Diablo III

 PC
User Score
4.2

Generally unfavorable reviews- based on 10199 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,918 out of 10199
  2. Mixed: 1,570 out of 10199
  3. Negative: 5,711 out of 10199
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  1. titicaca
    Jun 19, 2012
    0
    Not only this game is incredibly boring and repetitive, but the always-on DRM means you can't play offline--meaning when your without internet or during the numerous and lengthy maintenance periods. A complete rip-off.
  2. donarkaz
    Jun 19, 2012
    5
    Cons: Story is terrible. Voice acting is bad. Cinematics do not live up to Blizzard's Diablo 2 quality. WoW inspired skills and skill system so no great character customisation. Real Money Auction House is a joke. Looting tables and item qualities are not rewarding.

    Pros: Graphics (They could be MUCH better though), Sound and Interface.
  3. beorthulf
    Jun 19, 2012
    1
    Not much more than a slot machine.

    Note. In games, I always play single player campaigns. Rarely play online multiplayer (never played WoW or any other mmo). Up till now really rated Blizzard. I finished the game with all class (although normal difficulty) and uninstalled the game after reaching level 60 with a monk class and 25-30 with all other (I don't know why I kept going really,    Not much more than a slot machine.

    Note. In games, I always play single player campaigns. Rarely play online multiplayer (never played WoW or any other mmo). Up till now really rated Blizzard. I finished the game with all class (although normal difficulty) and uninstalled the game after reaching level 60 with a monk class and 25-30 with all other (I don't know why I kept going really, I really wanted the game to be fun, I guess I didn't want to feel like I threw $80 away - probably the same reason I am writing this)

    -Gameplay -
    Poor balance, starts too easy on normal, then hell champs are unbeatable without buying your way through.
    Loot is clearly scripted to be below your level or for a different class, most drops are useless (hatred on sword...), I refuse to go on the online auction to buy items when I want to play solo however the game force you to do that. In that case there is no way to progress other than abusing the AI, avoiding combat or restarting the game to generate easier champs.
    There is no real skill involved in beating enemies, point and click really (that or die, restart, die when the enemy champs combo you without any way to react -e.g. paralyse + insta kill area spell)
    Poor dungeons layout, no sense of exploring, spend most of the time backtracking (items that increase your speed are a must) with little else happening.
    The first two chapters are long enough and don't feel as linear, has some interaction with the environment (only chapter 1 really), however you will notice a big drop in quality for the last 2. I hated doing the 3rd one -feels like a really long corridor toward chapter 4 - and the last chapter although having nice visuals is really too short compared to the others. I am amazed that the story is so short and linear for a games that's been in dev for so long. It's not as if blizz had to start from scratch.
    Characters are quite different although one quickly realise their skills are fairly pointless at higher level. And Bliz nerfed a couple of abilities that were used too much apparently (some might call it balancing to me it' killing some of the fun aspect to make it blend. If I want to run set a set of skills I will even if they are not as powerfull as other combo, it's up to me to decide but then again the problem is with the online balance. As shame really in other rpg games it would be up to me to decide if I wanted to change my gaming experience by applying a balance patch or not.

    -Story-
    Nothing special but nothing too bad there. Very linear and so predictable, not great fantasy there but I guess the story in this game is secondary, a shame you have to go through it again every time you restart the game at higher level of difficulty (i.e. no random levels to explore) -Re playability -
    Nothing here, no random dungeons (clearly the same map with a chance of bringing 2/3 scripted events (i.e. small cellar, merchant) from a pool of ~10), I played the same story with all characters, brought the monk to 60 the games hoping it would get better however it got boring after the 2nd replay
    Adding to that random server maintenance (it took an afternoon off work to play and got very frustrating not being able to play a solo game).

    - Other -
    Too many hacked account doesn't inspire confidence in Blizzard. for one I see this as a solo game. Blizz has created the security issue by going online and clearly has poor server problems. The game is clearly designed around the auction house instead of what happens ingame.    … Expand
  4. youdeviant
    Jun 18, 2012
    6
    Diablo 3 is a mixed bag of delicious chocolate and **** shaped to look like chocolate. The gameplay in general is still fun, and the supposed dumbing down of the skill and attribute system actually works for me. This allows players to experiment with different builds without resorting to recreating a character again just to try something new. The exclusion of manual distribution ofDiablo 3 is a mixed bag of delicious chocolate and **** shaped to look like chocolate. The gameplay in general is still fun, and the supposed dumbing down of the skill and attribute system actually works for me. This allows players to experiment with different builds without resorting to recreating a character again just to try something new. The exclusion of manual distribution of attribute points is a little missed but ultimately doesn't take away too much from the game. The enemies in the game are generally well designed and fun to kill. There are, of course, some exception that make the game totally unfun to play: namely Soul Lashers (monsters that lash at you with their tongues from afar, move really quickly and somehow do massive damage out of nowhere), kamikaze imps that hide behind doors and blow up the instant you open the door; yes its a surprise unpleasant as it is but it just gets old and cheap really quickly. Some attributes of Elites are also very annoying like Invulnerable minions which make all the creatures accompanying the elite unkillable and also soaks up damage and blocks your path to the elite. Couple that with enemies that retreat and attack from afar and you got yourself a recipe for fun times!

    The story , as in the plot, is fine; nothing great, just... fine. But the delivery is where everything is flushed down the toilet. Main plot lines are extremely cheesy. The scriptwriter must have had a lot of experience writing children's book because it really seems like they are the target audience for such unoriginal and tacky lines. Be it the constant whining of Diablo, which really takes away from the "terrifying" feel of the lord of terror. Or how the master of tacticians Azmodan essentially discusses his tactics with the player ever so often. Or how Magdha, a character that could only be discribed as the Jar Jar Binks of Diablo, narrates her plans like an episode of Dora the explorer. The list goes on, and trust me the list is loooong. Stupid, juvenile scriptwriting. There is, of course, some redemption in the "other" lines, of which I am sure did not come from the same person that wrote the main script. Lore books and lines from the followers are favorful and entertaining. A special nod to the deeply religious templar Kormac and to Covertus Shen. Pick it up, pick it up :)

    Also, the always online part of the game is really annoying. There is absolutely no way you can play single player when the server goes down. As if i'm playing some kind of MMO. There are of course many reasons and justifications for this but ultimately, its just really annoying not being able to play by yourself when you want to.

    If you're looking for a nice hack and slash game with good mechanics and replayablility, and you have a good internet connection and don't live in Australia,then yes, please give this a try. But if you're looking for a game that has good immersion and story, please for goodness sake look elsewhere because you would be sorely disappointed. I had quite high hopes for this game but unfortunately, it wasn't met. Blizzard was known for quality storytelling in its Warcraft, starcraft and Diablo series but they really dropped the ball with this one.    … Expand
  5. rtm125
    Jun 18, 2012
    0
    I have played over 100 hours of this game only to be stone walled because I don't have several hundred dollars for the Real Money AH or millions of gold to gear my barbarian in ACT 4 gear just so I can progress into act 2. Melee is completely at a dis-advantage in this game and besides that. It is extremely dumb ed down with no skill points or talent points it is nothing but a linear ARPGI have played over 100 hours of this game only to be stone walled because I don't have several hundred dollars for the Real Money AH or millions of gold to gear my barbarian in ACT 4 gear just so I can progress into act 2. Melee is completely at a dis-advantage in this game and besides that. It is extremely dumb ed down with no skill points or talent points it is nothing but a linear ARPG with limited action after you beat the game once. How much fun is farming the same 4 acts to get to level 60 then at level 60 you get to farm act 1 inferno that has a 2% chance to drop gear that is even level 60 most of it that drops prevents you from progressing sense it is the same exact thing you can get from act 3 hell.

    This game was an extreme disappointment and should be sued for false advertising. i wonder when the beta version will stop being sold and we can purchase the real release in 2013    … Expand
  6. xerachtaxs
    Jun 18, 2012
    8
    Diablo 3 is a great game. While is not made in the same path as Diablo 2 it has its own merits to say the least. Act 1 trough 2 are the best in a open environment scenario type while the rest of the Acts takes a more linear path. Having said that some players will not be happy with this. It also has an auction house where you can purchase things with gold currency or real money and sell inDiablo 3 is a great game. While is not made in the same path as Diablo 2 it has its own merits to say the least. Act 1 trough 2 are the best in a open environment scenario type while the rest of the Acts takes a more linear path. Having said that some players will not be happy with this. It also has an auction house where you can purchase things with gold currency or real money and sell in the same manner. While some think this is bad for Diablo I see it as a way to have fun while maybe earning something in return. The graphics are great, not mind blowing but good enough to keep you going. With that said some players will desire more eye candy in graphics but Blizzard took a safer approach ensuring that most of the player base can max most of the settings. The game has some flaws, one of them being the requirement to be online at all times to enjoy the game. This on a single player game will undermine and penalize gamers that purchase the game on a store and may not have an active connection at home or a poor connection overall.
    While in general chat will tend to see some spam from gold sellers and blocking or reporting this spammers don't really mitigate the current problem. Overall I'm enjoying the game and some might like it and some might not. But at the end everyone is entitled to their own opinion and not everyone likes the same cup of tea..    … Expand
  7. Arnoscene
    Jun 18, 2012
    3
    Diablo itself was raped repeatedly with a blunt object maybe someone blinded her and she couldn't find the players, it has to be one of the worst boss fights of all time, and why bother, when she dies she just spits out some crappy vendor loot. This game was designed for idiots who don't know how to control their money, it may as well have been a slot machine with pretty lights...Diablo itself was raped repeatedly with a blunt object maybe someone blinded her and she couldn't find the players, it has to be one of the worst boss fights of all time, and why bother, when she dies she just spits out some crappy vendor loot. This game was designed for idiots who don't know how to control their money, it may as well have been a slot machine with pretty lights...

    Thanks to Diablo 3 I went looking for another game, I discovered the guys who made Diablo 1 and 2 and checked out their Torchlight series I didn't buy Torchlight one since it was a single player game, but it came free with a pre order of Torchlight 2, and I must say I can really feel the difference between a game designed for the purpose of playing and game designed to take your money with your soul. This probably the weakest attempt of a company to copy a game made by guys who already left Blizzard to start their own company called Runic, had it not been for the poor story telling the laughable game mechanics where your spoon fed your class stats so there is no way in hell you can customise your class to assist your play style or difficulty its purely down to the loot, now while a lot of dungeon crawlers base formula is the loot at least the stats would give you an idea of what you can use to assist you.

    Diablo 3 there is very little armour restrictions everyone wears the same armour and you basically run around trying to find the next best thing which is rare, rare items usually have opposing stats forcing you trade other players or since the last patch the stats are now even worse making most loot drops useless/unusable, this is what it looks like when a company rapes you for your money the game is stuck together with virtual ducktape. So much time is spent on things happening behind the scenes almost to try and distract you on how boring the game is.

    Thank you Blizzard you have taught me to find the developers who make quality not the crap you trying to sell my you rest in pixels.    … Expand
  8. Caligamy
    Jun 18, 2012
    1
    (Wouldve given it a ZERO but..)

    Diablo 3 = Grind to level 60, then grind endlessly for gear with absolutely nothing else to do once your there. Get completely random gear with random rolls with random stats from random things in random places... 99% of which will make you question why it is even in the game. (ie; level60 2-handed weapons dropping in Inferno Act4 with 100-200dps (while    (Wouldve given it a ZERO but..)

    Diablo 3 = Grind to level 60, then grind endlessly for gear with absolutely nothing else to do once your there. Get completely random gear with random rolls with random stats from random things in random places... 99% of which will make you question why it is even in the game. (ie; level60 2-handed weapons dropping in Inferno Act4 with 100-200dps (while your gonna get murdered with 1000 dps weapons there.) But wait for PVP you say!? Why? So I can enter a game with some moron that dropped $250 on weapons and items in the Real Money Auction system? No thanks.

    Summary: This game is 95~99% gear, and 1~5% skill. Anyone still wanna play it?

    Good riddens,
    Someone elses future customer

    P.S. The lack of response to combat the RMT spammers from sending friend invites, chat spam, and now whispers has made this alrady horrible game much much worse. Great job Blizzard. Wont EVER buy one of your half completed products ever again, and its because of your amazingly bad CUSTOMER SERVICE that will cement this decision as I submit my refund ticket.    … Expand
  9. BoozerReviews
    Jun 18, 2012
    2
    sweet jesus this game is bad, 12 years huh. what did they dooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo I'm soooooooooooooooo maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy what a waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaste gaaaaaaaaaaah goood thing you could get a reeeeeeeeeeeeefunddddddddddddddddddddddddddd rip blizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaardddddddddddddddd 1998
  10. Sylentlight
    Jun 18, 2012
    5
    As a big fan of Blizzard Entertainment (WoW player for 5 years and played the original Warcraft and Diablo) I was kinda excited about the release of Diablo 3, but I was fairly disappointed. It could have been an AMAZING game... maybe 5+ years ago. The graphics are decent, and the spells look pretty cool. The game play once you get used to it is pretty fun and easy (definitely differentAs a big fan of Blizzard Entertainment (WoW player for 5 years and played the original Warcraft and Diablo) I was kinda excited about the release of Diablo 3, but I was fairly disappointed. It could have been an AMAZING game... maybe 5+ years ago. The graphics are decent, and the spells look pretty cool. The game play once you get used to it is pretty fun and easy (definitely different from typical MMORPG play style). The story line is probably the best thing about it thus far, well, that and that you can have your friends join you. Since I got this game for free with my year contract with WoW I really can't complain, it helps subdue boredom, but I can honestly say that if I had bought this game I'd be highly pissed. All in all I'd say its GOOD... but definitely not "10+ years to make good"… Expand
  11. Cursedderb
    Jun 18, 2012
    1
    Who decided that this was worth $60, why do I equip a spear for the monk and he uses his fists? Why do I need someone to hold my hand through the first 10 levels? Why do I need to be online for a single player game? Why does the graphical detail look like it
  12. Dogfish
    Jun 18, 2012
    0
    I have spent the last eight hours farming a random drop item to get into whimseyshire, a farming area. I still have not seen the npc pop that has a random chance of letting me get the item I need. this is one of six items required. Is this an asian MMO or what? It is also becoming increasingly clear that you cannot beat the game on the hardest difficulty without using the in-gameI have spent the last eight hours farming a random drop item to get into whimseyshire, a farming area. I still have not seen the npc pop that has a random chance of letting me get the item I need. this is one of six items required. Is this an asian MMO or what? It is also becoming increasingly clear that you cannot beat the game on the hardest difficulty without using the in-game Auction House(which is now shifting into real money sales). Steer clear of this game, Blizzard has finally put out a dud.… Expand
  13. TBayless
    Jun 18, 2012
    1
    This game could be a 10 star but there are so many failures it just doesn't warrant the high rating. From the fact that it is not playable in single player mode to be played offline is disappointing. The loot drops are COMPLETELY random... I am 60 in Act III of Hell Difficulty and have never looted or even seen a set item drop, nor have I ever had or looted a Legendary item. The pricesThis game could be a 10 star but there are so many failures it just doesn't warrant the high rating. From the fact that it is not playable in single player mode to be played offline is disappointing. The loot drops are COMPLETELY random... I am 60 in Act III of Hell Difficulty and have never looted or even seen a set item drop, nor have I ever had or looted a Legendary item. The prices which are driven by lunatics have the I game gold costs so insanely high to (in my opinion) entice people to the real money auctions to have a hope in hell to get a weapon or armor upgrade is beyond disappointing. I have not looted a upgrade to my gear since about level 30. The stuff that drops is utter crap... Low damage or retarded combinations with the randomized stats makes most of what drops as useless. The crafting is equally useless as the stats just do not compete with the stuff on the auction house. The game is so unpolished and unbalanced it has already turned into shovel ware for me. Diablo, and Diablo II were fantastic games that I got hundreds of hours of play and replay - Diablo III has zero interest from me to reload it. So, on to the next game as this one was a huge letdown.… Expand
  14. h4ldol
    Jun 18, 2012
    1
    What else is there to say about Diablo 3 that hasn't already been touched upon by the thousands of reviews? As a huge fan of the first two Diablo games, I find D3 to be a massive disappointment. How did it take 12 years to basically rehash Diablo 2 with updated (and cartoonish) graphics? Same four act structure? Same basic environments for the acts (forest, desert, under seigeWhat else is there to say about Diablo 3 that hasn't already been touched upon by the thousands of reviews? As a huge fan of the first two Diablo games, I find D3 to be a massive disappointment. How did it take 12 years to basically rehash Diablo 2 with updated (and cartoonish) graphics? Same four act structure? Same basic environments for the acts (forest, desert, under seige snowy/mountain region, etc.)? Same number of character classes (five, at launch)? It seems the only things Blizzard made were negative ones -- timers on everything, elimination of skill/character customization, noobish inividualized item drops, extremely low item drop rates, horrible (and I mean horrible) items with lame modifiers where only the DPS really matters, implementation of AH/RMAH to ruin the item hunt fun at the core of the Diablo series, etc. I can't really think of one innovative aspect of D3, or any good features that aren't derived wholly from Diablo 2/LOD. Bottom line, is that unless you're 10 years old (or have the equivalent mental capacity) you will probably not enjoy this game very much, or for very long.… Expand
  15. 09Cetic
    Jun 18, 2012
    0
    DON'T TRUST THE RECENT POSITIVE USER REVIEWS. Diablo 3 has spawned a small army of top tier "investors" who now have a financial interest in seeing that this deeply flawed game receives positive feedback. They don't see you as fellow gamer seeking honest opinions before a $60 purchase, but as a potential mark who will foolishly spend money at Diablo 3's Real Money Auction House.
  16. Matt_S
    Jun 18, 2012
    0
    I do not buy a lot of games but I was really looking forward to this game after having played Diablo 1 and 2 in the past. I wish I could get my money back frankly. The fact that I have to always be connected to the game servers to play solo is just dumb. It actually wouldn't be so bad except that apparently in this case always connected also means always connected at high bandwidth withI do not buy a lot of games but I was really looking forward to this game after having played Diablo 1 and 2 in the past. I wish I could get my money back frankly. The fact that I have to always be connected to the game servers to play solo is just dumb. It actually wouldn't be so bad except that apparently in this case always connected also means always connected at high bandwidth with no latency. I never had a problem with lag on steam protected games playing solo. If my wife checks facebook in the other room on her tablet, I literally get killed from lag. How dumb is that? Plus the loot drops are without a doubt planned around the RMAH so that you can't find good enough gear. Ever. Literally. Not in a million years of farming. How dumb is that? You can of course take this all to the Blizzard Diablo III forum where you will find that Blizzard's presence on their own forum is most noticeable by the high volume of threads they delete and not at all by the smallest fraction in which they actually respond.… Expand
  17. Pizzaboy66
    Jun 18, 2012
    0
    Diablo 3 could have just been D2 with updated graphics and I would have been happy. Magic finding in D2 was very addicting. In D3 though, instead of hunting for unique items with interesting stats (meaning items that have stats you wouldn't find on a blue or yellow), you're searching for blue weapons with high damage and yellow items with the stats people want (vit, int, dex, str, allDiablo 3 could have just been D2 with updated graphics and I would have been happy. Magic finding in D2 was very addicting. In D3 though, instead of hunting for unique items with interesting stats (meaning items that have stats you wouldn't find on a blue or yellow), you're searching for blue weapons with high damage and yellow items with the stats people want (vit, int, dex, str, all res, etc). All items can have these stats, which means that there aren't any truly unique items that get you excited. Sure everyone in D2 was using roughly the same items, but the varying stats could make your items better because you have +2 to all skills instead of +1!

