Great review! Diablo 3 has to be the best example of porting a PC game over to console ever. I'd rate it a 9.5/10 myself. 5 points off for the craptastic writing and dialogue. The voice acting itself was surprisingly good despite having nothing interesting to say!
Diablo III - even better on 360
Game Review | October 16, 2013 11:01 am
By Meta
Developer: Blizzard
Publisher: Blizzard
Genre: action-RPG
Subgenre: dungeon crawler / hack 'n slash
Players: 1-4 local, system link and/or online
Rated: M for Mature (blood and gore, violence)
Full disclaimer: I am a huge fan of the Diablo games and played through the PC version of this with multiple characters. In the interest of providing a better review, I have asked Kat for her input, as she had no prior experience with any Diablo games but has completed a playthrough of this console version of 3.
Diablo is an action-RPG where you fight tons of monsters and pick up new weapons, armor and other varieties of loot. Instead of choosing spells & skills, every class has the same set of skills that unlock as you level up. However, each skill also has 5 "runes" and the one you assign determines how the skill behaves.
For example: every Wizard has the spell Ray of Frost. By selecting different runes, you can make the ray slow the target's movement, do more damage, reduce the energy cost, create a cold storm that affects all monsters near you, or make it so that enemies killed by the beam leave behind a patch of ice that deals damage over time.
Every class has a male and female version.
In Nightmare Mode, enemies become stronger but also drop better loot. Elite and rare monsters will have 2 "suffixes" instead of 1, creating interesting tactical challenges. For instance, you may run in to a pack of elite goatmen that reflect damage AND drop ice traps.
Your character's level will be in the 30's and at this point you will have multiple rune choices for every skill, as well as all 3 slots of "passive skills" unlocked. This is the point where you can really develop multiple fighting styles and figure out which you prefer.
The screen gets busy with 4 local players.
After completing Act IV in Hell you will unlock Inferno, which is the preferred mode amongst dungeon crawler connoisseurs. Elites and rare stay at 3 suffixes, but every creature's health & damage go up again . On top of that, enemies come in larger groups. The reason for putting up with so much nonsense is access to the best loot in the game. You will hit 60 quickly and from there you start earning Paragon rewards, such as increased gold & magic find, instead of experience levels.
Inferno is obviously the most difficult but also the most fun way to play as you will now have all skills and runes unlocked, allowing you to experiment with different combinations. Legendary items show up more often, and since each one has a range of possible stats, there is always some better piece of gear to look for.
Diablo 3 has a crafting system in place to give you something to do with all the loot you don't use other than selling it. You meet characters that will break items down to generic components that can then be used to construct new gear. If you have rotten luck finding items you need or are a stickler for having your armor match, you can grind up all that junk to make what you specifically need.
+ Flexible skill system lets you tune your character to your style
+ Simple, fast loot system for equipping, crafting and selling
+ Randomized maps & varied events keep multiple plays/characters fun
+ Adjustable difficulty lets you set the amount of risk/reward
- Grinding is pretty much required
- Surprisingly hackneyed writing in most of the story & dialogue
- There is a small bit of screen tearing when things get very busy
? Why can't you drop your banner on people like in the PC version
The reasons I feel it's better on 360:
- direct analog stick control of your character
- they added an evasion roll to the right analog
- the camera is zoomed in more
- inventory is a list rather than having to play tetris with a set space
KAT'S THOUGHTS:
As Meta mentioned, I have not played any of the past Diablo games, although I did play Darkstone on ps1 and I feel like that qualifies me to throw my 2 cents in.
First off, I loved Diablo 3. It is an incredibly fun game, fun to solo and even better with friends. I love the fact that no matter what character you play with, as it levels you earn skills that enable you to solo like a boss. I love the fact that there are difficulty levels inside of the modes so even the biggest noob (like me) can play on every mode (except when you are playing against enemies who use poison- the most ridiculously overpowered thing ever in any game. :/) And, unlike Meta, I didn't think the writing was bad- I actually thought the story was really good for that type of game. Most was revealed through dialogue and story progression, you didn't have to hunt down and read books and whatnot. I can see how that might be a negative for some people, but for me when it comes down to the main story I like my hand to be held. I hate not knowing what is going on because I missed some obscure book in an obscure dungeon of obscurity.
One thing I do enjoy having to explore for is sidequests, and in Diablo 3, this is an area that just kind of fell short for me. Each act does have a handful of sidequests that you can trigger by being at an exact location and interacting with an NPC or something of the kind- but there weren't any side QUESTS. You find out the stories of your 3 followers just by talking to them in each act, but not having quests specific to each one to unlock their stories is a truly missed opportunity.
But, at it's core, Diablo is a dungeon crawler, not an rpg- so that misstep can be forgiven. Dungeons crawlers I've played in the past have had less story than Yaris. But that does mean the focus should be on the dungeons- which it just didn't seem to be in Diablo 3. I have to disagree with my esteemed colleague about the randomized maps being fun- mostly they were just lazy. I played through act one about 4 times before I even realized the maps were random. I'll be honest, I expected Diablo to essentially be set in a tower deep underground, where the quests took you deeper and deeper down as you leveled up. At some point, I figured, you'd hit a wall and have to start from the beginning to level up higher and proceed. So I expected the maps to literally be dungeons, sprawling mazes with randomly appearing doors and elite enemies and loot drops. What Diablo 3 is instead is basically a series of large, but ultimately quite linear, open air maps with a couple of smallish 3 level dungeons here and there. So that was kind of a let down for me.
The last thing I noted and wanted to mention is the graphics. They're pretty decent in cutscenes, but pretty meh during gameplay. I know that's probably to keep the game moving when you're surrounded by dozens of enemies (which doesn't happen nearly often enough) and loot starts dropping. Maybe the 360 couldn't handle more detailed character models during gameplay. But that just fell a little flat for me.
Other than that, Diablo 3 is a solid game, incredibly fun, and I wholeheartedly agree with the 9/10 Meta has awarded it.
Rating: 9.0 of 10
Reviewed: Diablo III
Keywords: None
