When you can actually play, it's deja-vu all over again

Iselin

I won't comment on the server problems or requirement to be on-line in the first place... others already are doing that...

 

Once you do get in an start to play what you'll find is not so much a revolutionary new 2012 prooduct continuing the franchise but essentially a tweaked version of D2... which itself was a tweaked version of D1...

 

Everything from click to move to the limited inventory to handle its humongous number of drops resulting on frequent use of the town portal spell just to go back and empty it... it's all sooooo 1996. Mind you there are good tweaks in that "town portal" is now an ability that doesn't require scrolls just like identifying rares is now just a right click away... gone are also mana potions since it regenerates uber-fast... that's the good stuff.

 

The mediocre? Let's not mince words, it's D2 man! Now I loved and played the crap out of D2 so this is not a total loss. The problem is that with all this time to do D3 much better I expected more. The graphics are OK but this is not Tera... it's not even current WOW for pete's sakes. Stylized, moody artwork is pleasant enough but if you think you need a new machine to run this...save your money and keep your old Pentium II with its Voodoo card (I jest, I jest) and you'll be fine.

 

Fighting is generally the same as before with one annoying, to me, twist: bosses are now AOE "don't stand on the green/red/purple stuff you scrub!" crazed--think WOTLK raid. If your idea of fun combat is to dance the time warp ("it's just a jump to the left...") while you kill stuff then this is for you! Hectic choreography is the phrase that comes to my mind.

 

The bad? well nothing really (remember I'm talking just about playing it and not the server-related fiasco)... wait... I just thought of something I got tired of quickly in D2: gem drops. You know how you get crappiest quality that must then be combined to give you crap quality and so on until you eventually end-up with pretty good quality? That whole thing is back except now an NPC does it for you...for a price.

 

Bottom line? I'm enjoying myself but then again, I also enjoy Torchlight and had D2 in my HD until very recently. Not quite an unqualified thumbs-up but not a totally flacid thumb either... a solid 7.2.