    Another thing that is upsetting is the auction house. Instead of trading items, which is pointless with stats that can be on any item, you scrounge the auction house for a long time looking for the stats you want. This removes any social interaction the game had via trading and makes it boring.

    The skills system... The skills were pretty cool, except that you can't use all of your spells and are locked to 6 or so, along with 3 passives. Sure you can change them, but there is a cooldown if you're not in town and the cooldown increases if you're in the higher difficulties. I actually liked the spell system at first with the whole rune enhancements while you level up. However, I realized that the runes I was unlocking weren't making my spells any better and I was using the old versions of the spells through end game. It sorta ruined the whole feeling of getting stronger.

    I don't know what suckers are still playing this game, but after I reached halfway through inferno I was done. The only people I know are still playing are the ones that want to make money using the real money auction house.

    I won't bother saying what else I don't like about this game, but I would say stay away from this one. And one last thing; Diablo in D3 looks retarded.    … Expand
  18. chazden
    Jun 18, 2012
    2
    The only thing I found fun about this game was farming the auction house sniping great deals and power leveling... Now power leveling has been nerfed to hell and AH will crash soon enough since there will be more useful lvl 60 items up in the coming months which... blah too lazy to explain the rest but if you have basic knowledge of supply and demand you see where I'm going with this.The only thing I found fun about this game was farming the auction house sniping great deals and power leveling... Now power leveling has been nerfed to hell and AH will crash soon enough since there will be more useful lvl 60 items up in the coming months which... blah too lazy to explain the rest but if you have basic knowledge of supply and demand you see where I'm going with this.

    This game has GREED written all over it, everything about it.
    I got my refund but I'll never think of blizzard the same after playing this atrocious game.    … Expand
  19. MikeJones
    Jun 18, 2012
    0
    Wow what a great game. Never in my life was I this happy to turn on a game I paid 60$ for (maybe) and finish it in 2 days. What an amazing game with an absolutely horrible story line. I remember kids in java class in high school making games with better story lines than this one and those games were all based on Tetris. I wouldn't mind getting a refund as long as I can still occasionallyWow what a great game. Never in my life was I this happy to turn on a game I paid 60$ for (maybe) and finish it in 2 days. What an amazing game with an absolutely horrible story line. I remember kids in java class in high school making games with better story lines than this one and those games were all based on Tetris. I wouldn't mind getting a refund as long as I can still occasionally log in and participate in this pay to win game. Thanks Blizzard for once again taking a good game and ruining it for your own profit.… Expand
  20. Sleppnir
    Jun 18, 2012
    3
    Seriously, DO NOT BUY THIS GAME. It's fun until you realize you will NEVER get a drop you can use at the level range you need it. The whole game is designed to force you to the RMAH. It's fun to play with friends if you never plan on getting to end level content and just want to screw around in a game that doesn't take much brain power.

    DO NOT BE FOOLED BY THE CRITICS SCORES. They    Seriously, DO NOT BUY THIS GAME. It's fun until you realize you will NEVER get a drop you can use at the level range you need it. The whole game is designed to force you to the RMAH. It's fun to play with friends if you never plan on getting to end level content and just want to screw around in a game that doesn't take much brain power.

    DO NOT BE FOOLED BY THE CRITICS SCORES. They only got to play the first part of the game where your gear doesn't make much of a difference. Also, a lot of them are forced to give good reviews if they expect to ever get consideration for future game releases.    … Expand
  21. Nominrath
    Jun 18, 2012
    7
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. The Good:
    Diablo III has the formula that made it's predecessors work down to an art-form. The story, while not particularly deep, is a great monster-slaying setup with stunning cutscenes and story elements. The gameplay is addictive and intuitive, offering many choices on builds for characters and the ability to swap skills/powers in and out on the fly is a welcome feature. The visuals and soundtrack are equally great, continuing to bring the dark, medieval fantasy setting of the Diablo universe alive and keeping it dark and foreboding in tone. The game length is just long enough, neither being too long or too short... especially since the game kind of dictates multiple play throughs. The multiplayer is well-implemented, the fact that you can choose to play with friends or in public games makes it the game much more private and fun than that of an MMORPG, but at the same time keeps the kind of feel of being part of a community.

    The Bad:
    The item drops are way too random and the 'magic find' trait is misleading in it's function. Items you need or want won't drop unless you spend several hours, maybe even days, 'farming' for them and, more often than not, 90% of the item drops you do get will be fodder for salvage or straight-up selling. The blacksmith's item creation is also too random often requiring mass amounts of gold, resources and several costly tries to produce an item of any kind of use, which seems unfair after all the gold and resources you already dump into him to level him up in order to make him capable of making certain level items... not to mention the items he creates can only be sold for any kind of profit on the Auction House, which is hit or miss. Skills, while varied in their styles and powers, are only a masquerade. Several classes have what could be awesome abilities, but after Act I, Normal difficulty, these powers lose any and all usefulness. The class' all seem to have one or two skill/rune set combos that are the best, rendering all the other abilities obsolete, which only gets worse the higher level the character gets. This creates the illusion of customization, but it's a wolf in sheep's clothing. Multiplayer, while fun, is required on higher difficulties, which sucks some of the fun out of it. Personally, I'd like to be able to go through the game by myself on any difficulty. Cramming multiplayer down my throat is an unwanted feature.

    The Ugly:
    This new fad games are trying to use of only allowing players to play if they're online, even for single player, seems to be unnecessary. The Auction House, while a cool idea and useful, is a cop out, but at the same time you'll find that you have to use it in order to get your character up to a level in which he/she can survive... especially on higher difficulties.

    Overall:
    It's beautiful and keeps things simple and in the vein of previous Diablos making it accessible to old and newcomers alike. The random item drop seems way off kilter, not giving you what you need to progress and forcing you to spend oodles of gold (or even real money) in the Auction House to get 'caught up'. The skills have enormous unrealized potential by only picking a few of the 'best' skills and making those the best build options and not allowing equal optimization with all the powers.    … Expand
  22. Faivon
    Jun 17, 2012
    0
    Overall, I'm satisfied with the game. The difficulty is just right (Except for Inferno because the developer purposely make it almost impossible to finish it). Each character class is unique, the progression system is okay although it can be better. Itemization could use a bit more work but the current one will do just fine. The story.. I'm sorry but I do not like it. It's like written forOverall, I'm satisfied with the game. The difficulty is just right (Except for Inferno because the developer purposely make it almost impossible to finish it). Each character class is unique, the progression system is okay although it can be better. Itemization could use a bit more work but the current one will do just fine. The story.. I'm sorry but I do not like it. It's like written for kids, there's no depth at all. The graphic is excellent, the color palette is just perfect. Not too dark and not too colorful. About Auction House, I like it so far. Sure, the price nowadays may a bit weird but that takes time for the economy to stabilize, no? I'm looking forward for future updates, fixes and expansions.… Expand
  23. samthesham
    Jun 17, 2012
    4
    Ok, I played the game, asked for a refund, waited for a refund, played it some more just to confirm i wasn't crazy, then blizzard came through with the refund. (thanks blizzard, undoubtedly great customer support - 10 out of 10. no kidding)

    I have a lot of complaints about the title, but most of it wouldnt actually make me ask for a refund. Little things like: the story/dialogue was    Ok, I played the game, asked for a refund, waited for a refund, played it some more just to confirm i wasn't crazy, then blizzard came through with the refund. (thanks blizzard, undoubtedly great customer support - 10 out of 10. no kidding)

    I have a lot of complaints about the title, but most of it wouldnt actually make me ask for a refund.
    Little things like: the story/dialogue was horrible, needs a lot of balancing/stat logistics still, and crafting/jeweling is ridiculously expensive to be worth it and some other small things...

    What makes me really dislike the game is the auction house/farming direction blizzard went (haven't played the game while the real $$ auction was up, but that must be much worse). I don't care about uniques or set items; its fine with me if rares are more powerful. What i hate, and i can't imagine getting better is the whole economist gameplay aspect. You gotta enjoy selling/buying stuff to get anywhere in inferno and i'm just not interested. that's it. more power to blizzard for trying to improve the trade economy, and i hope other people like it, but i hate it.
    I made it to inferno before they could refund me..... that is to say the game is stupid easy. there should be no normal mode, its just a waste of time ---- nightmare would be fine for a tutorial run, but hell is where the gameplay moves past monotonous.... but it doesn't last. Also random dungeons??? whatta joke. Duels? how do you mess this up? Arena is not what i want (didn't get to try it thou). And the waypoint/game progression is just stupid; why can't i load up a game and switch acts? wtf. Oh yea, your game matching multiplayer SUCKS so bad. so bad. i really want to join a 4 player max game, occupied 90% of the time by a single afk guy.

    As for things that are pretty good: the art work --- way better then i had imagined before it came out. Some levels are nasty and bloody and brutal looking (so much so that it makes the story even more lame). Some of the new gameplay mechanics are ok too, but not polished(i wouldn't believe this got as much testing as it did if i didnt know better).

    Things i'm not sure about: attribute points removed. Can go either way for me. In d2 once you know what youre doing its atr points are mindless anyway. all you need to worry about is your equipment's attributes, so they just skipped a step in d3. on the other hand it just makes this shallow game more shallow. Then the skill points (or lack-there-of) are infinitely configurable; Same story, kinda nice, like many rpgs come and gone. on the other hand it kills replayablity.

    All in all i'd have to ask if the dev team ever played diablo2, and if they did, why did they not learn the obvious lessons it offered as far as what to do and not to do? (AND WHY DO THEY GET SOME MORON TO WRITE THE STORY? DUDE YOUR STORIES KILLED CAIN)    … Expand
  24. Gaea
    Jun 17, 2012
    2
    Absolutely pathetic, Blizzard. Christ, if this is what gaming is coming to I may have to opt out. Coach purse wielding, croc wearing fad followers are destroying this entire industry.
  25. Ayebo
    Jun 17, 2012
    0
    After 160 hours of game time i can clearly say that this game was made to maximise profit(auction house, real money auction house, poor class and item balance) and not the players enjoyment. So i am 160 hours into the game. I spend 130 hours(inferno-act 2 clear) on my barbarian, 20 hours(lv 30) on my wizard and 20 hours(lv 30) on my witchdoctor. All i have to say this game is a bigAfter 160 hours of game time i can clearly say that this game was made to maximise profit(auction house, real money auction house, poor class and item balance) and not the players enjoyment. So i am 160 hours into the game. I spend 130 hours(inferno-act 2 clear) on my barbarian, 20 hours(lv 30) on my wizard and 20 hours(lv 30) on my witchdoctor. All i have to say this game is a big disappointment. If you play melee (barb or monk) you have to play tank to play progressive. Who really wants to play tank especially in sigleplayer! Within those 130 hours i could have cleared act 2 with two ranged classes (wizard, witchdoctor, demonhunter). Demonhunter is the most overpowered class ever existed in a game! Virtually every progamer trying to make money with this game plays a demonhunter! Gamebalance is really bad! Auction house and real money auction house totally take the fun out of this game! Every player has 90% of his items bought via the auction house! The whole game system is just bad! Nearly all legendaries and set items are worthless. This takes a lot of fun and motivation out of this game! After 160 hours of game time i can clearly say that this game was made to maximise profit(auction house, real money auction house, poor class and item balance) and not the players enjoyment.… Expand
  26. RedMAK
    Jun 17, 2012
    0
    DO NOT BUY IT! I waited for this game not as a crazy fun, but still waited. Got it and... was terribly disappoined. When some time ago my friends discussed how a single player mode could still require network connection, I laughted at them, because these days almost every single PC is connected. Just now I realized how wrong was I and how right they were. The game is absolutely IMPOSSIBLEDO NOT BUY IT! I waited for this game not as a crazy fun, but still waited. Got it and... was terribly disappoined. When some time ago my friends discussed how a single player mode could still require network connection, I laughted at them, because these days almost every single PC is connected. Just now I realized how wrong was I and how right they were. The game is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to play because of disconnects and lags, even if you try to play just a little, just for fun, just alone. With these lags even by the time you reach end of Act 2, the game becomes something like "Spawn, freeze, wait, wait, wait, see your corpse". As for me, once per 15 minutes the game disconnects and forces you to start again from the checkpoint. Damn it! I prefer to explore everything, run in every corner and track (on minimap) where I have been. With these disconnects it is impossible, you always start on a new randomly generated map, scout about 30-40% of it and... disconnect again to start anew. Forget about completing everything, try to reach the next scenario milestone before it disconnects again. I am very happy for Blizz that they decided to make even more bucks on real-money auction houses and introduced online gaming to prevent hacking, but guys, I don't want to pay for your greed. I was never a fan of spending real money on virtual sh*t (wow, you just paid $$$ for that cool armor in diablo? wow! you are so cool, man, paying your real earnings for some set of bytes on Blizzard servers rocks! :)), and now you force me into lowered gaming experience because of your greed? Block my access to those stupid auctions, but give me normal gaming experience, for which I payed a considerable sum to you.
    In-game graphics sucks. So many talking about "working 10+ years to give the best experience" and we still have static cartoon portraits of NPCs?!
    A complete disappointment. Even not reaching the end of Normal difficulty I already regret about losing my money on that sh*t.    … Expand
  27. CaptainAwesomer
    Jun 16, 2012
    2
    This game should be rated M for Mediocre. I really wanted to like it, so I could play co-op with my friends, but the game is awful. The graphics look like something out of the 1990s, and that ruins everything. You don't care about the story or the characters because you can barely see them in the game, you don't see any facial expressions just their same lifeless portraits when they speak.This game should be rated M for Mediocre. I really wanted to like it, so I could play co-op with my friends, but the game is awful. The graphics look like something out of the 1990s, and that ruins everything. You don't care about the story or the characters because you can barely see them in the game, you don't see any facial expressions just their same lifeless portraits when they speak. The voice acting is all right, the warrior character I played actually sounds pretty cool, but that's not enough to save it.

    There's not a lot of variety in the locations either, from levels 1 to 9 you see a town, a graveyard, and some dungeons. There's so little detail in your character and the creatures you destroy, that they should have just gone with stick men. If the stick man version had some blood and gore I would have preferred it to this.

