01-27-2015, 09:21 AM
I'll pitch in my two cents here for anyone else reading this. Please note I have not played it online or finished the expansion pack yet, only the original game.
Firstly, I wouldn't recommend paying more than $20 maximum for a new sealed copy of it. I say this simply based on how much genuine effort I feel Blizzard put into making this game a quality product. Suffice it to say I think they failed in many aspects.
If you're looking for couch coop games on your console, this isn't a bad choice. Diablo III will probably not amaze you in any way, and is at least loosely similar enough in gameplay to the prior installments in the series that the hack and slash gameplay will be about what you expect. It makes an acceptable time sink/social activity if you have some good company to share it with. However, this is not without its issues - all but the first player may experience a problem every time you fire the game back up where ALL of their skills and subskills are marked with the 'new' star. There is no way to get rid of these without going into every individual skill and highlighting every single subskill every time you restart the game. And if you don't, it gets rather difficult to tell what new things were unlocked (we do not have Xbox Live, so it is possible this issue is fixed in an update you would benefit from if you have XBL). If you want ANY challenge, make sure you go into the Options menu and turn up the difficulty one knotch when the game starts to feel too easy, for it will only keep getting easier, and if killing major Act bosses in 5 seconds is not your idea of fun, you'll be glad you did.
If you're looking for memorable story and characters, look elsewhere. Diablo III is mostly generic and uninspired in this regard, and never seems to make up its mind if it wants to shove story/dialogue in your face, or deny parts of it from you entirely. Characters indicated by the game as having new things to say will sometimes leave if you spoke to someone else first or walked off a ways. Other characters (especially the villains, which are the worst) will repeatedly interrupt you with unsolicited dialogue while you navigate the battlefields, their speech easily drowned out during combat even with Voice volume set 50% higher than anything else.
If you're looking for a game that feels like Diablo I or II, don't get it for that reason. Most of the polish in Diablo III went into graphics, sound and cinematics. Blizzard always does great with these. The game looks nice enough, sounds nice, cinematics are of course insanely detailed. But none of those make the game 'Diablo' any more than they make the game fun.
On to questions asked in the original post:
•How well does it run? FPS, load times etc.
It ran very smooth on our Xbox 360. I don't think I noticed the framerate choke up at any point during play. Unless they seriously messed something up, I imagine it performs just as well on the other consoles.
•What exactly is the mob density like?
On the first difficulty, you will encounter a variety of densities. Sometimes one or two, sometimes a large group. Generally any area will have a mix of different sized mobs, and you will find yourself swarmed occasionally.
If I read correctly somewhere, the mobs become much bigger on higher difficulties. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong.
•How well balanced is the game? Gear, mobs, classes etc.
I can't comment on this having only played one. As is typical of these kinds of games, my Wizard felt like he had skills that weren't worth bothering with, and others that were arguably far more effective, but I can't foresee how they might scale to higher difficulties.
•How are the controls? I lean towards melee combat.
Great. It is really smooth to play this type of game with a console controller.
•How are drops? Is it a grind for gear or is it fairly easy to get good equipment?
I can't speak to this personally, but many other opinions I've heard suggest that this becomes an issue on the highest difficulty levels.
"Ultimately I'm looking for a fun adventure where I can invest some time in my characters that has good replay value."
That wasn't this game for me. I felt no desire to play it again. No compulsion to try a different class. No want to see higher difficulty levels. I suspect I never will until someone else wants to play it with me years from now. It was a little fun at first, but right around the start of Act III it lost my interest until I was glad it was over with, my only drive to complete it being, well, a completionist, which is why I even picked it up at all (to complete the series so far).
Standing on its own, in contrast to games these days, I won't say Diablo III is a bad game. But I won't say it is a good game. To me it was just another game. And a forgettable one. I can't even remember one piece of music from it. I had no expectations going into it (such as from playing previous Diablo games or other games in the same genre), and it still managed to disappoint me with things it was trying to do but didn't do right.
Firstly, I wouldn't recommend paying more than $20 maximum for a new sealed copy of it. I say this simply based on how much genuine effort I feel Blizzard put into making this game a quality product. Suffice it to say I think they failed in many aspects.
If you're looking for couch coop games on your console, this isn't a bad choice. Diablo III will probably not amaze you in any way, and is at least loosely similar enough in gameplay to the prior installments in the series that the hack and slash gameplay will be about what you expect. It makes an acceptable time sink/social activity if you have some good company to share it with. However, this is not without its issues - all but the first player may experience a problem every time you fire the game back up where ALL of their skills and subskills are marked with the 'new' star. There is no way to get rid of these without going into every individual skill and highlighting every single subskill every time you restart the game. And if you don't, it gets rather difficult to tell what new things were unlocked (we do not have Xbox Live, so it is possible this issue is fixed in an update you would benefit from if you have XBL). If you want ANY challenge, make sure you go into the Options menu and turn up the difficulty one knotch when the game starts to feel too easy, for it will only keep getting easier, and if killing major Act bosses in 5 seconds is not your idea of fun, you'll be glad you did.
If you're looking for memorable story and characters, look elsewhere. Diablo III is mostly generic and uninspired in this regard, and never seems to make up its mind if it wants to shove story/dialogue in your face, or deny parts of it from you entirely. Characters indicated by the game as having new things to say will sometimes leave if you spoke to someone else first or walked off a ways. Other characters (especially the villains, which are the worst) will repeatedly interrupt you with unsolicited dialogue while you navigate the battlefields, their speech easily drowned out during combat even with Voice volume set 50% higher than anything else.
If you're looking for a game that feels like Diablo I or II, don't get it for that reason. Most of the polish in Diablo III went into graphics, sound and cinematics. Blizzard always does great with these. The game looks nice enough, sounds nice, cinematics are of course insanely detailed. But none of those make the game 'Diablo' any more than they make the game fun.
On to questions asked in the original post:
•How well does it run? FPS, load times etc.
It ran very smooth on our Xbox 360. I don't think I noticed the framerate choke up at any point during play. Unless they seriously messed something up, I imagine it performs just as well on the other consoles.
•What exactly is the mob density like?
On the first difficulty, you will encounter a variety of densities. Sometimes one or two, sometimes a large group. Generally any area will have a mix of different sized mobs, and you will find yourself swarmed occasionally.
If I read correctly somewhere, the mobs become much bigger on higher difficulties. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong.
•How well balanced is the game? Gear, mobs, classes etc.
I can't comment on this having only played one. As is typical of these kinds of games, my Wizard felt like he had skills that weren't worth bothering with, and others that were arguably far more effective, but I can't foresee how they might scale to higher difficulties.
•How are the controls? I lean towards melee combat.
Great. It is really smooth to play this type of game with a console controller.
•How are drops? Is it a grind for gear or is it fairly easy to get good equipment?
I can't speak to this personally, but many other opinions I've heard suggest that this becomes an issue on the highest difficulty levels.
"Ultimately I'm looking for a fun adventure where I can invest some time in my characters that has good replay value."
That wasn't this game for me. I felt no desire to play it again. No compulsion to try a different class. No want to see higher difficulty levels. I suspect I never will until someone else wants to play it with me years from now. It was a little fun at first, but right around the start of Act III it lost my interest until I was glad it was over with, my only drive to complete it being, well, a completionist, which is why I even picked it up at all (to complete the series so far).
Standing on its own, in contrast to games these days, I won't say Diablo III is a bad game. But I won't say it is a good game. To me it was just another game. And a forgettable one. I can't even remember one piece of music from it. I had no expectations going into it (such as from playing previous Diablo games or other games in the same genre), and it still managed to disappoint me with things it was trying to do but didn't do right.