The Longest Damn Reviews - Diablo III (v2)

I originally started Diablo III as a Witch Doctor when I first got it, but I put the game away for a while and eventually came back during Season 15 and rolled a Monk for it.  It took just over 25 hours to get to the end of Act V, playing mostly on Hard with some Expert thrown in.  This review covers the base game plus Reaper of Souls, but not Rise of the Necromancer.  I played entirely on my own and since I had a seasonal character, none of the items or gold my Witch Doctor found could be used.



Diablo III is a bit of a different beast from the previous games in the series, mostly from Diablo II.  It's more of an arcade-y experience I think.  You no longer can allocate stat points (until level 70) and you no longer have three skill trees to balance your skill points between.  Instead, the game automatically adds points to your stats and you unlock a new skill or a Rune that modifies it for every level up to 69 or 70 depending on the character class.  I imagine some people cried foul at having player choice taken away in how their character develops, but you still have control over what skills are in use.  You just don't dump points into skills to boost the synergy it has with the others you'll use.



Minor break in the long review, but the best times I had with D2 were with modded games and using PlugY to not only give me a ton of inventory space as well as over four million pages of shared stash, but I could reset my stat points and skill points at any time.  Most of my playtime was during Normal difficulty and I had a bunch of builds, though not all of them were viable for anything beyond that.  I know Blizzard eventually added a once-per-difficulty respec option, but I'm still not keen on the possibility of ruining a character by investing in the wrong skills/stats.  You couldn't really freely experiment with builds unless you were willing to invest a bunch of time into leveling them and come to find out, Sanctuary really isn't a great Aura even when it's been leveled.  And for what it's worth, the only time I beat Act V Hell was in Eastern Sun, using an Arctic Blast/Winter Fury Druid.



Diablo III lets you change around assigned skills and their Runes at any time you're out of combat, no need to use a consumable or anything.  I really liked this aspect since it let me go hog wild with trying out different skills, combinations of them, different Runes, etc.  I didn't need to look up guides to see if a skill that looked good on paper was still worth using or not because there was no risk in actually trying them out.  You're given six slots (left mouse button, right mouse button, 1234 or QWER) to assign skills, and the game initially restricts you on which skills go in which slot, but you can change that with Elective Mode.  This also allows you to use more than one skill of a given category in your loadout provided it's not an "only one" situation like the Monk's Mantras category.



Each skill has five Runes assigned to it, though you're only able to use one Rune per skill.  Sometimes they merely buff the damage a skill does, sometimes they change other parameters like making the skill hit in a wider area or they change how the skill works entirely.  For example, the Monk's Wave of Light summons a ghostly bell right in front of the Monk that deals pretty heavy damage to anything it hits.  The Wall of Light Rune changes the damage type and makes it stun enemies it hits, while Shattering Light also changes the element type but also has the bell generate a wide beam of cold that travels and smashes into anything in its way.  Its Explosive Light Rune creates eight flaming avatars of the Monk that then rush in their own direction while still dealing heavy damage, but without summoning the bell.  Some Legendary items and some Set items can also change aspects of skills, like the Tzo Krin's Gaze spirit stone causing Wave of Light to drop the bell directly on the enemy instead of placing it next to the Monk.



Skills now run on weapon damage, though that's still derived from your stats as well as the actual stats on your gear.  I found this kinda jarring but instead of needing a caster weapon for a caster class, you can use pretty much anything.  So my Witch Doctor who could throw exploding fireballs somehow was doing more damage with it using a giant two-handed sword.  Okay.  Skills also use the weapon's attack speed, so you have to decide what balance of speed and power to run with.



Once you hit level 70, you start gaining Paragon Levels.  These actually give you points you can allocate across four categories with four attributes each (though you earn points for each category in a set order), and these too can be reset at any time for free.  You can boost your primary stat, your movement speed, give points to resisting all elements, and even buff your gold find!  Most of these stats can only be raised 50 times each but there apparently is no limit to Paragon Levels, though leveling naturally slows down after some time since you still have higher and higher EXP requirements for each Paragon Level.



Though the character sheet still has a tucked-away readout of all of your stats, all of those have been condensed to three categories that give you a general idea of your power--Damage dealing with damage per second, Toughness representing how much damage you can absorb before dying, and Recovery detailing how many points of Toughness a second you recover.  Items still have the full stat readout too, but you can use these three categories to get an at-a-glance look at which gear would be better to use.  Just remember that the game only cares about numbers when it comes to the comparison between the three categories--if you rely on Life Per Hit with fast weapons to stay alive, the game won't know that a Life Per Kill item isn't actually better for you even if the numbers are higher.