    The actual gameplay mechanics are weak as well. You don't customize your class at all at creation or after levelling, you're just given new abilities. Fighting is extremely unsatisfying unless you're fighting a boss which is rare, or a large group. You're just constantly clicking your left mouse button, there's no thought or skill required.

    And don't forget the constant internet connection requirement, not just of you but of their servers. I waited a couple weeks after getting my trial pass before playing, and when I was finally ready I was greeted with a message saying their servers were down for maintenance for another four hours. But other than that I played from levels 1 to 9 okay, and then uninstalled the game.    … Expand
  28. Heresticus
    Jun 16, 2012
    0
    Blizzard had always been a company where the real gamers develop the best games for us. Now, it is just a company where the money is their only goal. After 10 years of waiting and their "perfectionistic" expressions; I would say that this game could not impress me rather I have been disappointed. In brief, I payed a lot of money to be bored after 35 hours of playing. I won't buy anyBlizzard had always been a company where the real gamers develop the best games for us. Now, it is just a company where the money is their only goal. After 10 years of waiting and their "perfectionistic" expressions; I would say that this game could not impress me rather I have been disappointed. In brief, I payed a lot of money to be bored after 35 hours of playing. I won't buy any Blizzard games in the future. And my final score is a huge 0.… Expand
  29. mondieu12
    Jun 16, 2012
    8
    Erm, blimey, so many negative reviews! It's still a decent game, combat brutally satisfying in places, graphics are great for a single player game and the bosses are suitably huge and intimidating. Yes the online aspect is annoying, (it's fine with a good internet connection) but at least you don't have to pay a subscription fee. The story is also sub-par and at times I got bored with theErm, blimey, so many negative reviews! It's still a decent game, combat brutally satisfying in places, graphics are great for a single player game and the bosses are suitably huge and intimidating. Yes the online aspect is annoying, (it's fine with a good internet connection) but at least you don't have to pay a subscription fee. The story is also sub-par and at times I got bored with the weary exploring progression. But in the midst of huge battles with hordes of demons, with my character jumping everywhere while dealing insane damage and blowing stuff up, I really enjoyed it. So yeah, lighten up guys!… Expand
  30. Le_Moose
    Jun 16, 2012
    5
    I'm not the biggest RPG gamer around, but I daresay I know my way around a few. This is my first time playing a Diablo game, so storywise, I can't really judge. Gameplay however is lacking severely in replay-ability. The only real replay value present is dungeons are formed in randomization. Furthermore, the dungeon layouts are predictable, specifically the side quest ones. TheI'm not the biggest RPG gamer around, but I daresay I know my way around a few. This is my first time playing a Diablo game, so storywise, I can't really judge. Gameplay however is lacking severely in replay-ability. The only real replay value present is dungeons are formed in randomization. Furthermore, the dungeon layouts are predictable, specifically the side quest ones. The scripted dungeons become monotonous very quickly and if you're a thorough dungeon clearer like myself, enemies pose little to no threat on the lower difficulties. What good I can say for it is that I have enjoyed walking through the story with my friends. Having ranged, melee, and healer in a single party with some of your closest friends is truly fun no matter the game. All the basic team elements can be found in this game but the higher difficulties may bring down the enjoyment.… Expand
  31. MasterGamer
    Jun 16, 2012
    2
    ARPG without any loot surprise. 150 hours game play with my Demon Hunter i get 1 Legendary Shield. A game simply lead you to total frustration. When the RMAH came live, answer is clear. You are forced to buy something from RMAH or you going to spend countless hours farming gold to get some EQ that help you to progress to next level. Simply Boring and Frustrated.
  32. WarpAsylum
    Jun 16, 2012
    1
    Hmm, where should i start? I played through diablo III once, using demon hunter. I never really felt compelled to play more then once through, I felt that everything was the same again. This game is sort of like fruit stripe gum, it looses its flavor after only a little while, and you dont even get the cool tattoo afterward. Im a huge nerd for Diablo II and the expansion pack, and thisHmm, where should i start? I played through diablo III once, using demon hunter. I never really felt compelled to play more then once through, I felt that everything was the same again. This game is sort of like fruit stripe gum, it looses its flavor after only a little while, and you dont even get the cool tattoo afterward. Im a huge nerd for Diablo II and the expansion pack, and this game came no where near Lord of destruction. The art reminded me of Warcraft which i absolutely despise. They need to fire their art directors, keep it interesting. Blizzard is no longer a gaming company, its a corporate entity polishing up games so much that everyone likes them. In the end, its not the case just look at the user scores. The auction system kinda sucked IMO, the story got bland after the 3rd act. I realllly liked the lore in the beginning it gave alot of depth, then i got to the last act and deckard cain wouldnt shut up! I dont care about every blessed demon just shut up and let me kill! Way to over do it. The backgrounds were actually really good, especially in the second act with the palace in the background. mmm, the regular art was too much like warcraft, i wonder if other people thought of that as well? The textures are so bland and unappealing, im glad they changed the color scheme from super happy rainbow warcraft funtime, to just a little darker, it fits the mood better. You guys should look up photos of how diablo III was going to look back in the day with the old art! Its looks like your playing through a F*****g masterpiece painting! (in a good way)… Expand
  33. tomasdee
    Jun 16, 2012
    3
    After a few weeks of play now, the end feeling is disapointment. The game is a total relentless grind with little OMG moments to make the journey really worth it. They should have tweaked the difficulty levels more so that as you progress into harder modes, you got something for your efforts - extra content? something that is more than just a mirror run with harder mobs. The way the elitesAfter a few weeks of play now, the end feeling is disapointment. The game is a total relentless grind with little OMG moments to make the journey really worth it. They should have tweaked the difficulty levels more so that as you progress into harder modes, you got something for your efforts - extra content? something that is more than just a mirror run with harder mobs. The way the elites get extra nastier abilities is kinda cool - but in the end to defeat those just becomes a 'die a few times -> learn the tactic -> repeat X times till dead' process.
    I've mainly been playing the Monk class, and at each level up - i check the new skills available - total disapointment there. I've not changed my toons spec for a long time. For all the effort of grinding levels, i'm still using skills gained from my first run through (below lvl 30). There seems little reward for gaining levels (hopefully different for other classes).
    I did like the story, the first time around, but that hardly matters after your first play through - there is no connection to the story after you've seen it once, it just comes down to progressing your toon.
    Loot - the stat assignment is just so random that again most loot pickups are annoying. Any non-magical loot is just wasted bag space and not worth carrying and again is annoying to continually keep dumping it from you bag. The loot part of the game really feels under done. DRM - sigh.... if this is a sign of things to come for PC games then that really makes me sad. I really do enjoy the social side of the game when online but there MUST be an OFFLINE mode available with any game (of this sort).    … Expand
  34. ratatat
    Jun 16, 2012
    9
    Having brought 3 characters to level 50+ and one character to the level 60 post game in the past couple of weeks, I find that the game feels like something between playing slot machines and eating Kraft cheese singles. It is short, linear, repetitive, and, above all, boring.
  35. JohnnL
    Jun 16, 2012
    2
    It was highly anticipated but completely failed to deliver. Blizzard made a poor quality product, and rushed to release it - just to cash in. Compared to D2, D3's story is completely lacking and characters feel emotionless. Act 3 and 4 seem like they were done in a day. The animated movies are poor, and mostly are hand drawn repetitive, the good ones are few. Unique game-play mechanics andIt was highly anticipated but completely failed to deliver. Blizzard made a poor quality product, and rushed to release it - just to cash in. Compared to D2, D3's story is completely lacking and characters feel emotionless. Act 3 and 4 seem like they were done in a day. The animated movies are poor, and mostly are hand drawn repetitive, the good ones are few. Unique game-play mechanics and true skill play are - None. In fact after D2, after 12 years of experience it fails to give any unique single or multi-player challenge, apart from the usual click and slash. The whole game is based around loot and repetition. The game needs to be completed 3 times to reach maximum level and difficulty. At inferno (max level) multi-player coop becomes almost impossible unless you have the gear, which you either buy from the Auction House or farm solo. At max level the same content needs to played and replayed a hundred times, to progress the same old content that you already played before. Then you gotta ask yourself what's the point? Where is the fun? Blizzard used their old WoW formula, create as little content, force players to repeat it as much as possible, so that they become bots who just do the same task everyday, like a conveyor job. The ultimate goal of the game is just to farm... alone.... for no purpose, as there is no open world. Now they also introduced a real money Auction House with a 15% transaction fee, to make more money off players. The drop rate and good loot are very rare to drop at max level, and you have to farm for 100+ of hours if not more to get anything decent, which you probably sell on the Auction House anyway. This game is not a challenge, not entertaining, not multi-player teamwork oriented at all. It's another loot farm fest of virtual nothingness. Those who fell for the marketing and paid for it (me including) just boosted Blizzards quarterly profits, but wasted their money.… Expand
  36. FiddeA
    Jun 16, 2012
    3
    Diablo 3 had a heavy cross to carry from Diablo 2, where the focus of the game was the hunt for items and end-game play. Much of the buzz and hype leading up to D3's release came from the D2 community, whom naturally expected a sequel in spirit, a game that would last for years to come.

    There is absolutely no rewarding end-game in Diablo 3. I write this with having around 130 hours    Diablo 3 had a heavy cross to carry from Diablo 2, where the focus of the game was the hunt for items and end-game play. Much of the buzz and hype leading up to D3's release came from the D2 community, whom naturally expected a sequel in spirit, a game that would last for years to come.

    There is absolutely no rewarding end-game in Diablo 3. I write this with having around 130 hours played in Inferno alone. All players who made it to this last difficulty can attest to the statement. It's one part grinding for gold, and one part scowering the auction house. The supposed difficulty is nothing more than turned-up stat knobs and cheap one-shots. Drop rates are heavily influenced by the auction house, a fact very visible when RMAH was released and immediately people start finding legendary and set items in droves. At least for day. Once enough drops have been generated and the auction house is stocked, the cap is put back on. It really gives you no motivation to hunt for items.

    Speaking of items, they have terribly boring stats. This is quite an accomplishment since the game should revolve around items, and they had a terrific system in the prequel. Instead of diving in to this issue further, I suggest people just go look at Diablo 2.

    I sincerily hope that Blizzard will produce a satisfying end-game experience that can last for years, but I feel hopeless since the first "version" was such a large step in the wrong direction. The D3 team seem to have no idea what made its prequel last over 10 years with a sustained player base. It's like they haven't played it.    … Expand
  37. shadow862
    Jun 16, 2012
    1
    I've been playing this game for more than 100+ hours now and I really have to say that in it's entirety, I hate it. Not in it's core content and but in it's implementation. Don't get me wrong. It is still fun to play and retains the same dungeon-crawling, loot-grabbing, clickity-click click goodness. But is that really all there is to it? I've played D1/D2 and have finished and enjoyedI've been playing this game for more than 100+ hours now and I really have to say that in it's entirety, I hate it. Not in it's core content and but in it's implementation. Don't get me wrong. It is still fun to play and retains the same dungeon-crawling, loot-grabbing, clickity-click click goodness. But is that really all there is to it? I've played D1/D2 and have finished and enjoyed those multiple times but what made those games stand out and acquired a cult following seems to have been lost in D3. I'm not even gonna mention the DC's and server stuff because those are fixable, in fairness to Blizzard. Upon playing this game a lot because of it's "fundamentally" fun gameplay, and I use the term loosely, I can't help myself in the back of my mind feeling cheated. It seems that this "Always-Online" thing is forced upon the consumer to make sure that their asses are covered for delivering an unpolished product. Think of it as ordering delivery for a pizza. They send it to your house, without most of the toppings and the delivery guy occasionally puts toppings on it as you notice it while eating. Terrible.

    They also mentioned the online setting is to promote coop and to fight gold-sellers and outside seeling from third-party sites and what-not. But they have a real currency auction house for Christ-sakes, they want you to spend your money on them, not on some god-forbidden site where they have no share from the earnings.

    The way the loot is spread and supposedly "randomized", somehow I felt cheated. I have 3 level 60 characters and you don't get what you need, ever. You get crap or what other classes need. Hence me making 3 Chars. Seriously, the AH has been my friend and I couldn't have survived without it. How will I have gold? Yes, grinding. Now, I don't mind grinding but when you're digging through the ground with a teaspoon to find an ever so slightly bigger teaspoon to dig with, well you get the picture. They got you playing for a long time and almost always never getting a feeling of satisfaction.

    Maybe I'm a noob, maybe you're the greatest player in D3, but one thing is clear. D3 is made with business in mind. They don't care really care about you, all they care is you clocking a million hours doing the same things so they can get more of your money. From the bottom of my best judgment and honesty, I give this game a measly 1/10 for its entirety. After all, the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts. Nuff' said. Thanks for reading. HTH.    … Expand
  38. taglag
    Jun 15, 2012
    0
    The Diablo 3 Forum deletes anyone's post they disagree with.

    I posted this*** ******************************************** I don't even play it now. I log on check auction, leave. If any of my friends decide to play, I log on and play a bit, that's it. There is no skill to the game. If you have the right gear you can beat it. If you do not have the right gear you will die all the time.    The Diablo 3 Forum deletes anyone's post they disagree with.

    I posted this***
    ******************************************** I don't even play it now. I log on check auction, leave. If any of my friends decide to play, I log on and play a bit, that's it. There is no skill to the game. If you have the right gear you can beat it. If you do not have the right gear you will die all the time. Game is Gear driven Not skill Driven, any clown with the right gear can beat it. Only place to get drops is in AH or RMAH. The Items you need will not drop at the right levels. 2. No free from the internet Play, causing extreme lag at times even in single player.
    ********************************************
    ::: And got banned, and all my posts deleted, not just this one.

    The makers of this game do Not want any negative feed back    … Expand
  39. Guilherme02
    Jun 15, 2012
    10
    a good game deserves a good mark for great graphics. Optimal optimal gameplay of the series continued good characters and good dialogues blizzard had seven years of production
  40. Kheke
    Jun 15, 2012
    2
    Worst Blizzard game in history!
    Not skillbased just pure gear and luck based.

    Boring as Hell (pun intended)! First 20 hours in the game you must really try if you are going to die.
    Then 2h och quite fun and challanging play.
    The you have to get used to die every minute no matter you skill, it is just designt that way.
  41. diablow
    Jun 15, 2012
    0
    ***a copy paste of a great review on diablo forums - not mine and not full because the 5000 characters a reached***
    * Extremely dumbed down from D2, with insulting amounts of hand-holding present everywhere. This ranges from autostats, all skills enabled, no skill levels, freespecing, restricted skill choices without elective mode enabled, simple skill tooltips, removal of almost all    ***a copy paste of a great review on diablo forums - not mine and not full because the 5000 characters a reached***
    * Extremely dumbed down from D2, with insulting amounts of hand-holding present everywhere. This ranges from autostats, all skills enabled, no skill levels, freespecing, restricted skill choices without elective mode enabled, simple skill tooltips, removal of almost all combat mechanic affixes, no weapon swap, 4 socketables vs the hundreds of D2, generic/boring legendaries, etc.

    * Lack of social support - poorly implemented chat channels, automatched game joining only, ghost town effect (similar to SC2's major problem with Bnet 2.0), 4 player limit = even less socializing.

    * Cheesy B-movie story-telling, cliche one-dimensional characters, corny voice-acting, non-sensical/comical actions by villains, predictable twists and plotline.

    * Lack of diverse character types within and among classes - no more physical/caster/hybrid - all character types now rely on weapon damage like physical characters in D2. This destroys a huge amount of itemization/gearing choices, as there's no longer a deviation between decentralized gear (caster) vs centralized gear (physical) vs a build that needs to balance the two (hybrid). In D3, there are no more physical barbs (frenzy/ww), caster barbs (singer), or hybrid barbs (BvC), there are only barbs that all base their gear on weapon damage (physical).

    * DRM online only - no offline single player, no lan support. Laggy servers, and all the same issues of botting, duping, spamming, and trade exploits present in a game that's over a decade old. * Crappy UI that's designed by a console developer - convoluted to navigate, clunky, and inefficient at utilizing screen space.

    * Approx FOUR times less legendaries (uniques/runewords) in the game than D2:
    * 9 chest pieces vs 37 uniques + 14 runewords
    * 18 swords vs 35 uniques + 26 runewords
    * 6 shields vs 22 uniques + 8 runewords
    * 7 helms vs 23 uniques + 5 runewords
    * 7 bows vs 19 uniques + 16 runewords
    It's actually more like 20x less if you consider that all but 1-2 legendaries per category are completely worthless - low/mid-level legendaries are unusable due to a general lack of utility mechanics present in the game, and no way to upgrade the base item to the next type (which would increase base damage or defense).

    * 4 gems vs 7 gems + 8 unique jewels + 33 runes + a NEAR LIMITLESS variety of magic/rare jewels.

