A month
or so ago, I posted a review for Legend of Zelda A Link Between Worlds, in which I stated how nostalgia mixed with
gameplay to create an admirable experience for anyone that entered Hyrule on a
quest to save the princess. Diablo
III has higher stakes than Zelda
(save the world, not just a princess), but the nostalgia factor is just as
high. This could be due to the fact that
Diablo I and II were released when I was still in high school and we’ve been
eagerly awaiting not only a new Diablo,
but one that could be played on a console for years. Imitators have come and gone in that time (Dragon Age, Kingdoms of Amalur, pretty
much anything with sword/sorcery and an inventory system) but anyone that has
played the original PC Diablo games
have held out hope that they would be able to revisit that world with updated
graphics and gameplay.
We got
our wish, and with Nik’s review of the first few hours of gameplay (one of the first articles on this site), it looked
like a wish fulfilled to the highest power.
Nik picked up the PC version of Diablo
III when it first came out, I decided to wait and grab the console version
(360) as I’m not much of PC gamer. I
have to admit, I couldn’t wait for this game, holding off for as long as I
could to let the price go down a little first (I still find it hard to stomach
$60 for a game) and eventually grabbed it around the beginning of the
year. I jumped right into it with both
feet and soon found myself covered in waves of nostalgia. I remembered the gameplay, I recognized the
surroundings (to an extent) and the prospect of fighting Diablo again had me
raring to go. Unfortunately that
excitement turned into tedium as the hours of gameplay grew. I forgot just how much of a grind the
original two games were, or how linear everything was. I am not a huge, open-world game fan (for examples
of that just look at anything Rockstar puts out), but this game was incredibly
linear, as in, turn the viewing angle slightly and it would feel like Super Mario Brothers. Even the exploring that you did do, in a
clearing or a large room in a castle was completely unnecessary as you really
wouldn’t gain anything from the experience.
One of
the major downfalls of this game (and it was apparently only in the console
version) is that the inventory system was reduced to the generic list of items
that we see in any of the other fantasy-genre games. One of the things I loved about the first two
games was the innovative inventory system.
You had a grid that represented your “backpack” and you could only carry
weapons/items to the point where that backpack was full. You could move things around to maximize
space but it often came down to “do I want to spend an extra six squares on a
shield or three squares on a sword and three potions.” That system had a very table-top RPG element
to it that I loved at the time and couldn’t wait to get into with this
iteration. To see that removed for the
console version seemed to take away what little originality was left in the
game.
This is
not a terrible game, despite the issues I had with it. The graphics are great, with the cutscene
graphics being exceptional, and the gameplay is solid. The characters are interesting, and the
choices are incredibly varied beyond just a different name and weapon-set. I chose to be the Witch-Doctor and thoroughly
enjoyed it. He definitely seems like the
kind of character that would be good for beginners as you can stay back and let
all of your summoned minions take the brunt of the damage, but he was fun to
play with nonetheless.
As I
finished the game, I was overcome with a sense of accomplishment that this game
I had slogged through for quite a while was finally done. I was, however, also overcome with a feeling
of “that’s it?” The final boss, Diablo,
was incredibly easy, one of the easiest of the game, to be honest. It’s not like I was maxed out in terms of my
level either as I had just crossed level 30 (with the cap being 50 I
believe). However, after dying multiple
times with the other bosses, I was able to dispatch Diablo fairly quickly and
easily.
Co-Op
multiplayer in this game is relatively fun but not overwhelmingly so. It is nice to play with someone (in this
case, my son Jake) who is seeing this terrain for the first time, to go back
and forth with him sitting next to me on the couch as we slog through dungeons
and fight hordes of enemies, but multiplayer on its own doesn’t bring much more
to the table, and honestly, if it wasn’t for Jake I probably wouldn’t pick the
game back up.
Where
nostalgia in Legend of Zelda helped
ease me back into Hyrule, nostalgia in Diablo
III made it feel like a game built for 1998 that was just delayed for sixteen
years in its release. If you can find
the game at a cheap price, scoop it up for the experience, but at this point,
games like Dragon Age, or The Elder Scrolls have long since passed
Diablo by.
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