I found that items didn't drop very often for me on Hard, and I actually liked that, as ass-backwards as that sounds for a game in a genre all about killing things and getting loot from them.  I still picked up everything, even white plain items since they could be broken down at the blacksmith.  The inventory has been expanded to 10x6 and items take either one or two slots, so no need to figure out how to fit a 4x2 giant axe into your backpack.  For me, this led to not needing to return to town nearly as often because of a full pack and I oftentimes came back willingly before I capped out because I found a waypoint or because the questline required me to come back.  There are also three crafters in town who can create items for you, and you very quickly unlock the ability to make rare-quality items and the blacksmith can even make Legendary or Set items with the post-game recipes you can find.



With Reaper of Souls, beating Act V opens up Adventure Mode for all of the characters on your account regardless of their progress in the story.  Here, you're given full access to all five Acts and their waypoints, and each Act is given five Bounties.  These involve going to X area and killing Y many monsters, or Z specific boss, or surviving for so many seconds during an event.  Completing a Bounty rewards gold and experience, while clearing all five of an Act's Bounties rewards a Horadric Cache which dumps a bunch of items, crafter recipes, and Blood Shards to use for the new Gambler.  Bounties only last for one game session, so completing four of Act I's and leaving the game for a moment will cause all Bounties to reset.



Two types of Rifts open up as well.  Nephalem Rifts put you in "random scenery, random enemy" environments and you go through killing enemies to fill up a meter that summons a boss when full, and then you're allowed to leave.  You also earn a Greater Rift Stone, and Greater Rifts are much like Nephalem Rifts except their difficulty is determined by the Rift itself instead of the current game setting, enemies don't drop loot, and you're timed.  15 minutes is kind of generous, but Greater Rifts have access to difficulty levels well beyond what the rest of the game does.  Clear it in time and you can win a Legendary Gem and are given opportunities to upgrade it or any others in your possession a number of times.  Get a good time and you'll jump several levels ahead on the difficulty selector, as well as place well on the leaderboard that I ignored entirely.



Instead of having the "complete the game three times" difficulty loop of prior Diablos, the game starts with three difficulty levels and you unlock an additional 14 as you play.  You're able to set the difficulty to whatever you have unlocked before you enter a game, but you can only lower the difficulty while in-game.  I originally started my Monk on Expert but found the enemies too damage spongey on a new character, but I honestly could've kept it there once I had actually good gear.  I found Diablo III pretty easy my first time through the story, not dying until I very smartly jumped from Expert to Torment III in Adventure Mode and got one-shot by the first boss I came across...seven times in a row.  Enemies scale with your level but the difficulty levels boost their stats while also granting you more EXP and gold per kill.  When I stopped to eventually write this review, I was sitting at Torment VIII but could probably push it up a little bit more.



I didn't really mind the story, but I was more of a "play the game, skip the story" player with the prior games.  There are a couple of contrivances I rolled my eyes at, but I really enjoyed that your character actually has a personality and talks so much.  You converse with NPCs instead of being a monologue-catcher and you say a hell of a lot more than a single line when entering certain areas or completing quests.  You unlock three different companions of which you can take one along with you on your travels and they too have personalities and comments and you can even have conversations with them!  I didn't try going through with other characters to see if the NPC interaction was mostly canned, but this was a nice touch for me.  I actually tried to exhaust all of the dialog options with every character just for that reason to be honest, though the little blue asterisk above their head to denote a new topic might've been a driving factor too.



I didn't really have many issues with Diablo III.  It being forced-online sucks because you can't really play in an internet outage or on the road without a hotspot, and that in turn kills off any ability to have mods.  While I gushed about the characters having personality and all above, I also triggered their taunts (from killing a bunch of enemies in a short time) excessively often and I don't think there's a way to turn just those voicelines off.  The first time through the game is probably where the game is the worst since you're probably a burning scythe with a monofilament edge cutting through demons made of wheat, but the ability to skip the story afterwards with any character more than makes up for it as does having a wider selection of difficulties.  And I wish more games did at least the "postgame for everyone" option too.  You're pretty limited on character slots (I had ten with the expansion) which wasn't really a problem for me, but I imagine people could be constrained if they had different builds or if they wanted Seasonal characters as well as their usual roster.



I lucked out and got Diablo III plus Reaper of Souls for very cheap, but I'd say it's worth $15-20.  The story mode is kind of short but it has pretty long legs to it.  Six different character classes, a bunch of builds based around the gear you find and use and what skills and Runes you like, and a bunch of demons and other baddies to kill, recipes to learn, achievements to farm, challenges to clear...  For me, Diablo III put more emphasis on actually getting out there and killing instead of doing research on builds so you don't permanently screw over a character with misplaced points and all, and you're even rewarded for not slowing down on killing mooks or breaking things.  I didn't have way high levels of fun playing, but I actually enjoyed my time and didn't feel like stopping midway.



Though you'll need a battle.net or Blizzard whatever account, you can try part of the first Act of plain Diablo III for free with any of the original five classes.