    * Legendaries are generic, boring, and don't have the flavor that D2 uniques/runewords did. Legendaries hardly seem to have themes or any effort done to them anymore, and most are just cookie-cutter molds that have been pasted onto every Legendary item type. Randomization of 1-3 entire affixes also makes the item much less iconic or powerful than before.

    * The removal of attack rating (accuracy), faster hit recover, and faster block rate equates to a severe loss of having to balance such stats on gear, and represents yet another dumbing down of the decisions you make in the game.

    * Much weaker bonuses on items in general aside from pure stats - less attack speed, less damage reduction, less run/walk speed = items feeling much less powerful than before and gear choices becoming much less meaningful or strategic. Set items also have extremely weak, almost laughable bonuses.

    * Inferno mode is broken. It's not more difficult, it's just cheap. 1/2-shots everywhere, melee is severely handicapped. A number of retarded monster affixes that should never have been put in. Most builds except for a select few aren't even viable. There's no semblance of strategy, just having the best gear possible and dumb luck in not hitting the wrong champions. Since when did Diablo change from a game where you mow down monsters and feel like a god, to one where you repeatedly get cheap-shotted over and over again in a boring grind?

    * Lack of character uniqueness/identity/ownership - all builds are freely changeable, many builds in the late game are similar or identical - no character permanence + lack of customizability = lack of character attachment.

    * Lack of in-depth customization - skills only have 1 level each so it's impossible to specialize in certain skills to the extent you could before. You can't specialize in builds that aren't predetermined for you through the passive trait system. Because there are no points to allocate, there's no more tinkering with unique builds, thinking about your build, or calculating your allocation of skill points/synergies. Although stats played a lesser extent (due to most people putting enough str to wear gear, and rest into vit), removing stats still removed some unique build options such as pure dex amazons, pure energy sorcs, pure str barbs, half/half varieties of the aforementioned, and max block vs 50% block vs passive block depending on dex allocations.    … Expand
  42. zed1207
    Jun 15, 2012
    0
    Such an incredible disappointment after waiting for so long.

    The classes are vastly unbalanced, which explains why PvP still isn't part of the game. Playing a ranged character means dodging a couple dangerous elite combos in Inferno, playing melee means crying your heart out consistently. Comparing the experiences of Monks and Demon Hunters in Inferno, for example, is illustrative of    Such an incredible disappointment after waiting for so long.

    The classes are vastly unbalanced, which explains why PvP still isn't part of the game. Playing a ranged character means dodging a couple dangerous elite combos in Inferno, playing melee means crying your heart out consistently. Comparing the experiences of Monks and Demon Hunters in Inferno, for example, is illustrative of the degree of imbalance in the game. Which leads to the biggest problem with this game: Inferno hero packs. In D2 they were randomly generated, which was lazy and sloppy. In D3 they are still randomly generated, and Inferno difficulty has absolutely no new mechanics, just a cliff-face scaling of mob damage and resistance. It's incredibly, mind-numbingly, almost unbelievably lazy. It results in a game where the final boss in Inferno is a cakewalk compared to the elite group with insane combinations that can spawn anywhere in the whole of the Act.

    Oh and the number of hacks already out there, a month after the game was released, is a joke. Stupefyingly lazy, EA-style cashing in on an established brand.    … Expand
  43. 223kazin
    Jun 15, 2012
    2
    I'm really surprised out how blatantly biased these game "critics" are. Do these people actually get paid? I've read so many of these 100% reviews that it literally churns the stomach. How can anyone think this game is good? It's 13 hours of solid gameplay, then the rest is repetitive grind. The voice acting is TERRIBLE. Terrible, god damn it. The game's customization steered away fromI'm really surprised out how blatantly biased these game "critics" are. Do these people actually get paid? I've read so many of these 100% reviews that it literally churns the stomach. How can anyone think this game is good? It's 13 hours of solid gameplay, then the rest is repetitive grind. The voice acting is TERRIBLE. Terrible, god damn it. The game's customization steered away from talent trees to this dumbed down "pick 6 skills and mash" system. Look up diablo 2 on gamefaqs and at their indepth/character guides and recognize how watered down this game is, compared to it's predecessor. The graphics are straight from the 2004 era, which, I can understand, considering blizzard strong arms you into playing online, but they could have at least used cell-shaded graphics. As it stands I won't buy the sequel, or any blizzard game at this point. It's down right appalling that people still buy the mountains of **** blizzard craps out and call it gold. This game is not gold, it's a long, tedious grind, that won't even last you 3 days. Worst of all, it's a loot game but it's so painfully randomized that you could spend your whole day grinding, even using exploits to make it go by faster, and never find a single piece of useful gear. You are better off going to the royal crypts loaded up with +Gold find, and buying **** off the AH. I have a firm belief that every game should last it's cost in hours. Diablo should have brought to me 60 hours of enjoyable time spent for the 60 bucks I had to pay. Instead I played it for 13 hours, enjoyed the cinematics, then the other 26 hours I begrudgingly put into it, I was banging my head against the desk, and the only thing that made it even remotely tolerable or why I kept going to begin with was because I had 6 people to play it with. I got skyrim 2 weeks ago and I'd say I'm about 20% through the **** game and still loving it. Sufficed to say, I haven't even touched diablo since and don't have the slightest desire to pick it up again, even if I played a new class. Blizzard really doesn't respect it's fanbase at all, if they think they can get away with marketing this and expecting us to eat it up. Game get's a 2/10, for not meeting my hour to cost quota, wasting 20+ hours of my life, and in all honesty, being drastically underwhelming for a game I have been waiting 10-11 years for. What. a. letdown.… Expand
  44. Foxcool
    Jun 15, 2012
    0
    After finally able to play leveling a monk to 30 and a wizard to 60, experienced inferno up to act 2. I can tell you what I felt is wrong with this game. While I have played diablo 1 and 2, I harbored no lingering nostalgia or yearn for an upgraded version of the predecessors, I only wanted an entertaining and fun game. Diablo 3 failed in that respect, It's just not fun or entertainingAfter finally able to play leveling a monk to 30 and a wizard to 60, experienced inferno up to act 2. I can tell you what I felt is wrong with this game. While I have played diablo 1 and 2, I harbored no lingering nostalgia or yearn for an upgraded version of the predecessors, I only wanted an entertaining and fun game. Diablo 3 failed in that respect, It's just not fun or entertaining enough to warren multiple play through.

    One of the most glaring problem is that this game feel unfinished and I felt like I was a beta tester. It seems that nothing in this game is set in stone and you're investing time and literally money if you use the real money auction house in a very uncertain environment. Whenever the player find ways to make progress, blizzard will change things in the game to bar the players from making progress, this range from changing skills down to the gears that you payed for. Yes, what you buy today may not be what it is tomorrow.

    Changes are good most of the time, but blizzard seems to only change things that are favorable to themselves and not the players, it seems that their whole design and patching mentality revolves around their auction house. It's like making the auction house work is more important to them than making the game more enjoyable. There are a lot of useless skills on each class but they makes no attempts to change it for the better, not even hinting they will change them. However one skill that players found were useful and having an easy time with it, they hotfix it before we can blink. Another solution would be to give all classes useful builds, but I guess it's easier to make one useful skill in one class useless.

    It seems that blizzard is just working against the players instead of for them or with them. I highly recommend to just skip this game. You missed nothing, it's not revolutionary, it's not even evolutionary.    … Expand
  45. comic399
    Jun 15, 2012
    1
    More and More Server Disconnection. 3 times in 10 minutes. Give us a break, Give us a single player without constant internet connection!! I am a fan of Diablo, however, this has become a pain. Yes. Understand it is Friday evening, but I want to play single player mode anytime, anywhere. The constant network disconnection took the fun out of it. We paid for the game, not paid for theMore and More Server Disconnection. 3 times in 10 minutes. Give us a break, Give us a single player without constant internet connection!! I am a fan of Diablo, however, this has become a pain. Yes. Understand it is Friday evening, but I want to play single player mode anytime, anywhere. The constant network disconnection took the fun out of it. We paid for the game, not paid for the disconnection and disruption of the game flow.… Expand
  46. Toh
    Jun 15, 2012
    0
    Lots of connection issues, i rate this game so bad because people cant play it when they want to play, means its not about fun, people just cant play it
  47. Parag0N
    Jun 15, 2012
    10
    I totally get being unhappy with the lack of innovation, but this is Blizzard, they don't innovate games so much as they perfect them. This is Diablo II perfected. It's also updated for a modern audience, yeah it's easier on lower difficulties but so is every other game these days. This game is unreal in it's abiility to suck you into it. I hate PC games to the point where this is theI totally get being unhappy with the lack of innovation, but this is Blizzard, they don't innovate games so much as they perfect them. This is Diablo II perfected. It's also updated for a modern audience, yeah it's easier on lower difficulties but so is every other game these days. This game is unreal in it's abiility to suck you into it. I hate PC games to the point where this is the first one I've bought in over a decade, the last being Diablo II and I am loving every second of it. Don't let the crybabies fool you. This game is epic and once all the kinks are worked out within the next few months plan on playing this for years. Say that about other games...oh yeah you can't… Expand
  48. VplusY
    Jun 14, 2012
    6
    Diablo 3 is not a bad game. At least objectively. It's true that Diablo 3 was plagued by launch issues, but launch issues are expected from almost every game; especially one with the largest launch day player-base for any PC title in the history of, well, PC titles. To Blizzard's credit, Launch day woes were resolved through an aggressive onslaught of patches before the week had evenDiablo 3 is not a bad game. At least objectively. It's true that Diablo 3 was plagued by launch issues, but launch issues are expected from almost every game; especially one with the largest launch day player-base for any PC title in the history of, well, PC titles. To Blizzard's credit, Launch day woes were resolved through an aggressive onslaught of patches before the week had even ended, and no review or score should hold launch issues against a game that sold over 3.5 million copies in it's first day. Ignoring the the launch day disaster leaves us with a game that, while expertly produced, may not be so fondly remembered by history as previous installments in the franchise have been. For starters, Diablo 3's art direction (however much criticism was leveled against it during development) is as polished, focused, and well executed as all Blizzard games have become expected to be. The graphical fidelity of Diablo 3 is not state of the art; and for a very good reason. It was never meant to be. Diablo 3's graphical requirements are designed to be accessible, and in this regard the development team at Blizzard for Diablo 3 have done quite well despite the limitations they set for themselves. The lonely, desolate feel of Diablo 1 & 2 is still present in the third dimension, and overall design is still top notch. The cinematic cutscenes in Diablo 3 are probably the highest quality that can be produced with current technology and look fantastic. Unfortunately while the characters in Diablo 3's cutscenes are all jaw-gapingly pretty, Diablo 3's story fails to garner a similar reaction. In all honesty Diablo 3's writing is not bad enough to induce vomit, but it will certainly work your gag reflexes. Which is unfortunate because one of the best parts of Diablo 2 was it's dark, mysterious story of interweaving stories culminating in a showdown with Diablo, and ultimately resulting in the destruction of the Worldstone. Diablo 2's engaging story was certainly one of the factors behind the hype buildup for Diablo 3. I won't spoil anything about Diablo 3's story, but it's safe to say that story will most likely not be a replay value for most people. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately depending on how you look at it) Diablo 3's story and campain are fairly short. Expect to be through the campaign on normal difficulty in anywhere from a few hours to a day, depending on how completionist you tend to be. Nightmare difficulty takes only slightly longer, and is only slightly more difficult as well. Hell mode presents a fair leap in difficulty from both normal and nightmare difficulties, but by the time you beat the story for the 3rd time you will most likely be at or around level 60 with decent enough gear to run all 3 difficulties without too much trouble. Inferno, however, is a different story altogether. Most player's first experience in Inferno mode will most likely be dying to cannon fodder that are suddenly and mysteriously able to kill less durable classes in only a few swipes. More problematic are field minibosses which are transformed from what were essentially free magic quality loot into literal roadblocks preventing you and your friends (if you happen to be playing with them) from moving on. This is because Loot tables are set up to drop the most desirable and consistently level 60 gear from field bosses to encourage grinding out caverns and maps, and as a result field bosses are meant to be the most difficult encounters. Most actual story related boss encounters including Diablo itself are rather scripted and easy to defeat even on Inferno, and the loot they drop is accordingly scaled down. The result being that players are discouraged from farming bosses over and over and are instead encouraged to run entire dungeons or indeed acts to farm the rarest of loot. It isn't a bad thing to encourage per se, but fighting the lords of hell holds significantly less gravitas when reading their attacks tends to play out like an intense game of Simon Says.

    But while the difficulty of Inferno at first encounter is frustratingly high, the actual mechanics and features of the game itself are conflictingly shallow. Gone are the stat points, skill points, and inventory management of Diablos past. In Diablo 3 everything is automatic, and you are given the option at a click of a button to create a town portal anywhere and anytime you want. The auction house is a good way to obtain items that are most likely leagues better than the ones you find for a relatively low price, and the addition of a real money auction house is honestly just valid response to gold farmers who would otherwise offer the same services. In the end, Diablo 3 is a well produced Blizzard product which does ARPG as well as is possible within the current formula. Which is a downright shame because Diablo 3 could have been a Blizzard's biggest chance to turn things upside down and breathe new life into the aging ARPG genre.    … Expand
  49. ReapGrimmer
    Jun 14, 2012
    1
    Story: Dialogue is horrible and there is nothing special about the story. In fact I would say it is below average.
    Game-play: Game runs smooth until it starts to lag which is pretty often.
    Graphics: Aside from the fact that it looks more like WoW then the previous Diablo games, it is still designed pretty well. Other: AH is broken. Way too many bugs in the game. Blizzard continues to    Story: Dialogue is horrible and there is nothing special about the story. In fact I would say it is below average.
    Game-play: Game runs smooth until it starts to lag which is pretty often.
    Graphics: Aside from the fact that it looks more like WoW then the previous Diablo games, it is still designed pretty well. Other: AH is broken. Way too many bugs in the game. Blizzard continues to ruin the game more and more despite all the feedback on forums. Obviously they only care about $$$ and not the fans/players.    … Expand
  50. Soulsoda
    Jun 14, 2012
    2
    Diablo 3 is an average game, on the verge of good. However its not nearly the standard that is expected of the Diablo franchise. 6 years ago, this might have been slightly groundbreaking, but to be honest they didn't offer anything new or very exciting. They nerfed what little joys are to be found in this game. I mean its a looting game that gives terrible loot... Seriously good loot isDiablo 3 is an average game, on the verge of good. However its not nearly the standard that is expected of the Diablo franchise. 6 years ago, this might have been slightly groundbreaking, but to be honest they didn't offer anything new or very exciting. They nerfed what little joys are to be found in this game. I mean its a looting game that gives terrible loot... Seriously good loot is scarce to come by because... 1 its only found in inferno difficulty which is terribly unbalanced. 2 drops do not have a high chance of rolling up to anything good because the auction house is factored into how the game drops items so you bound to pretty much always get terrible loot. Don't say i didn't play either, 70 hours and i did get 3 legendary items but too bad they are weaker than most blues -.-. This "we'll patch later" mentality has ruined gaming. They left the endgame inferno untested, and impossibly difficult. The story was fine, but after playing through it over... and over... and over its a terribly boring ( and i mean in terms of a hack slash, sure you could play an elemental and kill things off screen for a few hours but is it really fun at that point?) but lets not forget there is... the lack of a good user to user interface, servers are constantly laggy, you can never truly play the game by yourself, and the list goes on... Sure i'll probably look back at the game in... a year or two when the hype is gone, the bugs are fixed, and the nice gear is cheap.… Expand
  51. twinsen13579
    Jun 14, 2012
    1
    If you are a fan of the diablo series and loved diablo 2, do not buy this game. The story is horrible with terrible voice acting and a ton of holes. The boss fights are very dissapointing. This is absolutely garbage unless it is your first diablo game, then possibly it would be mediocre at best. The loot system is completely broken and the game has adopted the pay to win mentallity of manyIf you are a fan of the diablo series and loved diablo 2, do not buy this game. The story is horrible with terrible voice acting and a ton of holes. The boss fights are very dissapointing. This is absolutely garbage unless it is your first diablo game, then possibly it would be mediocre at best. The loot system is completely broken and the game has adopted the pay to win mentallity of many F2P games online. The thrill of the open world and roaming while farming is gone as you are forced to follow the repetitive and boring story over and over. Even the end game requires you to follow the lame story over and over.

    This in all honesty was the biggest dissapointment in video games I have ever had and I have been playing blizzard titles since I installed the original warcraft on floppy disk. The only reason this has sold anyhthing is because of the brand name.

    I wouldnt reccomend this game to my worst enemy, and blizzard has lost the business of myself and many others that I know due to this abomination. If you want a hack and slash title give torchlgiht 2 some consideration. It is made by the original diablo developers and has the true diablo feel. Also another title worth consideration is Krater.

