Diablo III first impressions.

Since Blizzard saw it fit to give me a Mists of Pandaria Beta invite instead of my dream-beta Diablo III, I had to wait with the rabble to return to better times in PC-gaming. About Mists I can only say "Crouching Anime, Hidden Gameplay" and leave it at that. This Bloggietythingmaboob is about Diablo III.

My love for the Diablo franchise stems back all the way from the very first Diablo, a game that fitted on a CD-ROM, allowed for limitless spawns on friends' computers and packed so much gameplay that to this day, it is still played. Diablo II, it's successor came on three CD-ROMs and the friendly unlimited spawns was gone. It was later expanded with "Lords of Destruction", adding new classes and few extra end-bosses.

The core of the game, fast and addictive gameplay, was not really changed between the two games. Your primary attack is on the left mousebutton and your super-attack is the right one. Your toon follows either mouseclicks on the playfield or it trails your mouse. The level of control that this system allows for is faster than a gamepad and infinitely better than WSAD. 

In the first two games, you were able to allocate stat-points like in traditional RPGs and they had skill-trees with skills that could only be reached with care and planning. Not so in Diablo III. Statpoints are allocated for you and you unlock skills as you level and you get to decide whether you use them or not. For my purist's taste, Diablo has stopped being a psuedo-RPG (It never was a true RPG to start with) and it is now a pure action game with a deeper story to it than is found in most other action games.

Blizzard has really taken care to stick to the established lore of the Diablo universe. The game still unfolds in the world of Sanctuary and it even returns to the cursed town of Tristram to start the adventure of. Old monster-types make an updated return, like the Quillfiend, what is now more of a humanoid than a porcupine. New monsters have new abilities and Blizzard has mixed old and new in such a way you're kept off balance. I really enjoy that aspect.

Graphics-wise I wonder why the game taxes video-cards so heavily, since it is MMO-fare quality. Since Diablo isn't an MMO, Blizzard did the extra mile and upped the quality of the textures, but the company's now well established MMO-roots are overly present. They're gothic enough, and the scenes are lighted properly to fit the mood, but I expected something more. Still, it allows Blizzard to spawn lots of enemies on the map while maintaining a high framerate, so I see not really a need to be negative about it. All I can say is that they miss the cutting edge one would expect from a game that is released today, literally.

At this moment I am exploring the Demonhunter class and sticking my nose in every nook and granny. To my dismay I have already missed one Diary by Deckard Cain's niece Leah, so for this playthrough I already can't complete the prerequisites for an achievement... And I thought I was being thourough! But there are achievements in this game that are brutal... Each class has an achievement that reads "Reach lvl60 with two [class]". So I will get the 2nd diary anyway.

I don't think that those achievements are designed to force people to replay Diablo III over and over again. Both it's predessecors are still played today, so it is safe to asume that many original fans will meet the requirements for those achievements anyway without them feeling held ransom to the completionist syndrome. For people new to the franchise, with little knowledge of the lore and the two classic earlier installments, many of the achievements will feel like they're being cheated out of getting them.

One dislike for me personal is that Diablo III doesn't offer an off-line solo-play component, the gamer has to be connected to Battle.net the whole time during play. That literally means that should your el-cheapo ISP fail service, you can't play your $70 game. Maybe you get equipment failure which prohibits you from connecting to the internet. Being forced to be on-line to play a very expensive game that punishes you for when you can't connect due to reason not within you control by denying you service, that is fascism. Plain old, unadultered fascism.

Luckily then that Blizzard doesn't add insult to injury by forcing to play with randoms, you can start a solo-session and keep it closed from the outside-world. Only you can set your session to public, or close it again, on the fly. From my experience so far, keep it closed. I don't mind minor stupidity. Allah knows I'm at times not the sharpest tool in the shed. But the level of stupidity I exposed myself to last night boggled the mind. Either I have become incredibly smart and sharp-witted in a very short time without me noticing it, or people don't get an upbringing and a decent education anymore. Since the former is totally impossible, the latter must be true.

If you have to play with people, find some friends. That would be my advise.

As I told above, I'm still in act one, looking everywhere and killing everything. So I can't give a verdict on how Diablo actually is. Here are my likes and dislikes.

Likes:

-Blizzard stayed close to the lore, atmosphere and ambiance of the franchise.

-Updated gameplay that builds on the established Diablo-method.

-Fast and furious, but the gamer is always in control.

-You decide on the fly whether or not randoms can join your game.

-Old and new is well mixed, keeping you off balance. It's Diablo, but also much more.

Dislikes:

-Decisions are made for you, removing the RPG-aspect from the franchise.

-MMO style light graphics.

-Missing little things can ruin achievements runs you can't correct for your current playthrough.

-Achievements can put off new people to the franchise, as the achievements appear to be geared towards the original fans of the franchise.

-On line interactions with randoms detract from the experience.