In my last post, I mentioned that I had officially declared war on my backlog, and last night (early this morning, really), I had my first victory. Diablo (3) now lies conquered at my feet. While the final stretch was a harrowing battle—one which woke me from an impromptu 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. nap and kept me up until nearly 4 a.m.—I feel that I am stronger for it. (Sleepier, too, but that's a different matter entirely.)
Overall, I felt that Diablo 3 was a well put together game, as hack-n-slash action RPGs go. The combat was fairly solid, the visuals were engaging, and the voice acting was very well done. There are a lot of changes made in this interation of the series, and at first, I was planning on railing on the new mechanics. But as I thought more about some of the nitpicky complaints I had with the game, I realized that most of them were coming up because this game isn't Diablo 2. And while that's not a bad thing, the realization that my judgment had been colored by my experience with a previous title helped me reevaluate how I wanted to comment on what I saw in the new game.
Blizzard has completely overhauled the system with Diablo 3. Talent trees and player distribution of stat points are things of the past, replaced by rune-modified skills and automagically assigned stat increases. First, let's talk skills. Each class has six primary categories for their abilities. The first three have the same name for all five classes—Primary, Secondary, and Defensive—and the other three have more class-specific names. Each category has three or more skills in it, and these skills can be modified by unlockable runes that add or change trappings on the skills. (For example, the demon hunter class has a skill called Chakram which allows you to fire a large projectile that can damage large groups of enemies. But when you toss on the Twin Chakram rune, you're suddenly throwing two of these projectiles at a time.) Each skill has five runes, so there are a ton of possible combinations.
This also means, however, that all of the powers are handed to you as you level up, not unlocked by putting points into a tree. At first, I was a little put off by this change (because it's not Diablo 2), but the more I think about it, the more I realize that I enjoyed not being limited to a certain character build. I was free to switch from my mow-down-the-monsters Twin Chakram setup to a more boss fight-friendly Chemical Burn Impale loadout. And that's really what this system allows you to do: put together ability loadouts that you can mix and match as necessary. (If you haven't already, you should go into your options screens and enable the option to put different skills in your hotkey slots. It increases your loadout possibilities immensely.) They've also included several passive abilities that give you some good boosts. I won't go into detail here, but you'll want to pay attention to which passive skills you use in different situations.
And getting a new level isn't just changed because you don't need to spend time putting points into talent trees. Leveling up no longer means receiving stat points to allocate as you see fit. As I mentioned earlier, stat increases are handled automatically when you level up, and you're left with stat boosts from equipment and gems to stack your attributes the way you want. Again, I was initially irritated by this change, but it really does end up helping you in the game. First, leveling up takes almost no time whatsoever now. When you see the dramatic flash of light and the banner welcoming you to your new level of power, you'll only spend a few moments tweaking your skill loadout, rather than agonizing over whether you should increase your Strength or your Magic. And the number of stat increases you get from equipment is, quite honestly, staggering. By the end of my first run-through, I was finding armor with +30 or +40 Dexterity, plus a socket to dump even more increases into.
While it would have kept things familiar for Diablo 2 fans who eagerly anticipated this game's release, I think that moving away from player-distributed stat points was a good idea. It seems like Blizzard has shifted the complexity and customization away from the character stats and put it firmly into the skills and runes, which keeps the player from worrying about ruining his character with an ill-considered advancement or two. Diablo 2 had very well established character builds, and if you decided to deviate from those specified builds (putting more points into Magic than Strength or Dexterity on a barbarian, for example), you often found yourself behind the game's difficulty curve. Instead, Diablo 3 lets you mix and match your skillset and keeps the bulk of the stat issues behind the screen.
I also loved that crafting had been included and that you could remove gems from socketed items without destroying whatever they were attached to. I miss the days of combining gem fragments without charge in the Horadric Cube, but the jeweler's personality (and voice acting) minimized the pain of shelling over gold for such services. The new class resources were a breath of fresh air, too. Having different pools to power abilities really lends a distinct air to each class, and the system seems to be a descendant of World of Warcraft's varying resource management systems. It's nice to not only have health and mana for every class.
The story was decent, enough to keep me playing, but I will say that the foreshadowing felt a bit too heavy. It was more "Well, yeah, you told me about that two acts ago." than "Why didn't I realize that before?!". That, and the final boss fight was a little underwhelming for me. (But that's probably just because I'm so pro at video games, right? ;) ) All in all, though, Diablo 3 was a very fun game; I'd probably give it a 9 out of 10. It's a good-looking and fun title that changes the fundamentals of the genre without ruining the gameplay.
Locke: 1 | Backlog: 28
No comments:
Post a Comment