    Both of these games are 20 dollars or less and provide much more entertainment and value then Diablo 3.    … Expand
  52. lerotz
    Jun 14, 2012
    9
    I've put in a lot of time into this game, and I must say that Blizzard has truly outdone themselves. The story that continues right from the end Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction truly makes this a fantastic title with marvelous boss fights, replayability with up to 8 characters, Hardcore, and at least 4 difficulties that I have seen there is so much content packed into the game we can all seeI've put in a lot of time into this game, and I must say that Blizzard has truly outdone themselves. The story that continues right from the end Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction truly makes this a fantastic title with marvelous boss fights, replayability with up to 8 characters, Hardcore, and at least 4 difficulties that I have seen there is so much content packed into the game we can all see ourselves playing this game at least until the new Starcraft 2 expansion comes out. Plus with the easy ability to join into a public game and get involved with other games it is just fantastic. The only two complaints is why do they not have a feature where I can speak to my teammates through a mic, and I should not have to be online to access the game because I might not have a fantastic internet connection, but still want to play the game. SINGLE PLAYER should never have lag.… Expand
  53. Hvalfisk
    Jun 14, 2012
    2
    Coming from Diablo 2, of course there would be some huge expectations. Unfortunately Diablo 3 actually disappoints quite a lot. Fortunately most of the areas where Diablo 3 is lacking will be fixed in patches, so in a year or something the game will probably be 50% more fun. THE most important thing is items, and this is actually one of the areas where it is lacking the most. This will beComing from Diablo 2, of course there would be some huge expectations. Unfortunately Diablo 3 actually disappoints quite a lot. Fortunately most of the areas where Diablo 3 is lacking will be fixed in patches, so in a year or something the game will probably be 50% more fun. THE most important thing is items, and this is actually one of the areas where it is lacking the most. This will be fixed and that will be awesome, but one thing they can't fix is the story. And the story is bad. I don't think they can fix the voice acting either, and especially with the bosses is it bad. I still get goosebumps from Diablo saying "Not even death can save you from me", or from Baal's laughter, or basically just from any boss in Diablo 2. The bosses don't sound cool in Diablo 3, so you don't really get this feeling of "Epicness". And even though the combat and action is immensely fun, the game doesn't really feel that great.… Expand
  54. mjwilliams84
    Jun 14, 2012
    5
    Good combat system, a fairly well-designed skill system that leaves you juggling constantly, and decent presentation. For me, that's where it stops. The storyline and voice acting are verging on spoof, the difficulty levels of late game are nowhere near challenging enough, and it's incredibly short. Once you've finished it two or three times there really is no need at all to ever play itGood combat system, a fairly well-designed skill system that leaves you juggling constantly, and decent presentation. For me, that's where it stops. The storyline and voice acting are verging on spoof, the difficulty levels of late game are nowhere near challenging enough, and it's incredibly short. Once you've finished it two or three times there really is no need at all to ever play it again. Overall a big letdown, in fact I'd hugely recommend Diablo 2 over this, regardless of technical advances.… Expand
  55. duckydoug
    Jun 14, 2012
    9
    I can let go of the well-known fact - that the story is lacklustre, kills off too many major characters and has obvious plotholes - because the gameplay is absolutely engaging, addictive and FUN.

    When I first played diablo 2, I was too young to have any appreciation of storytelling in videogames. Thus, I didn't really have any expectations for lore or storyline for the game. Even    I can let go of the well-known fact - that the story is lacklustre, kills off too many major characters and has obvious plotholes - because the gameplay is absolutely engaging, addictive and FUN.

    When I first played diablo 2, I was too young to have any appreciation of storytelling in videogames. Thus, I didn't really have any expectations for lore or storyline for the game.

    Even with such a major change to the way you use abilities from the previous installment, the point remains that Diablo 3 is as fun to play as I had hoped. It isn't perfect but I'm having fun and I suspect it'll keep me sated for years to come.

    To sum up, I started off with a score of 11 out of 10, because I'm having that much fun playing the game.
    Technical hitches at day one and beyond --> Minus one. (blizzard should know better)
    STORY STORY STORY --> Minus one.

    Leaves me at a 9/10 :) thanks for reading.    … Expand
  56. Fido
    Jun 14, 2012
    3
    Character animation, and some soundtracks are very nice in this game, but this all. Absolutely boring storyline and gameplay. Low replayability, very simple and linear locations, and i can continue this for a long time.
  57. Egrimm
    Jun 14, 2012
    3
    i waited years for it and now I'm really disappointed about this game... Bad story, bad graphics, bad sound, requires to be always online and the all idea of the auction house is simply wrong in a farming game like Diablo!
  58. purpleoctopus
    Jun 13, 2012
    3
    I don't write a lot of reviews - but for this I gotta chime in ... was really excited about Diablo III - was a huge D2 fan. It took them how many years to make this piece? Sure it's fun but they control when you can play!!! Yeah, you read that right - you'll pay $60 for a game that's in many respects dated AND they can shut the servers off on you ... which happens all the time!! Bunch ofI don't write a lot of reviews - but for this I gotta chime in ... was really excited about Diablo III - was a huge D2 fan. It took them how many years to make this piece? Sure it's fun but they control when you can play!!! Yeah, you read that right - you'll pay $60 for a game that's in many respects dated AND they can shut the servers off on you ... which happens all the time!! Bunch of control-hungry bastards. Never buying another Blizzard game period.… Expand
  59. MenjiCA
    Jun 13, 2012
    1
    This game is a total disappointment. I am a long time Diablo 2 Fan and had great expectation for Diablo 3.
    Since it's release I never had a day that I played that went without a connection error, or deconnection , or a server maintenance. Server maintenance can last from 4 to 8 hours! Thank God I paid whit paypal and could get my money back.
    Diablo 3 is the MW3 of 2012. Total letdown.
  60. Decimal
    Jun 13, 2012
    7
    Fun game so far, about halfway through ACT II and I'm enjoying the dungeons and storyline (nice that there isn't too much story). Too bad servers keep glitching out so have to give it a red until they fix it. Edit: Bumped it up to 7 since servers have stabilized. The always online pushed it from a 8 to a 7 for me. Edit 2: Inferno balance, lag deaths, aand having server restarts when I'mFun game so far, about halfway through ACT II and I'm enjoying the dungeons and storyline (nice that there isn't too much story). Too bad servers keep glitching out so have to give it a red until they fix it. Edit: Bumped it up to 7 since servers have stabilized. The always online pushed it from a 8 to a 7 for me. Edit 2: Inferno balance, lag deaths, aand having server restarts when I'm pushing my monk to ACT III Inferno with 5 stacks of NV dropped it another 2 to 5. They really messed this title up… Expand
  61. valrond
    Jun 13, 2012
    1
    It doesn't get a zero from me because this things works, kindof. Of course, It didn't work the first few days. And all of that because of the greed of Blizzard, forcing the use of the internet for DRM and for the pay shop. If the game was good, that wouldn't matter that much, but it isn't. It's a casualized, made fro 5 year old kids, version of what Diablo was using the graphic engine ofIt doesn't get a zero from me because this things works, kindof. Of course, It didn't work the first few days. And all of that because of the greed of Blizzard, forcing the use of the internet for DRM and for the pay shop. If the game was good, that wouldn't matter that much, but it isn't. It's a casualized, made fro 5 year old kids, version of what Diablo was using the graphic engine of World of Warcraft. Avoid at all cost. If you want something close to the original Diablo and Diablo II experiece, get Torchlight and Torchlight II.… Expand
  62. rfpo009
    Jun 13, 2012
    1
    purchased this game on line and still cant download the game, installer hangs on updates,tryed everthing to get it to work.
    then i read all the reviews on the game, I will not buy another game from Blizzard ever!
    all the games i buy on steam work fine!
  63. FloydSummerOf68
    Jun 13, 2012
    5
    The game has it's problems. The main one being that playing through on normal and nightmare are simply too easy to the point of being boring. By the time you get to hell mode the difficulty feels like it's where it should be, but the story is very dull by this time. You've already seen it twice and it's so short that it's not worth replaying for the sake of the story. It is an averageThe game has it's problems. The main one being that playing through on normal and nightmare are simply too easy to the point of being boring. By the time you get to hell mode the difficulty feels like it's where it should be, but the story is very dull by this time. You've already seen it twice and it's so short that it's not worth replaying for the sake of the story. It is an average game, at best. Definitely not one that will stand the test of time.… Expand
  64. Tracer
    Jun 13, 2012
    0
    The worst purchase in years. Technical problems and poor support. But once you get through that, the game is an utter bore. I stuck with it too to find out if it got better. It has to - its Diablo! It doesn't.
  65. ginnk
    Jun 13, 2012
    1
    This "game" is a shame for Blizzard and for players! I spend more than 40 hours on ths game before i say what i think. Graphisms are from an other time (10 years ago?) the gameplay? what gameplay? Loots are so poor! and the aspect "paytowin" is really , really a shame. And of course i don't speak about the obligation to be online all the time. I think Blizzard is over, just a company toThis "game" is a shame for Blizzard and for players! I spend more than 40 hours on ths game before i say what i think. Graphisms are from an other time (10 years ago?) the gameplay? what gameplay? Loots are so poor! and the aspect "paytowin" is really , really a shame. And of course i don't speak about the obligation to be online all the time. I think Blizzard is over, just a company to make money making casual games. I go back to D2, waiting Torchlight2 . I hope i will be better - but i guess it will be easy to be better. (Sorry for english people , english is not my native language)… Expand
  66. D3sucks
    Jun 13, 2012
    4
    I was gonna give it a 7, because it is a fun game the first few days even if it's nowhere near as fun or addicting as its predecessor, which I'd rate a 10. However, the pay2win feature absolutely killed the game.

    Do not buy it, don't support Kotick and his greedy plans!
  67. Pudsley
    Jun 13, 2012
    3
    I gave it a harsh 3 simply because after all the development time, the hype and the very reasonable expectations I had for the game it just didn't deliver even for the hardcore D2 fans amongst my friends it was a disappointment.

    The graphics are reasonable, nothing special which isn't a major problem, the sound is good, the story is poor (no thought required to create that at all, even    I gave it a harsh 3 simply because after all the development time, the hype and the very reasonable expectations I had for the game it just didn't deliver even for the hardcore D2 fans amongst my friends it was a disappointment.

    The graphics are reasonable, nothing special which isn't a major problem, the sound is good, the story is poor (no thought required to create that at all, even when compared with D2 it is pretty dire) the CG cut scenes at the end of each act where stunning as you'd expect from Blizzard but that's quite simply where it ends.

    I completed Normal, Nightmare and Hell so I gave the game more than adequate chances to shine, but glaringly it didn't, it handles multi-player very badly for playing with friends but somewhat better for playing with strangers in that if you join someone ahead of you on a quest it bumps you to their quests level and it's hard to figure out where you were previously (as an example if you are on act 1 and you join a friend even for a split second to trade with them who is on act 4 then you are now on act 4, when you go back to your own game you have to try and figure out where you where and where to continue from. To visit the Auction you have to log out of the game world and you will probably lose a lot of progress, regress several quests/objectives and at the very least lose all of your explored map and have to do it all again.

    Damage doesn't scale and neither does level so if you try to help someone lower level you end up obliterating 100 enemies in a single swing, try to help higher level and all the mobs will gain 75=100% health and you won't contribute at all when it comes to killing them, in fact you'll just evaporate when they take a swing at you.

    You cannot mail items and trading in game usually screws up progression as previously mentioned.

    I've saved the worst for last, it is an incredibly short game with very little diversity, to reach level 60 you will have to play through Normal mode and complete the game (ending at around level 40), then play through Nightmare and complete the same content again reaching level 50, then again run through Hell difficulty doing the same content again to reach 60. At which point if you really weren't bored to tears you can do the game for a fourth time on Inferno difficulty just because you fancy a challenge.

    In this day and age a game that cannot provide enough content to fill it's level range is pathetic, if they'd have cut it down to 40 levels it would still have been pretty short but to ask people to redo some pretty repetitive content three times to reach the level cap is just outright lazy, Hellgate London did this and it was a total flop largely because of it. Diablo 3 is a short sighted underdeveloped over hyped game from developers who had more experience and resources than almost any other developer and it's game was a financial success based on the Blizzard and Diablo labels only, not the game's actual worth, the fact that the majority of reviews here is negative is testament to that.

    To top everything off, for the first two weeks on and off the game just didn't work period, login errors, full servers, all problems that were tested for in open beta testing and stress testing weeks before launch, problems that were simply not addressed. Frankly that kind of thing is acceptable (though really it shouldn't be) on day 1, maybe day 2...the weekend after launch myself or my friends couldn't log into the game at all due to overloaded servers, on the busiest day at the busiest time of the week "Sunday afternoon" in Europe the servers went down for 8 hours and the game was off limits to everyone, pure incompetence.

    So why a 3 then and not a 1? I gave it a 3 simply because as a single player game I've seen far worse, had it have been priced a little cheaper digitally and had they not forced online logins that frankly didn't work 80% of the peak time the first week then I probably would've given it a more favourable review.    … Expand
  68. alexil
    Jun 13, 2012
    1
    I honestly can't understand why people giving negative reviews are being called whiners and idiots.
    I was awaiting for this game with much anticipation, because I liked very much D2 and Titan Quest. Does love for D3 predecessors not count as main reason of anticipation? Am I an idiot just because D3
    does not stand to my expectation? Previous reviewers already mentioned main flaws of    I honestly can't understand why people giving negative reviews are being called whiners and idiots.
    I was awaiting for this game with much anticipation, because I liked very much D2 and Titan Quest. Does love for D3 predecessors not count as main reason of anticipation? Am I an idiot just because D3
    does not stand to my expectation?
    Previous reviewers already mentioned main flaws of Diablo 3. So I'll just make an accent on what made D3 very disappointing game for me.
    1. I can't play this game in the evening hours after my work, because of lag issue. I have good broadband internet connection and in the morning hours game was running OK. But in the evening I just can't play. Yes, I'm ashamed of throwing 60 bucks into waste basket. But we learn on our mistakes.
    I will never, ever buy another DRM game.
    2. We rate everything in our life compareing to previous experiences. So I don't understand why comparing D3 to its predecessors is not legitimate. In my opinion D3 is almost not replayable, which I cannot say about D2 or TQ., I played those games for a long, long time.
    3. Getting sword with intelligence stat in a game, where there is no cross-classing is not fun !!
    4. Being robbed of really good loot in a game that is mostly about loot - is not fun !!
    5. I don't whan't all this real money stuff, I just want good single player gaming experience

    I'm very frustrated.

    I'm    … Expand
  69. gruese
    Jun 13, 2012
    5
    Considering the hype for this game and the large fan base looking forward to its release with huge expectations, disappointment was to be anticipated in some form. The always online thing is a bummer, for starters, but that is nothing that surprised me out of Blizzard. What did surprise me was the startling mediocrity of the game in terms of visual style, sound and voices, in-game videosConsidering the hype for this game and the large fan base looking forward to its release with huge expectations, disappointment was to be anticipated in some form. The always online thing is a bummer, for starters, but that is nothing that surprised me out of Blizzard. What did surprise me was the startling mediocrity of the game in terms of visual style, sound and voices, in-game videos and quest design. These things are tolerable, although I personally hate the way everything out of Blizzard is becoming more and more cartoony and World-of-Warcraft-looking. The storytelling on the other hand is not mediocre - it's frankly terrible. Where the fascinating background lore could have been worked into an enticing, mysterious storyline, it was not. The characters are simply laughable. I really hated listening to most of them. Opponents like the "Lord of Lies" will be so daft, I found myself wondering what the target age group for the game actually is.

