| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| PlayStation 4 | 6.00 |
| Overall | 6.00 |
|
This is going to be a different kind of review because I am clearly in the minority on this one. I don’t play many hack and slash loot games cause they don’t compel me much. I did play the original Diablo back in the day and enjoyed it for what it was. So I decided to give the much praised Diablo 3 a shot. I played the Reaper of Souls edition on PS4, which includes Diablo 3 and all its expansions. What I played was a mess of a campaign with horrible difficulty balance and a game that failed to give compelling gameplay but is wrapped in a very well made package. Instead of a normal review, I will assume you all know what Diablo is like so I will go straight into why this game did not work for me. By far my biggest gripe with this version of Diablo 3 I played is the difficulty or lack there of. Throughout the campaign I rarely even sniffed the threat of death. Diablo 3 has a huge emphasis on life per hit and life regen, basically as you attack you heal. I understand in a game like this healing needs to occur as you attack because you are constantly being hit, but it does not need to be to this extent. I would stand in the middle of a mob and watch my health bar regenerate far faster than enemies could damage me. I raised the difficulty as much as the game allowed which was only to expert, why the campaign has a cap I do not know. So for nearly 20 hours I played through a story mode where I felt like god fighting insects. Diablo and all hack and slash games rely on a simple feedback loop to keep the gamer engaged. Fight your way through hordes to gain better gear so that you may fight through tougher hordes and so on. If there is no challenge, if nothing really hurts you then your gear does not really matter. The loop is broken, why should I explore if all I will get is gear that makes me more overpowered than I already am. Why keep fighting optional enemies, what is the point when you can kill most in a few attacks. What is the point of anything if there is no fun to be had. Eventually I gained access to a higher difficulty mode after finishing the first four chapters. I then ran into another issue, how difficulty was determined was also flawed. In Diablo all they do is raise the HP and damage output for enemies, well my defense and regen is still so high that nothing really kills me but now it takes three times as long to kill stuff. So I should raise the difficulty for what, to make the game more tedious? Why doesn’t the difficulty raise the damage significantly, forget the enemy HP, fighting tanks is not fun, being in danger is. I also have issues with how gear is handled, specifically how all abilities are tied to the skills you learn as you level up and not really on your gear. The best loot games I played, games like PSO, the weapon you find changes how you fight. A giant sword will allow you to hit further and more enemies. Some weapons have special powers that you can use in the battlefield. Not the case in Diablo, at least not until the end game. The grand majority of weapons are nothing but skin changes. Sure they raise your stats and give you specific buffs but nothing changes in the gameplay. You still use the same skills you learned many hours ago. It doesn’t matter if you have a knife or a giant sword, the range and scope of your attack is only determined by what skill you choose, not the weapon. This removes the joy of finding that new weapon and discovering new gameplay mechanics. Unless you get your kicks from watching numbers go up in a menu this is a poor way to handle loot. These issues are frustrating because there is clearly a great game in there somewhere. The story is very well done with incredible production values and fun CG cutscenes. The depth of ;the skill system is impressive, by far my most enjoyable moments were simply coming up with new builds of my character. The combat could have been great if more emphasis was put on making battles less chaotic and more skill and strategy based. I don’t get the love for the whole mindless hacking, as if killing 100 enemies in 5 seconds is fun. Killing 5 tough enemies that made me play smart is fun. There are a few special enemies that offer good challenges, I feel most of the game should have focused on those. The boss battles are very well done, some have level specific dangers to go along with them. Again the lack of difficulty ruined these battles for me; one battle in particular against the butcher had parts of the floor fill with fire. Normally one would have to avoid these traps, well I discovered that the fire did nothing to me, so ignored it. What resulted was me hitting the boss mindlessly for a few minutes. Now I have learned that perhaps the class I chose was one that made the game too easy. Maybe I should have ran around naked to artificially create a challenge. Sometimes I question myself but then I quickly remember it is not my job to make the game work properly, that is on the developer. Don’t have a class that makes it nearly impossible to die. How about not arbitrarily creating a difficulty cap for the story mode. After the campaign is over a new adventure mode is unlocked. I found that the game actually becomes fun in this mode. All difficulty modes are accessible now, a new leveling up system is introduced and gear begins to have some crazy effects. The goal is to perform specific missions to gain keys to go into rifts which are hard random dungeons. Then you gain keys to access a greater rift which is a timed dungeon that increases in difficulty if you complete them in time. The further you go the more incredible the rewards. In this mode death has meaning, time is of the essence, teamwork helps greatly. It is what the entire game should have been. As I mentioned before this is a well made game, clearly you can see the care Blizzard puts into the amount of content available and the depth of its character build system. There are a ton of optional challenges to complete, much like in game achievements, there is enough to keep you playing for hundreds of hours. Online play is simple to setup and works great. Graphically I miss the handdrawn style of the old games, I dislike the cartoony polygon look, still the game runs well. The music top notch as expected. Diablo 3 to me is a huge missed opportunity. Granted this is not a favorite genre of mine but a game like this can be addicting and should be mindless fun. But the issues prevented me from really enjoying the experience until I reached the end game. Now I have put somewhere around 25 hours into it and it was not painful, it was just boring. I am kind of hooked on it now but the damage has been done, you should not have to feel like doing work to get to the good stuff. |
|
Posted by Dvader Sun, 01 Feb 2015 05:53:32
Recently Spotted:
*crickets*
*rubs cavier all over naked body*