really hard to kill types. This game is also fun because you can play it as a team, with up three other players, that I know of. The one downside is communication with your cohorts (real humans) is via chat messages that have to be typed in. But, our group has implemented Skype and that works FLAWLESSLY. It's just like having your friends in the room with you. The bad news, is that re-playability is limited. I think once you've won the game on all (what?) four levels of difficulty, and tried out the all five flavors of hero, it's very likely you will play the game again. The good news? It will take you several hundred hours (perhaps more than a thousand hours), to reach that point!
So while the $60 starting price is high, it's a darn good game. My only wish is that somebody would design a game, something similar to D&D Online, that had a random scenario generator that could make huge worlds, but was free to play with others online, that is, no monthly fees. For a game like that, I would pay a couple of hundred.
Sadly, it will never happen.
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Product information
| Number of Players | 1 |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | May 15, 2012 |
| Computer Platform | PC/Mac |
| Global Trade Identification Number | 00206267285154 |
| UPC | 841393081678 020626728515 065555567088 065555566005 206267285154 |
| ASIN | B00178630A |
| Release date | May 15, 2012 |
| Customer Reviews |
4.1 out of 5 stars |
| Best Sellers Rank | #48,314 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games) #88 in Mac-compatible Games #1,252 in PC-compatible Games |
| Product Dimensions | 5.25 x 1.45 x 7.5 inches; 5.6 ounces |
| Type of item | Computer Game |
| Language | English |
| Rated | Mature |
| Item model number | 728515 |
| Is Discontinued By Manufacturer | No |
| Item Weight | 5.6 ounces |
| Manufacturer | Blizzard Entertainment |
| Date First Available | June 30, 2008 |
Warranty & Support
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Diablo III
When I first heard it was coming out I was so excited. I even pre-ordered it,(something I never do), I played the beta test, when it would let me on, and although the online aspect was less than desirable, the game for the short beta, was exciting. Then I received it. Since then, the site has been up, down, game client crashing, online interaction lag(that gets you killed quickly), and worst of all, the lack of info on even the most basic parts of the game. The online guide was nothing more than a forum for idiots. I asked and asked questions about things that came up in the game, all I would get was jeers, and lies, and my favorite," just buy what you need at the Auction House". Really? Blizzard doesn't have enough of my money, and they want more. I finally got upset and sent in a ticket about just that ( I sent in others about technical issues and crashes, but I usually fixed them or waited them out before they ever responded). The response was about right, they never even read the ticket. My one question still needs an answer, when will they come out with an 'offline' only mode. Online takes up time and resources from myself, and their server. I never played online with Diablo, or Diablo2. And after the poor results of this fiasco, it would only be a improvement. But if they do that then Blizzard and their developers wont be able to make money on the side. My advice, don't buy it, wait until they either come out with an offline mode or buy it used,(I'm about ready to sell mine for 20.00). Their are way to many issues with the game and developers, customer service, ect... Oh and the developers like to play games with your game to, noticed this tonight. Game mechanics changed mid play, in a very strange way. Yeah I ticked them off so they are messing with my game. I don't care, Blizzard has lost my respect and my buisness.
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- Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2012
- Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2012
Top reviews from other countries
- Gaijin JPReviewed in Japan on July 7, 2012
The best of Diablo trilogy, one of the best of blizzard
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