    Yes, Diablo 3 is fun if you play through it once, maybe level up to 60 and go hunting for some gear if that's your thing, but personally I will put it on the shelf for now. I've spent my money on worse games though, so 5 out of 10 is about right.    … Expand
  70. L3kris
    Jun 13, 2012
    3
    Having never played either Diablo I or II, so I didn't pick this game up out of nostalgia or other sentimental reasons. Played it because of the hype, mainly. Even though my expectations were not too high, I am somewhat disappointed. Smooth as it is, it just couldn't keep my interest for an extended period of time. The combat is too repetitious, just keep your left mouse-button pressed,Having never played either Diablo I or II, so I didn't pick this game up out of nostalgia or other sentimental reasons. Played it because of the hype, mainly. Even though my expectations were not too high, I am somewhat disappointed. Smooth as it is, it just couldn't keep my interest for an extended period of time. The combat is too repetitious, just keep your left mouse-button pressed, sometimes right-click or press numbers 1-4... Best thing it got going for it is the many checkpoints - "I'm just gonna take another checkpoint", but even so it becomes tedious grinding once the story is completed and just starts over on Nightmare...… Expand
  71. Lontra
    Jun 13, 2012
    10
    It amuses me how people people give such a negative comments on a game they have hardly touched. Several complaints are simply that there are minor issues with the game play, but if this was made by another company they would be compliments on how few they are instead. Others complain that you don't get to put points into a particular stat like you we're able to in the previous DiabloIt amuses me how people people give such a negative comments on a game they have hardly touched. Several complaints are simply that there are minor issues with the game play, but if this was made by another company they would be compliments on how few they are instead. Others complain that you don't get to put points into a particular stat like you we're able to in the previous Diablo games and this creates a lack of diversity in builds. This simply is untrue as the current system allows for far more option, in D2 you would just go on-line and find the best build and use that one, now you actually think about what abilities you are going to take depending on you play style and group make up. Another common complaint is that the game is too easy, for this I have to say get to hell difficulty act 2. that is where the challenge really starts to ramp up. Normal and Nightmare really are there to teach you how to play your character and slowly give you all your skills with their 6 different variants each, Hell is to finish off your levels, and Inferno is to Give you the real Challenge. One last complaint is that the game is Grindy, well that shouldn't really be a surprise this is a Diablo game after all. Finally this game isn't perfect and there is defiantly areas that can be improved, and if we know Blizzard the problems will never be fixed.. JK everyone knows deep down that any bugs and game play issues will get fixed it's just a matter of time ;)… Expand
  72. prh99
    Jun 12, 2012
    4
    It's mediocre at best, the plot is uninspired and the major plot twist is equally cheap and unimaginative.
    The combat is satisfying but that's about it, blizzard has dumbed down the skill and attribute system to a greatly simplified talent system that can be infinitely respected without incurring any penalty. Boss battles are pretty simple as well, the major bosses have annoying AOE    It's mediocre at best, the plot is uninspired and the major plot twist is equally cheap and unimaginative.
    The combat is satisfying but that's about it, blizzard has dumbed down the skill and attribute system to a greatly simplified talent system that can be infinitely respected without incurring any penalty. Boss battles are pretty simple as well, the major bosses have annoying AOE attacks which get spammed at regular intervals to make up for how easy they are to defeat. This game is nerfed out of the box.    … Expand
  73. Timothy80
    Jun 12, 2012
    3
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. First of all, I'm not from Battle.net fourms. I'm speaking from my heart. I started to play diablo 2 about 4 months ago and decided to buy diablo 3 for the hell of it a couple of weeks ago. I don't listen to gamespot, etc. Basicly in today's industry the publishers are starting to buy for their "10/10" Scores *COUGH*EA*COUGH*.

    Well enough about that. Let's move on!

    I keep hearing how Diablo 3 is the quote and quote "BEST RPG EVER". You know what? This game was just over-hyped to **** It tells a story when a game is forced to go into a redesign phase in development possbily twice by the publisher. Plot: Way too short. Only about 5-6 hours if your playing on Normal for the first time. Also Obvious plot twist.

    Graphics:
    Good god, I wasn't impressed. I've seen games with better graphics. These graphics look cel-shaded. Not that there is anything wrong with that. It's not right for this type of game. To be honest, the atmosphere is not as good as diablo 2's. I was going for the impression that Blizzard was going to add more detail to this game.

    Gameplay: Mainly my biggest problem is the gameplay. It's boring as **** There is nothing new. It's just Diablo 2's gameplay with a new engine in my point of view.

    - Replay Value: Once you play it with your friends once or twice, It gets boring. BLizzard had a chance to change some stuff in development. Why didn't they take the chance?

    I also noticed from a couple of friends of mine (One who is also a writer for MMO.org, Paragustrants) had an issue with Act 3 in Inferno. Your basicly hitting a brick wall at this point. And it is said the blizzard testers didn't even finish Inferno. Wow.

    Music: Okayish. It's not bad in any way!
    Some of my other complaints,

    Servers:
    Yes, Even after about a month after release this game is still having connection issues. Lag outs every 15 minutes. Unable to login, etc. Blizzard is a huge company. Shouldn't they have the funds to buy more servers instead of swimming in their bathtub of greed? If I was a developer, My mindset for a bad launch would be to clear up the connection issues and bring in more and faster servers for the players. Blizzard had a stress test for this game I believe. What the hell was that for? Was it for people who could brag about how they were in the first closed beta for this game? 8 years and Blizzard wasen't expecting to be a big turn out? Seriously?

    Botting: Blizzard knew about this problem since Diablo 2. Go look at the online for Diablo 2. It's filled with bots. Nothing was done. Blizzard just turned a blind eye to them. And now in Diablo 3, They don't. You should have been more prepared for this. Again, They had 8 years to plan an idea to stop this. Also note: I love how they **** over people with the new patch that was "SUPPOSE" to fix botting. FYI: These guys are f**king smart. They make a living off of this. I know they will just work their way around this.

    Real-Money AUction House: This is my biggest complaint. Out of all the stuff blizzard could work on, They decide to work on this. Now prices will be insane for the item market in this game. Theres no cap for selling items. So people can put a price of over 500$ on an item. Skillpoints:

    Blizzard missed a great chance to pull up the replay value if they let players create their own builds like in Diablo 2. Pretty bad move on their part.

    The "ONLINE" DRM:

    Ladies and Gentlemen, Please take a moment to look at Ubisoft's SHINING EXAMPLE of why this was a horrible idea to begin with. Now, I can understand Blizzard was trying to cut down on piracy. But who in development thought this would solve the problem? Private Servers are already starting to appear to be worked on from I understand.    … Expand
  74. Ceridwen8
    Jun 12, 2012
    4
    I've gotten my wizard well into Inferno. (Despite being female myself, I picked the male wizard because the woman's voice was incredibly grating. Hers was the only voice acting that I actively loathed.) When asked about the game overall, I'd say, "eh, ok." The story is painfully short, and your character makes virtually no difference, and has no choices to make. At this point, I expectI've gotten my wizard well into Inferno. (Despite being female myself, I picked the male wizard because the woman's voice was incredibly grating. Hers was the only voice acting that I actively loathed.) When asked about the game overall, I'd say, "eh, ok." The story is painfully short, and your character makes virtually no difference, and has no choices to make. At this point, I expect games to offer me some choices, even in a survival game. On the other hand, I found my character likable and sometimes witty. (I felt stuck with the templar companion - and he's intensely irritating. The Scoundrel grew on me, but was useless by Inferno, & the Enchantress was like nails on a chalkboard. Pink nails.) Blizzard asks you to replay the same story over and over and over - which I assume everyone knows & expected, but it got VERY old for me. As for game play & challenge, Hell was the most fun - it was fine solo. (I also played with friends & family - never the public games.) Inferno is hard, as everyone says, but mainly, annoying. Mobs have random spells - wasps buzz around bubbled & linked & spitting flames (if they did this in real life, I'd be off the planet.) I felt very limited trying to balance health & damage - it just wasn't fun, & didn't feel like using the character to the fullest - at the very time you WANT to be using all your abilities. Auction House - I hate that you have to buy gear, can't earn it other than gathering gold. Worst of all - recently they made General Chat mandatory. Before I can type "/leave general," I'm hit with gold spam. (I assume they're selling the items stolen off hacked accounts?) Every time you log in, you get hit with this, and have to leave chat (this gives plenty of time for gold sellers to spam you.) If battle.net changes this, good, but too late. Even so, after round 3, the auction house was still more interesting than the game. By the end, I felt the first round should have been optional. Nightmare felt utterly pointless and should have been either the first round, or nothing. Hell was the best - inferno is just a pain. The strategy seemed to be - "Well, I can't kite here - have to reload." I didn't mind the old fashioned styling, really - it felt like being back in an old Ultima. The armor dyes were pretty lousy, though. In conclusion - I don't hate the game - I surely don't love it. I might fiddle around on my wizard if I'm bored, but nothing could inspire me to run another character through. For one thing, the classes aren't all that different - even between ranged & melee. For another - I couldn't face cycling through that story again. Most of all, I don't want to be focused solely on buying-selling gear, and that seems to be the utter core of the game. And real money? Ha! I don't THINK so! In all, it held my attention for about a week.… Expand
  75. Vizition
    Jun 12, 2012
    3
    Diablo III is the biggest setback in gaming history. I am writing this review, in hope of gaming directors waking up. This is a true copy of WoW. The quests, the dialog and even the grouping. Its the same UI as wow, and thats just terrible. Diablo II is one of the best games ever made, and Blizzard totally ruined it. We need offline play. We want randomized scenery as the old. We want noDiablo III is the biggest setback in gaming history. I am writing this review, in hope of gaming directors waking up. This is a true copy of WoW. The quests, the dialog and even the grouping. Its the same UI as wow, and thats just terrible. Diablo II is one of the best games ever made, and Blizzard totally ruined it. We need offline play. We want randomized scenery as the old. We want no cartoony Graphics, but dark and spooky stuff like in the II. This is just sad. I give it a 4.0, because its fun to play with friends. But it was 12 hours to Hell, and now its just pure poo.

    GG    … Expand
  76. Syrionn
    Jun 12, 2012
    3
    Have played for about ~130 hours of total on three different characters and I can firmly say that Diablo 3 was a mistake. Blizzard, in the past, has not released a mechanically bad video game EVER. Battle.net 2.0 made SC2 a overall bad experience for me but the game itself was good. WoW has it's balance issues in terms of DPS in PvE and class issues in PvP. They are constantly patchingHave played for about ~130 hours of total on three different characters and I can firmly say that Diablo 3 was a mistake. Blizzard, in the past, has not released a mechanically bad video game EVER. Battle.net 2.0 made SC2 a overall bad experience for me but the game itself was good. WoW has it's balance issues in terms of DPS in PvE and class issues in PvP. They are constantly patching those and it is a work in progress just like any MMO. Getting down to it Diablo 3 did not have promised features and for a time the development team was not doing anything in the pre-release. I waited over 10 years for this game that had been redone more than once by Blizzard and I can firmly say that it was worth the wait. From PvP not being in game even though it says it is on the box, to the RMAH requiring you buy a device, along with the game you already bought, so you can use it. It has been a terrible ride. The first week's launch and the whole idea of being online to play a single player game was and is a slap in the consumer's face. Hardcore is out of the question as you are always online and lag is always an issue. I would never even think of making a character in that environment as the frustration of farming gear is already too much. Blizzard built the game so people would get to inferno and hit a brick wall. Only way to topple that brick was is to farm gear for hours on end or you can spend money at the RMAH. This is good for business but who the hell wants to pay more money on to something you already bought to do well in? Who the hell wants to farm for hours on end so you can progress through content you have already done? I am a hardcore gamer but I don't see artificial challenge worth doing. There is not anything in it for me. Lastly, the story was written by a guy who got hired on for his artistic abilities. CGI scenes and dialog should be skipped at all times it is just that bad. The plot does not line up to anything that happened in the previous games and should have been aborted by any normal human being. Service maintenance, consumer always being wrong, terrible customer representatives, and a grindfest is all that awaits the willing and able Diablo 3 fanatic. I would recommend playing D2 as even with the duping it is still more "fun" than this trainwreck.… Expand
  77. Sunfire
    Jun 12, 2012
    7
    This is a good game,with many fixable problems(servers/loot/diff). But! This is not a diablo game,it lost its atmosphere,its feeling,it turned into a grind game with roles, Yes just like wow.I'd rather had 5 more diablo 2 expansions thans this gam,and i want Jay wilson to gtfo of diablo and these guys come back!( The game, with its dark fantasy and horror themes, was conceptualized andThis is a good game,with many fixable problems(servers/loot/diff). But! This is not a diablo game,it lost its atmosphere,its feeling,it turned into a grind game with roles, Yes just like wow.I'd rather had 5 more diablo 2 expansions thans this gam,and i want Jay wilson to gtfo of diablo and these guys come back!( The game, with its dark fantasy and horror themes, was conceptualized and designed by David Brevik and Erich Schaefer, who with Max Schaefer acted as project leads on the game. The producers were Matthew Householder and Bill Roper.) - taken from wikipedia - Diablo 2 Even if i played like 120hrs now,i will play more but it bores me now,diablo 2 never bored me for 4 years, Everybody say that D2 became good after lod and patches,in my opinion if this is true why couldn't they bring those goodies in D3. If this game hadn't been called Diablo it would be a 10+++++ rated game,but because it bears the name diablo,and cant exceed the minimum for it,it gets only 7.… Expand
  78. cbapiaz
    Jun 12, 2012
    1
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Honestly who did their hire to write such a pathetic and stupid story? is lame, boring, repetitive and brough into you everytime. Also the darker feeling of previous diablo games is not there, cartonish graphics, boss/enemy tauntings, darker ambientation is not there. This game is dumbed down for 10 years old wow gamers, it should be called DiaBloW 2. This game Is not as inmersive as D2 was, and honestly after replaying D2. I can see the diference and ambientiation, even if D2 has outated graphics is still an amazing game. I don't see myself playing this game over and over as D2. I got my monk till level 60 and rerolling other char on D3 doesn't seem fun for me. why rerolling just to see the same crappy story over and over and over? at least on D2 the story was great and you could enjoy it. Now is just an "esc" fest on every cutscene and event. At least i got my good hours of fun out of it. still hoping some patch or expansion would fix this, but this game is a failure from scratch, it should be redesigned at wiped out and rerolled again.
    seriously cain dying to a demon fairy, with demon powder? come on... Very dissapointed. 1 point just because i actually had fun for a while, then i got bored.    … Expand
  79. Natura
    Jun 12, 2012
    2
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Honestly, i'm not the type to write reviews, but on this occasion after YET another unannounced 'server update' other than checking the blizzard website, I actually created an account to write this. It is that bad.

    As most reviewers here would know, the basic review is that, if your a fan of the series, you'll find it bland, uninspired, repetitive and at times frustrating when compared to the original. Environments follow the same formulae as the old series, i mean come on, from dark forest type level to sand level in act 2 of diablo, to the exact same thing of diablo 3? Give me a break. This is but one of many flaws...

    However, for the people new to the series, they will find this the bee's knees of gaming, because it is. It has to be, as with a formulae from the original D1 and D2, randomizing maps, randomized items, randomized champions, gameplay was limitless, kind of like the random jokes on any obscure pop culture refernces on family guy, its an unlimited source of fun.

    So that in a sense meant that D3 was destined to be good. For new users to the IP, it would be great. However for the other users that have played before.... when comparing it to the previous game, its like comparing Lebron James to Michael Jordon. Lebron would be D3, a spoilt, over indulgent,over commercialised, GREEDY (RMAH case in point) talented player, where as MJ would be D1 & 2, the original and still the best even if Lebron gets some rings or more than MJ, he still will never live to the passion, the drive and the honest pure entertainment value that MJ provided us.

    D1 and 2 is a testimate to 'gameplay first' just like how MJ was all about the team and the winning the championships.

    D3 just shows how far Blizzard have lost their way, and will forever be remembered for its constant unannounced patch updates(come on Blizzard, a simple email notification in advance would have been great...its stakeholder management 101), the 'mommy me' handling of skills distribution and character customisation, its persistance with an always on DRM system for the single players(an obvious lure to syphon more people into the online world and its RMAH) and its controlled scaling of item drops/item performance versus enemy health(Sometimes Blizzard, its good to get an item drop that will help you kick ass for the next 5-6 hours of gameplay).

    People complain all the time about how we shouldn't be upset about the server outages, the fact that this is pretty much a MMPORG, and we're being too self righteous as fans of what we want and that metacritic should be a forum of game reviews, and on the "in game gameplay", but the fact is:

    Gameplay is about the 'whole experience' from the moment you receive it, to actually playing and completing the game... To say that it isn't, is like saying going to watch a basketball game or any real life game is not judged on the traffic you had to fight to get there, the quality of the referee decisions or the amount of dirty tricks tactics made in the game. In the case of the server patch updates, it would be like to going to watch the series finals and suddenly the nba decide they want to upgrade their stadiums and not let you know until you show up at the door.

    I'm so sorry Blizzard, I used to have so much faith in you with the "Gameplay first" attitude, however it seems that you have become too self indulgent, too greedy and in that... lost the way... not even upcoming DOTA2 can redeem this user from buying another product of yours, no doubt you'll end up finding some sneaky way to charge the user to get better items, colours, banner and what crap have you...    … Expand
  80. fox294
    Jun 12, 2012
    6
    A decent game made worse by the fact that I can't play it when I want to.

    1. Regarding the online requirement: I thought that this concern was hogwash at first. However, the game is often down. I have limited windows of time to play, and more-than-rarely am I unable to play my f*cking game because the servers are down. This is structured as a single-player game with an option to    A decent game made worse by the fact that I can't play it when I want to.

