Last week, Diablo 3 came out. I flitted over to the store on the morning of release and bought myself a copy.
As some of you know, I was a mad fan of Diablo and Diablo 2. Both were pretty roguelikes, which has always been one of my favourite genres. The latter in particular I played for oodles of hours, ending up with a level 96 sorceress, a level 9X amazon and a few other characters. This was no small feat, since levelling became torturously slow at high levels. I also had awesome gear, and had beat the highest difficulty many times over. What a game!
So my anticipation for Diablo 3 was high, to say the least. It was with great excitement I created my first character, Momomo:
Ok, she’s already level 41 in that screenshot! I did say the game came out a week ago surely?
I blasted through the normal difficulty quite quickly, finding it fast-paced and (frankly) quite easy. It probably took me about 16 hours to get to and kill the final boss:
That’s his loot in the above screenshot. A nice haul, wouldn’t you say?
Anyway Diablo games have never been about beating normal mode, they are about playing through multiple times at progressively higher difficulties, in which both the challenge and the rewards increase. Diablo 3 has 4 such difficulties (Normal, Nightmare, Hell, Inferno) and right now I’m half way through Nightmare mode. The going has gotten harder, but still not the level I’m anticipating!
This game is fun! It’s like ‘Gauntlet’ on overdrive, more arcadey and prettier than old Diablo, without sacrificing (yet, at least) any of the addictive qualities. It’s easy to lose hours just running around killing massive packs of monsters and sorting through the loot looking for upgrades.
The above shot shows that the game hasn’t abandoned character complexity, although I’m starting to suspect that amidst all those stats only two actual matter (DPS and HP). Character skills (of which there are dozens) are awarded automatically and cannot be upgraded via skill points like in D2. This means the five character classes are more homogenized within each other (for instance, in D2 the sorceress class alone had 3 or 4 viable ‘builds’ that were so different they felt like different characters), which is probably a change that was made in the interest of game balance. It remains to be seen how many of my skills will be viable at the level cap.
There’s Momo and Stefka (SFL) playing together! Diablo 3 is an online-only game, and obviously supports co-operative multiplay, which is handled very well with little noticeable latency or syncing problems. There are some issues however, especially that multiplay games are not really fun for either party when there are large level discrepancies between the players. But I suspect this is a short-term problem, since eventually everyone will hit the level cap (60) and farm Inferno together.
My biggest concern for the game at this point is with regards to longevity. It will take about 50 hours to get Momo to level 60. But how long will the game hold my interest then? The true appeal of Diablo 2 was farming for gear, and there was a mind-boggling variety available. I’m not yet convinced Diablo 3 has this variety and gear appeal (in fact I’m almost convinced it doesn’t), and the many words written on this exact topic in the last week by passionate Diablo veterans carry more than a grain of truth in my opinion. In addition, if the gear is not there then the draw for level capping additional characters is diminished as well (since it feels pointless).
But Blizzard is a smart company, with a lot invested in this game. At the very least, without a monthly fee their plan is to make money via a ‘Real Money Auction House’ (exactly what it sounds). This can only succeed if the items sold on the RMAH (gear) are attractive enough for people to buy. Therefore I think we’ll see some significant adjustments/additions to the gear in the game before too long.
But, as I said, that’s in the future. Right now I’m only lvl 43, and have a lot of playing ahead of me before I hit Inferno difficulty. And I’m still having a blast doing just that 🙂