Despite claiming that I won’t revisit Diablo III after reviewing Diablo II: Resurrected earlier this year, I did. I’m planning to play the fourth entry in the franchise, so I’ve decided that I might as well play them all. And yes, “all”, Blizzard, I don’t play games on my phone so no other entries exist. Truth of the matter is, I don’t have much to add to what I’ve said back when I first played the game in 2015, so I’ll simply focus on the most important points of what was already written, and add a few details on what I didn’t mention at the time. With the overall impression being the same – despite the hate it got, it’s not a bad game.
Diablo II was so big… is so big. Even today. It defined what these kinds of “Diablo like” action RPGs are about and nailed almost every idea it attempted, so most of the games to this day use the exact same formula. So back in 2012 Blizzard couldn’t just release Diablo II again but with better visuals, especially since that’s what games like Torchlight II or Borderlands series were doing already. Instead, Diablo III is an attempt at pushing several key aspects of the predecessor beyond the limits that were already attempted within the genre.
The biggest gameplay change is the fact that every class has it’s own set of rules now, instead of being locked into the same paradigm of “Health and Mana orbs”. Every class plays completely differently and has its own unique rhythm, because even your basic attacks are now usually special skills. Last time I’ve played as a Monk class, that is all about doing simple combos and building up energy for special massive attacks, balancing between the two approaches. This time I’ve played as a Demon Huntress, who had basic ranged attack skills that can be about constant evasion or buffs and debuffs and two whole separate meters of special attacks powering different sets of moves. Which felt familiar and similar, but also very different and within the class I could also build my own variations of how it would behave.
But the downside of the approach taken in the game was that since you could change your build at basically any point and all of those variations are designed to be valid. So my set of skills and approach to every situation remained almost exactly the same throughout the playthrough with no need to readjust or adapt. And in fact the more the game evolved before release (it had an open beta period) and then with updates, patches and the expansion after, the less complex it became. Town portal is just a timed action that’s always available. Gold doesn’t take space in the inventory. Potion is just a one infinite “skill” that has its own recharge that you rarely ever need, as most of the game is designed around regeneration and health orb drops. Removal of run and stamina but addition of special bonuses for particular actions, like “destroying X objects” or “killing X enemies” within a certain time.
All of which also tied with the narrative of the title. Where the first two games were more about fighting against difficult to comprehend impending doom with little chances of success and only Lord of Destruction planted a seed of a more “epic” story, Diablo III starts with you being the coolest being in existence and ends with you being basically a god. From how each class destroys the enemies and the world in gameplay, to how everyone you meet exists to strike your ego and tell you how cool you are, the tone of the game both feels like a logical continuation of the storyline and also complete departure from what one would expect from the franchise. I won’t lie – it feels great to see the destruction you do with your most basic abilities each time you engage with enemies that are now appearing on the scene in a far more visually cool way. But even without the constant disgusting flattery in writing, the atmosphere of the game also feels wrong. Then again – where else could it go, if the trajectory of the storyline was set to go this way by the previous entries?
There is supposedly more nuance and thought involved if you play at higher levels of difficulty, which is part of another thing that Diablo III decided to evolve. Diablo II already had special multiplayer events and it was extremely popular because of the online. Diablo III is built all around it, with the “endgame content” as an important concept and ability to infinitely play over and over again. With special events, new difficulties, new special post-game modes, new challenges and etc. It all tied to your overall profile and also gives you achievements and unlocks and other silly things even for simply finding different unique events in the world. As this time around, Diablo III doesn’t really have “quests” other than the main questline, but all of the optional content is random for your playthrough, expanding on the idea first attempted in the very first game.
As someone who doesn’t care about this, I can’t really judge if the whole multiplayer aspect is done well or not. What I can judge, however, is the fact that the game requires constant online connection on PC, which was stupid when the game got released and remains as stupid today. Even during this playthrough I couldn’t continue my completely single-player focused experience as the game servers were having connection issues and I had to wait for some time before being able to continue. This frustrates me in completely free experiences like Path of Exile and in a paid experience, that isn’t technically an MMO, this is especially obnoxious.
But time to wrap things up. You have companions that are now named and have stories, but they’re horribly written and obnoxious, as are almost all other characters in the game. The structure of the campaign is extremely similar to the previous game, including the same basic “biomes”, just in a slightly different order and with a couple of new ones. The music isn’t terrible, but is genuinely boring and lacks the flair and uniqueness that the previous entries had. Visually the game still feels good in motion, but it has aged considerably by modern standards. The story does feel like a logical expansion on things and elements that were already covered in the first two titles, but a lot of things are recontextualized, some are tweaked, some are changed drastically and while the lore work is impressive, the end result does feel too “epic fantasy” for the franchise. Oh and despite so many changes and simplifications, item durability is still a thing, when a lot of other games of the era were moving away from it.
Did I enjoy playing Diablo III with the Reaper of Souls expansion and even more patches in 2023? Sure, but just as in 2015, it was a feeling of enjoying junk food. The basics of the game and the variety of classes are genuinely satisfying, but the fact that this somehow leads to the game that feels exactly the same for dozens of hours is not. And always online requirement is really really dumb and should go.