    1. Regarding the online requirement: I thought that this concern was hogwash at first. However, the game is often down. I have limited windows of time to play, and more-than-rarely am I unable to play my f*cking game because the servers are down. This is structured as a single-player game with an option to co-op, so this really pisses me off. Really.
    2. The game itself is merely ok. First of all the story is weak and seems to become seriously rushed in the second act. Worse than the story is the dialogue which is terrible. I also don't care for the fact that your heroes have all sorts of irritating remarks and one-liners. I preferred the stoic types from the first two games. The gameplay is fun, but not the least bit revolutionary. Thematically the game is vastly inferior to its predecessors. Using the D3dark mod helps the atmosphere, but nothing about the game installs that sense of dread and creepiness that the first two games had.
    All that said, there's no reason to give it a 1. I don't know why it took this long to make a game that begins rushing through the plot less than halfway through and contains a very limited number of Blizzard's signature cut scenes. Meh. Swing and a foul ball, Blizz. Not nearly as good at Starcraft 2.    … Expand
  81. Vadoff
    Jun 12, 2012
    3
    * Extremely dumbed down from D2, with insulting amounts of hand-holding present everywhere. This ranges from autostats, all skills enabled, no skill levels, freespecing, restricted skill choices without elective mode enabled, simple skill tooltips, removal of almost all combat mechanic affixes, no weapon swap, 4 socketables vs the hundreds of D2, generic/boring legendaries, etc.

    * Lack of    * Extremely dumbed down from D2, with insulting amounts of hand-holding present everywhere. This ranges from autostats, all skills enabled, no skill levels, freespecing, restricted skill choices without elective mode enabled, simple skill tooltips, removal of almost all combat mechanic affixes, no weapon swap, 4 socketables vs the hundreds of D2, generic/boring legendaries, etc.

    * Lack of social support - poorly implemented chat channels, automatched game joining only, ghost town effect, 4 player limit = even less socializing.

    * Cheesy B-movie story-telling, cliche one-dimensional characters, corny voice-acting, non-sensical/comical actions by villains, predictable twists and plotline.

    * Lack of diverse character types within and among classes - no more physical/caster/hybrid - all character types now rely on weapon damage like physical characters in D2. This destroys a huge amount of itemization/gearing choices, as there's no longer a deviation between decentralized gear (caster) vs centralized gear (physical) vs a build that needs to balance the two (hybrid).

    * DRM online only - no offline single player, no lan support. Laggy servers, and all the same issues of botting, duping, spamming, and trade exploits present in a game that's over a decade old. * Crappy UI that's designed by a console developer - convoluted to navigate, clunky, and inefficient at utilizing screen space.

    * Approx FOUR times less legendaries (uniques/runewords) in the game than D2:
    * 9 chest pieces vs 37 uniques + 14 runewords
    * 18 swords vs 35 uniques + 26 runewords
    * 6 shields vs 22 uniques + 8 runewords
    * 7 bows vs 19 uniques + 16 runewords

    * 4 gems vs 7 gems + 8 unique jewels + 33 runes + a NEAR LIMITLESS variety of magic/rare jewels.

    * Legendaries are generic, boring, and don't have the flavor that D2 uniques/runewords did. Randomization of 1-3 entire affixes also makes the item much less iconic or powerful than before.

    * A severe lack of combat mechanic affixes compared to D2.

    * Inferno mode is broken. It's not more difficult, it's just cheap. 1/2-shots everywhere, melee is severely handicapped. A number of retarded monster affixes that should never have been put in. Most builds except for a select few aren't even viable. There's no semblance of strategy, just having the best gear possible and dumb luck in not hitting the wrong champions.

    * Quests feel a lot more forced and non-optional than in D2.

    * RMAH diminishes the sense of achievement of finding items. Spending hours finding a great item just doesn't feel as rewarding when you know you can find something similar at the RMAH for a couple of cents. Although buying items with money was prevalent in D2, at least it was hidden away and not endorsed for all players to see and use.

    * Farming has shifted from item finding to gold finding. However, gold finding is considerably less fun than item finding. D2 was like playing the slot machine, each pull of the lever and you had a chance at something amazing. D3 is like going to work everyday, earning a paycheck, then buying what you want with the money.

    * Outdoors feel a lot more linear, which is amplified by their completely static nature - there's less vast open areas with less monsters at a time compared to D2 = less opportunities to kill hoards of enemies at once.

    * No ethereal or superior items, no ability to create items with such properties or transmute it onto items you own, no gambling, no charms, no way to reroll item affixes. Mystic used to be able to do this, then got scrapped. All this just represents more dumbing down of features.

    * Lack of character uniqueness/identity/ownership - all builds are freely changeable, many builds in the late game are similar or identical - no character permanence + lack of customizability = lack of character attachment.

    * Lack of in-depth customization - skills only have 1 level each so it's impossible to specialize in certain skills to the extent you could before. You can't specialize in builds that aren't predetermined for you through the passive trait system. Because there are no points to allocate, there's no more tinkering with unique builds, thinking about your build, or calculating your allocation of skill points/synergies.

    * Low replayability - no point in making more than 1 character for each class. All unique builds can be tried out in the timespan of a few minutes, instead of a few weeks. Unique builds aren't practical in Inferno. Not enough depth in customization. Not enough depth in itemization. Bad pvp = low incentive to find loot. Bland loot = low incentive to find loot. Gold farming = low incentive to find loot. Low social support = less fun while playing. After beating inferno, is there even a point in continuing to play a game that's no longer fun?    … Expand
  82. johndoe530
    Jun 12, 2012
    0
    Diablo 3 is a disgrace to the franchise and a slap in the face to its fanbase. The story is terrible and predictable with cheesy dialogue. The graphics are almost 10 years old. No singleplayer. Pay to win. Always online. There is zero social aspect to the game. Diablo 2 had the main chat lobby where you could see other players and their gear, as well as interact with them in a multiDiablo 3 is a disgrace to the franchise and a slap in the face to its fanbase. The story is terrible and predictable with cheesy dialogue. The graphics are almost 10 years old. No singleplayer. Pay to win. Always online. There is zero social aspect to the game. Diablo 2 had the main chat lobby where you could see other players and their gear, as well as interact with them in a multi channel chat interface. Diablo 3 has one pathetic "general chat" which is plagued by an ungodly amount of gold farmers spamming relentlessly. One will find themselves forced to leave the channel instantly. The item database is garbage. Blue "magic" items are generally the best in the game and "legendaries" are a complete joke. One will often find class specific items full of worthless attributes (e.g. intelligence on a "mighty" 2handed barbarian only club). Terrible. I think the auction house is the worst feature this lackluster game has to offer. It literally gives no incentive to playing the game at all. Lets say you get to a boss in act 3 and it's too difficult to beat with your current gear (i.e. gear check fights which are also lame). Instead of going back through the act and farming lower level content to gear up, the auction house is right there to solve your problems in a few clicks. Seriously, whats the point to trying to farm decent gear when you can just buy it for a few thousand gold and then steamroll the boss you were stuck on. I could go on but I find myself filling up with rage. I can't believe I waited years for this garbage to come out. The game is in beta mode at best. What has happened to the gaming industry? Remember when games had to stand on their own two feet and were sold as is? Those were the best. Now were stuck with mainstream casual friendly mega corporations with the "we'll patch it later" mentality. So sad. RIP Blizzard North.… Expand
  83. Luke494
    Jun 12, 2012
    10
    This game has been a huge disappointment to most players. Though many don't know anything about the Diablo series due to it's massive period of time between releases. Diablo 3 is a terrific game with beautiful graphics and the in depth story line and looting system will have you playing for weeks on end. I'd like to point out that this game will be receiving expansions as well as a raisedThis game has been a huge disappointment to most players. Though many don't know anything about the Diablo series due to it's massive period of time between releases. Diablo 3 is a terrific game with beautiful graphics and the in depth story line and looting system will have you playing for weeks on end. I'd like to point out that this game will be receiving expansions as well as a raised level cap through the years and will provide months of game play. It's a truly fantastic game that is spoiled on kids who don't appreciate it.… Expand
  84. sam1987
    Jun 12, 2012
    10
    this game is awful, and im a HUGE blizzard fan. at first i noticed i couldnt customize the look of my toon, yet.. its an rpg.. that right there says it all.. but the gameplay is terrible.. point click point click.. boring, where am i? no world map.. wow, no world map?! at that point i gave up, game sucks.
  85. Kerslake
    Jun 11, 2012
    0
    This gets a zero for the terrible story. Metzen went through the motions and churned out an incredibly flawed plot that made any Diablo fan squirm in their chair. Gameplay wise, it was fun...until you hit the Hell is too easy, Act II inferno is too hard spot and you must pray that the RNG is kind enough to grant you strong enough gear to auction or use. If you aren't that lucky, enjoyThis gets a zero for the terrible story. Metzen went through the motions and churned out an incredibly flawed plot that made any Diablo fan squirm in their chair. Gameplay wise, it was fun...until you hit the Hell is too easy, Act II inferno is too hard spot and you must pray that the RNG is kind enough to grant you strong enough gear to auction or use. If you aren't that lucky, enjoy your ever lengthening resurrection timer.… Expand
  86. Bossk-Office
    Jun 11, 2012
    4
    Diablo III is cheesy, soulless and seems to be made for ten-year-olds. Still, it's an okay game gameplay-wise -- on harder difficulties. However, and this is a big however, you have to start the game on Normal, play through the entire game on Normal, before you get there. And Normal is way to easy. It presents no challenge -- just keep clicking on the screen around your character and youDiablo III is cheesy, soulless and seems to be made for ten-year-olds. Still, it's an okay game gameplay-wise -- on harder difficulties. However, and this is a big however, you have to start the game on Normal, play through the entire game on Normal, before you get there. And Normal is way to easy. It presents no challenge -- just keep clicking on the screen around your character and you win every encounter. This is truly boring, and it's a 40-hour introduction to the game that you're forced to take. Not really worth it in my opinion.… Expand
  87. Zenn3k
    Jun 11, 2012
    2
    A poorly balanced game that lacks everything that made the series fun. In order to get upgrades from loot drops, you have to kill monsters above your current level of gear, this becomes more and more impossible as you progress, and by Inferno becomes impossible. This makes the game eventually turn into "Auction House Tycoon" instead of Diablo. The auction house becomes as optional toA poorly balanced game that lacks everything that made the series fun. In order to get upgrades from loot drops, you have to kill monsters above your current level of gear, this becomes more and more impossible as you progress, and by Inferno becomes impossible. This makes the game eventually turn into "Auction House Tycoon" instead of Diablo. The auction house becomes as optional to game progression as a keyboard is option to using a computer, and basically drains all the fun from the game. You stop hunting for items and quickly start farming for gold to buy them from others instead.

    Always online DRM is lag filled and further ruins the experience. I've literally lost track of the number of times I have died directly due to server lag. In a game like Diablo, thats ALL action, where every tenth of second matters...having a constant 150-200 ms connection ruins the game.

    I would recommend avoiding, save your $60, you'll save yourself a lot of frustration, far too many bad choices made during development.    … Expand
  88. enwhysee64
    Jun 11, 2012
    1
    i played Diablo and i played Diablo 2
    You would think they would make 3 so it works properly on the servers.
    Not the case. Same pathetic issues. I waiting for the hacks to arrive like they did in DiaBLO one and two. the hacks where you work hard on your character for weeks and someone hacks in and steals all your weapons and armor. Blizzard said sorry when i called.
  89. Pendragon1977
    Jun 11, 2012
    5
    I am willing to look past the launch day errors and habitual server problems. However, I am not able to look past the flatness of Diablo 3's game play and storylines. I really can't see myself playing this game anymore; I mean how many times can a person do the same acts over and over before it becomes boring and tedious?
  90. Enerla
    Jun 11, 2012
    0
    It is bad when you have to update a review and lower an already low score. Low poly models, bad lightning, shader issues, lack of camera movement / zoom. We can list them but we can say: many similar games share these traits. Lag spikes, disconnects, error 37... Ok, some online games stay this unstable for weeks long, Diablo III isn't all alone. Online only single player encourages accountIt is bad when you have to update a review and lower an already low score. Low poly models, bad lightning, shader issues, lack of camera movement / zoom. We can list them but we can say: many similar games share these traits. Lag spikes, disconnects, error 37... Ok, some online games stay this unstable for weeks long, Diablo III isn't all alone. Online only single player encourages account hacking but doesn't prevent item duplication? That is bad. And even worse with server side achievement and AH bugs. We can speak about stability issues, hacking incidents, AH bugs, item duplication and other things. We can point to the fact, there is no PVP because the game is half finished. We can see frequent hotfixes because of huge balance problems that shows how some abilities weren't tested at all. We see numerous smaller or bigger issues. We can see how Blizzard lied in russian key related scandals. But sadly when many people tell you, "it was easy to this point, but now I can't make a progress at all" and good drops just don't want to drop even after days... Then you have to say the game can offer you two things: Boredom because you see no challenge, or boredom because the game is too hard. Where is the fun part? Ok, "flow" (if you learned about psychology) and mindless farming can be "motivating" and "fun" for some. But the same people would have fun as factory workers as well.

    Why the game can't even have short part where the difficulty is just right and you can enjoy it? Why everyone sees easy progress then hit a wall and see "no progress"? Because the balancing mechanism that help to set proper difficulty are just wrong, and small tweaks and adjustment can't fix it. The core game mechanism is flawed and it needs a total redesign. This with the well known issues is enough to rate this game as a 0/10.    … Expand
  91. SpaceNinja
    Jun 11, 2012
    0
    This is a very bad game and doesnt deserve the name Diablo. Story is really bad. No skills and attributes. Everyone is playing with the same build and same items. Gameplay is too linear. Game is full of bugs. Itemization is broken. PvP was delayed and i have a feeling its gonna suck. I wasted like over 9000 minutes on skipping boring cutscenes. I wasted 60 euros for that **** game.
  92. Subterra
    Jun 11, 2012
    0
    The youtube videos of what Blizzard said was going to be Diablo3 are just complete lies and should be sued by many for false advertisement. All the slowly released videos to get you hyped up are completely non existent in what is Supposedly "Diablo3". Sad

    Well I have to be applaud Blizzard in all reality. From a business stand point it would seem like you're on the perfect track to make    The youtube videos of what Blizzard said was going to be Diablo3 are just complete lies and should be sued by many for false advertisement. All the slowly released videos to get you hyped up are completely non existent in what is Supposedly "Diablo3". Sad

    Well I have to be applaud Blizzard in all reality. From a business stand point it would seem like you're on the perfect track to make the shareholders at Activision very, very pleased.

    You've taken a game with so much hype built around it, a game with a rabid and wildly large fan base, a game vaulting off of the massive success of the previous generation - and you've turned it into your sacrificial lamb.

    I understand that WoW is dying. The cash cow that you have been able to depend on to fill your coffers is finally drying up. It had a great run. MoP is not likely to defibrillate the failing heart of what was once the WoW empire, and you know this. Starcraft 2, while an amazing game, cannot replace this cash cow - then again it wasn't meant to. How could it? Your business foresight is very, very attuned. Because of this you carefully planned your next chess move: Diablo 3.

    What better way to birth another golden goose than to bank an entire game off of the most addictive part of what Diablo 2 was: the item grind. Pure brilliance. And so, from the ground up, you formed this game to be solely about item exchange - this would be the titan built to replace WoW's subscription based bankroll in the form of micro transactions.

    Except one thing: you're boring.

    On May 15th 2012, after nearly a decade of anticipation, we were given Diablo 3! Except, it's not quite Diablo 3. It's a slimmed down, cut up version of the Diablo 3 everyone was taught to expect. Except, it wasn't given to us, we still had to pay you full price for it: $60.
    So where's the beef? - some might say. The beef is that this is not Diablo 3, this is an imposter. A hologram. An artificial replacement. A lame duck substitute for what hype built it up to be. A cut up and slimmed down version of what should have been. In essence: a slaughtered, sacrificial lamb.

    That leaves myself and thousands of others saying indeed, where is the beef? Blizzard's answer: there is no cow level. But hey, we got rainbows and unicorns!

    Is anyone still in complete denial about how truly boring this game is or have people started to shake off the honey moon dust?

    You eliminated enchanting, PvP, pet companions and other things from the release version so that you could market it as part of a later expansion for more money. (This is a trend in gaming that several developers have been following; withhold content you've been advertising for the past two years and charge a premium for it at a later date. I shouldn't have expected Activision-Blizzard to be any different, and that is my fault. I wrongly assumed this group was made of trend setters and leaders, not followers - so shame on me.)

    You didn't include a single player mode because you can't make money off of people if they aren't using the AH in a multiplayer format. Less work for you in the development stages, and forces people to engage in the micro-economy that your bankroll is based on. Again, brilliance. Which leads me to my final point:

    There is so LITTLE dynamic to this game I cannot believe it took this many years to create it. In fact, I don't. So why the long wait? I'll tell you: economic law.

    More specifically, the legality and complications that stemmed from the idea of a multinational game built around a Real Money Auction House. This process, I imagine, took years to iron out - while the game itself probably took no more than a few actual working years to complete (and it truly shows).

    It doesn't take an overly intelligent mind to figure WHY they would want to use a RMAH and get a cut of (a lot of) the transactions. That's fine. Here's the problem: you built the entire game around a pure gear grind, and then force that gear grind to revolve around the AH, specifically the RMAH. There is literally no other dynamic. When you build a game from a purely business stand point, you're not building a great game - and a great game this is not.

    In conclusion, gamers, do you really want to spend your time on yet another slave-like gear grind? If so, eat your heart out. You'll find no better place to do it! If not, there are a plethora of other games out there much more deserving of your $60, I promise.

    Diablo 3 was built around Activision's greed. Participate at your own will.

    Gamers hold grudges and people aren't going to forget this disaster. If you obliterate your true fan base, the pillars of your success come falling soon after.

    I give this post less than a few hours before it is deleted by Blizzard moderators. Can't have that bad flavor out there, can we? Truth hurts.    … Expand
  93. woodsielord
    Jun 11, 2012
    3
    Diablo III is lacking in every sense. The graphics are not stunning and too taxing on hardware, the plot redefines cookie cutter, the strategy level required to play the game is geared towards kids, the multiplayer experience is mediocre (especially when it comes to joining 4-player games), everything is mindlessly repetitive, high randomization and low rewards in both looting and craftingDiablo III is lacking in every sense. The graphics are not stunning and too taxing on hardware, the plot redefines cookie cutter, the strategy level required to play the game is geared towards kids, the multiplayer experience is mediocre (especially when it comes to joining 4-player games), everything is mindlessly repetitive, high randomization and low rewards in both looting and crafting only serves farmers and gold spenders.

    The high critic reviews only stand to show how rotten to the core the gaming industry is. Use the harsh reviews to guide you towards honest review sites.    … Expand
  94. X0R
    Jun 11, 2012
    5
    In a nutshell, I wasted $60 buying this and regret wasting the money. Could have been a really great game like the oldie, but is a clusterfck instead loaded with poor-performance on my high-end pc, and within a few days was trying to think of a reason to login.
  95. GrumpyOldWizard
    Jun 11, 2012
    5
    Let me start off by saying I've been with the Diablo series since Diablo 1 first came out. Diablo3 is not the Diablo I know and love. I have two max level characters in Diablo 3.

    Ok, I went into the game knowing a lot had been changed so my negative score is not based on what is written in this paragraph. Let's talk character customization. Very important in an action role-playing game,    Let me start off by saying I've been with the Diablo series since Diablo 1 first came out. Diablo3 is not the Diablo I know and love. I have two max level characters in Diablo 3.

    Ok, I went into the game knowing a lot had been changed so my negative score is not based on what is written in this paragraph. Let's talk character customization. Very important in an action role-playing game, right? Not in the viewpoint of the Blizzard team that developed Diablo 3. In D3 there are no attribute points that the player can allocate. No skill points to put into the character skills either. Attribute points for every character are automatically assigned and there is no option for manual control. Skill points don't exist in the game. Skils become more powerful the character levels up. Characters are granted all skills appropriate for their level and class as they level up. That is right, you don't chose any skills or spells, you get them all. Every wizard has identical attributes and identical skills available to them. A character is limited to 6 skills at any one time but can freely swap out skills at will. There is no such thing as a "character build" in Diablo 3, there is only a "build of the moment." The only thing that will ever distinguish your wizard from someone else's wizard is what gear your wizard is wearing.

    Now, let's talk gear. The itemization in the game is very poor. The items all revolve around granting the player stats. There are no fun item attributes like "chance to cast frost nova" on any item in the game. What you'll see on items are bonuses to strength, intelligence, dexterity, or armor. Bland, boring items. But the unique items are great, right? No...they are the same bland items as the random magic items that drop, only worse. Yes, those uniques (called legendary items) have nothing unique about them other than being named and having a different graphic. What is worse is that they are weaker than blue items or rares that can drop in the game.

    The number of gem types is reduced in Diablo 3. Gone are charms, runes, jewels, and rune words. There is no real difference between weapon types other than graphics.A two-handed maul and a two-handed sword are essentially the same weapon with different graphics.

    And about item drop rate, that is a hit on the game. As you advance in the game you would expect gear leveled to your character to drop, right? Doesn't happen in Diablo 3. When you get to the highest difficulty level in the game (you have to be the max level (60) to play on it) you'll be seeing level 57 gear drop.) Level 60 gear doesn't drop until Act 3 (out of 4) in Inferno mode. So you'll be struggling to advance while undergeared.

    In order to advance in the game after you hit Inferno level you'll have to buy gear off the gold auction house or the soon coming Real Money Auction House. That's right, you'll probably need to fork over your Mastercard for gear. There are no quick ways to make gold in the game. You'll be grinding for weeks or months to buy one decent piece of equipment (with prices of items in the millions of gold pieces.)

    Starting in Nightmare mode, you'll see stronger and stronger elite packs. That is great!! But what is not great is that you'll encounter elite packs with affixes that make them impossible to defeat. There is actually an "Invulnerable" affix that will make monsters immune to ALL attacks. As a ranged wizard you'll be constantly "vortexed" into melee range of elite packs, teleported on top of, or "jailed" (stunned for 5 seconds or so.) Can you say "unavoidable death?" Get used to it.

    Let's talk skills/spells. I have two characters at max level. A wizard and a witch doctor. There are a lot of cool spell ideas (like a giant toad for witch doctors) that simply don't work in the game. You'll find that only one or two "builds" are viable in higher difficulty levels. That is a major "hit" on the game score to me, especially since Blizzard promised a plethora of viable builds for each class. The Diablo series has always been a single player game with multiplayer elements. Diablo 3 has no offline mode. That is right, you can't play Diablo 3 offline at all. When you go online you'll find that the general chat rooms are full of "spam-bots" hawking the wares that they botted. That is right, Battlenet 2.0 and making the game "online-only" did not prevent hacks, bots, or dupes. There are also periods of heavy lag. I'd not recommend playing hardcore if you you decide to try the game.

    I can't recommend the game at this point. It is a game that is still under development (it was obviously not play-tested adequately, especially on higher difficulty levels.) Maybe in 6 months to a year they will have patched the game to make more skills actually viable in the game and dealt with the rampant cheating and terrible lag. I give the game a 5.0.    … Expand
  96. Jikahn
    Jun 11, 2012
    6
    The gameplay is good until you get into hell difficulty and higher. At this point you are forced into the auction house to stay on the gear curve. Also there develops a huge difficulty disparity between the elite packs of enemies that can really disrupt gameplay.

    If you are looking to play through the game on normal and maybe nightmare, this game is fun and engaging. After that, game    The gameplay is good until you get into hell difficulty and higher. At this point you are forced into the auction house to stay on the gear curve. Also there develops a huge difficulty disparity between the elite packs of enemies that can really disrupt gameplay.

    If you are looking to play through the game on normal and maybe nightmare, this game is fun and engaging. After that, game play flaws become apparent in the higher difficulties as the game starts revolve around your ability to run for your life.. My review is based on the entirety of content I have experienced as a witchdoctor which includes Act 1 of inferno.    … Expand
  97. sias
    Jun 11, 2012
    6
    A great dungeon-crawling romp that perfects the genre but adds nothing new to it. GOOD: a reasonably well written and coherent story with decent characters; Lots of loot allowing constant weapon and armour re-speccing; Graphically consistent with a nice water-colour finish to the landscapes; A good selection of classes to choose from, all with unique identifiable skills; Gold money auctionA great dungeon-crawling romp that perfects the genre but adds nothing new to it. GOOD: a reasonably well written and coherent story with decent characters; Lots of loot allowing constant weapon and armour re-speccing; Graphically consistent with a nice water-colour finish to the landscapes; A good selection of classes to choose from, all with unique identifiable skills; Gold money auction house is easy to use and gives players a reason to hang onto redundant, yet rare equipment; Drop-in drop-out co-op is quick and well implemented; Enemy scaling with number of players ensures no challenge is lost in co-op; Ability to re-spec abilities of active character on the fly reduces the need to start characters over again in order to get the ability combinations you desire; Ui is crisp, clear and uncluttered. BAD: Game cannot be played offline, even in single player, which is unnecessary and unfair for the consumer; Intrusive, unreliable always-online DRM causes many disconnection issues; Due to always-online functionality there are significant amounts of lag and framerate issues which diminish the overall quality of the experience; Weapon system is bizarre and poorly implemented with wizard characters casting spells out of a sword that they can't actually use; Other than clothing, characters cannot be customized, which makes the character selection seem a little out-dated; Character animations and graphics are boring and don't match the wonderful water-colour-like environments; Numerous balancing issues between classes that are going to take a while to iron out; Sound effects, voice acting and music are unremarkable; Stat points are automatically assigned upon levelling-up preventing players from creating truly unique character builds; Companion characters available when playing single player are not very useful and are quite boring additions to your adventure. OVERALL: There's nothing inherently wrong with Diablo 3 - it's a left-click marathon of a game with plenty of loot and loads of enemies to kill. But it's also one of the most stressful games I have ever experienced due to the totally unnecessary always-online DRM which is seriously detrimental to the industry and rather quite worrying. Add to this the fact that Diablo 3 brings little to nothing new to the genre that it so wonderfully popularised and you've got yourself a rather disappointing game. Is Diablo 3 fun? Yes. Is it the dungeon crawler that we've all been waiting for? Probably not.… Expand
  98. Fursnake
    Jun 10, 2012
    5
    The long awaited return of Diablo III leaves me feeling somewhat disappointed. Overall the gameplay has that old school Diablo feel, but the old school feeling only goes so far and does not warrant $60. It's fun for a few playthroughs with friends, but it gets stale quickly. The loot system is hit or miss and ultimately one finds themself resorting to the auction house to acquire decentThe long awaited return of Diablo III leaves me feeling somewhat disappointed. Overall the gameplay has that old school Diablo feel, but the old school feeling only goes so far and does not warrant $60. It's fun for a few playthroughs with friends, but it gets stale quickly. The loot system is hit or miss and ultimately one finds themself resorting to the auction house to acquire decent gear. The crafting system is awful for it's cost in combination with the utter randomness of the crafting results. The old school adherence to point and click movement is annoying at bes;, frustrating and outdated is a more apt description. The lack of any customization when creating characters is disappointing, but I guess it is a minor issue (at least you can pick a gender). The only real replay factor for me came from the classes and how differently they play. However the core gameplay feels repetitive and grindy after a couple playthroughs. The general chat is a joke; it is just a breeding ground for gold seller spam. In the end I feel like Blizzard made this game ultimately for the Real Money Auction House.; which is the one feature of the game I will never use, partly because I am already done with game but mainly because I find the whole concept distasteful and greed oriented. I played for a few weeks before becoming more than bored with the game...I guess I got my money's worth out of it. But the overall game does not best reflect the amount of time they spent developing it.… Expand
  99. CreziFella
    Jun 10, 2012
    4
    It really pains me that after the LONG wait, only to get such a big dissapointment over one of my favorite video game titles. First of all, I don't care about the server being down on the first day, it isn't permanent so you just have to be patient and wait. What bothers me about it is that even if you're playing single player, you have to cope up with the PING. I don't live in the US butIt really pains me that after the LONG wait, only to get such a big dissapointment over one of my favorite video game titles. First of all, I don't care about the server being down on the first day, it isn't permanent so you just have to be patient and wait. What bothers me about it is that even if you're playing single player, you have to cope up with the PING. I don't live in the US but apparently my country is listed in the US server, okay thats fine, but the ping, imagine I have to cope up with 300+ ping while playing. Sometimes, the ping shot up to 1000+ and then slowly returns to 300+. To have patience with the server being overloaded on the first day is managable but this is just pure bullsh*t. I tried Europe and Asia server, both are much worse then the US server. All this would be avoided if Blizzard didn't apply the new always-online DRM to the game. Don't have internet connection? Slow internet connection? Too bad your money is now Blizzard's. Why do they use always-online DRM anyway? To avoid piracy? Please tell me they don't believe that by doing this, they would stop people from pirating their game. They only make it harder for their players to trully enjoy the game.

    I'm ok with point and click games, I enjoy the heck out of Diablo, Diablo 2, Rift, Torchlight, Sacred 1 & 2 etc etc.. but Diablo 3 is just boring. Maybe its because of the fact that everytime you level up, you don't have any points to spend on stats and skills, instead you will unlock skills and runes that changes the skills effects, or the fact that you can only use 6 skills in one time. Or because the loots are SO BORING, i'm not kidding the loot is seriously boring. Remember Diablo 2? In your first mission in the Den of Evil, you already can get some sweet loots for a low level character, sure its not epic nor strong or anything but still you feel satisfied and wanting to get MORE loot when you see the magical effects that are on the equipment. Remember in Diablo 2 you can stack up 5 rune combo and have a sh*t loads of magical effects on your weapons and armor that the weapon/armor description window when you scroll over them is so long that it nearly touches the bottom of the game's window? THAT is awesome. In Diablo 3 however, you will be seeing a lot of "#% increase in gold pickup radius" or "+# (stats)" or "+# hp when you kill a monster" and some other boring effects. Seriously? Gold pickup radius? Sigh.. oh, and the Legendary items in Diablo 3 are much weaker then Magic items and much rarer, lame?

    The story is okay, but some part of it are bad.. Like when Liah says that before, she doesn't believe in monsters, but around near the end of Act 2 she told that one time when she and Cain is on an adventure in some ruins (if i'm not mistaken), bunch of skeletons attacks them and she had to pull Cain out of there. .... what...?

    I love the sound and music, Blizzard had always done a great job on the audios. The sound of the monsters are really good and the music fits perfectly. The voice acting, most of them are good but some can be done better.

    The graphic effects are very well done BUT the graphic details however are not. The character models seems like it was done in 2006. Also, it didn't have that style of graphics that Diablo 1 and 2 had. In Diablo 2, the graphics were dark and gritty, in hell you can see some dreadful sh*ts, however in Diablo 3, they make the graphics cartoonish-like (not so cartoonish like Torchlight) and that's makes it lose the charm that Diablo 2's graphic had, even though Diablo 2's graphics were old.

    One of the biggest problems I had is that you can't go back to the previous acts and kill the bosses again to get moar phat lewt. Maybe you can go back to the previous acts and somehow I didn't know about it, in that case, my bad. I still remember I used to beat the sh*t out of Diablo and Baal countless times and behold as Blue, Yellow, Orange, Green and Gold colored equipments dropped from them, that were fun as hell.

    One thing I liked in Diablo 3 aside from the audio, is the boss battles. They were epic, nuff' said. If only you can go back and defeat them again anytime you want. Sigh.

    You have to complete the normal difficulty first before you can play on the harder difficulties. It took me around 12 hours to finish it on normal and exploring everything from normal maps to caves and dungeons. Do you want to play a 12 hour game filled with boring loots and easy combat? Only you have to do it AGAIN in the Nightmare difficulty and AGAIN in Hell difficulty and AGAIN in Inferno difficulty? And if you want to play other characters you have to go through all of it ALL OVER AGAIN? You do? Then you might like this game.

    My opinion? Save your money and buy Torchlight 2 which will come out this summer and is only 20$, it's so cheap it feels like you're ripping them off. Compared with Diablo 3 which is $60, really, get Torchlight 2. Diablo 3, dissapointing as hell.    … Expand
  100. merc
    Jun 10, 2012
    5
    The biggest innovation D3 brings to the table is that Blizzard has found a way to bring server issues and lag to the single player game. Not good. Other than that the gameplay is decent but never shines because the difficulty curve is 3 difficulties of trivially easy followed by a brick wall of difficulty spike. The gear itemization is really poor, the storytelling is sub-mediocre and itsThe biggest innovation D3 brings to the table is that Blizzard has found a way to bring server issues and lag to the single player game. Not good. Other than that the gameplay is decent but never shines because the difficulty curve is 3 difficulties of trivially easy followed by a brick wall of difficulty spike. The gear itemization is really poor, the storytelling is sub-mediocre and its predecessors with worse graphics from a technical perspective do a better job of creating atmosphere.… Expand
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Awards & Rankings

12
#12 Best PC Game of 2012
1
#1 Most Discussed PC Game of 2012
3
#3 Most Shared PC Game of 2012

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
88

Generally favorable reviews - based on 86 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 81 out of 86
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 86
  3. Negative: 1 out of 86
  1. Thunderbolt
    Aug 31, 2012
    90
    My one major complaint is that the game never feels very difficult, especially on Normal. There are frustrating moments, hordes of baddies, and increasing difficulty levels, but the same feeling of utter defeat never really happens as it did in the past.
    Read full review
  2. Hyper Magazine
    Jul 18, 2012
    80
    For all the game's missteps, though, you certainly can't accuse Blizzard of phoning it in - if anything, the game suffers from the tendency to try a little to hard at times to evolve the design. [Aug 2012, p.61]
  3. PC PowerPlay
    Jul 3, 2012
    80
    When it works, Diablo III is the best of the Diablo games. When it doesn't, all it does is make you mad. [July 2012, p.54]
    Read full review
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