smallfry on 22/4/2012 at 17:06
My impressions:
1- it looks pretty good, but I hate the extremely blue fog and some of the other colors, plus the "softness" of it all. Looks MUCH improved using the "stronger, sharper" shader from darkd3.com. All the death animation of the enemies are totally cool. The player characters don't look great- run animations are very unnatural. One more pet peeve: remember in diablo 1 when the warrior walks around he's turned sideways with his shield held up in front and his sword back ready to strike? [For most weapons] in d3 (this was the same case in d2 too) you just let your arms hang down to your sides. You just don't look ready for battle and it looks a little silly.
2- music is OK, they at least play a little guitar in town like D1. I had to turn the sound effects down to around 40%, and music at 100% to actually hear it though. Too orchestral, and not enough drumming and scary sounds, but it's not bad. Sounds are awesome- all the slicing and monster dying effects are great, and I really like the witch doctor's skill's sounds particularly the grasping hands.
3- the game is WAY too easy. Yeah yeah this is the very first part of the game, but this is probably the easiest game I ever played. I know the difficulty will ramp up, but when the first X hours have absolutely no challenge whatsoever, well, that's just boring.
4- uh oh, the skill system. Man, it sucks! When you level up you make no choices, you just always get the same skills at the same levels. Now you make no meaningful, strategic choices about how you build your character as you go along. Every level 10 wizard is the same with the only difference being which skills they're currently using. Furthermore, if I want to use a skill in my "build" but it's not available until level 58, well, tough luck, I gotta wait. I will say though that using the runes to modify your skills is super cool.
5- uh oh, the items. What the hell, you basically don't even use your weapons anymore. Everything is tied to the skill system. The weapon you're wielding contributes its damage, speed, and other effects to your skills, but you can never just SWING your weapon at a monster. You equip your monk with a sweet weapon, well, he's never actually going to swing it because all his skills are punches and kicks. Another way that the game removes customization and meaningful choice.
6- some of the maps are random, most aren't in the beta. The ones that are (the cathedral) are pretty poorly done. Just big chunks of map attached by long hallways. Very disappointing. The problem with this is there's no sense of exploration- there's nothing new / exciting that you'll ever find.
I don't like it. But, it will be wildly successful I'm sure. Making all the monsters crunch and splatter when you click on them while getting CONSTANT, small rewards (congratulations you just opened 5 barrels!) and "loot" will suck many people in. I guess it's sort of like a bubblewrap popping simulator in disguise.
mothra on 24/4/2012 at 09:51
I played with 3 other guys and they just stayed idle in town.
That way the monsters are "buffed" for 4 players but you fight them alone.
Using a lvl1 char with no "hand-me-downs" in that scenario was pretty fun since you really have to use the right skills at the right time and strategize,
monsters can easily gang up on you and kill you. But it was not that hard. Still no health potion needed for Leoric and friends.
I like the new skill system, it seems every ability scales with weapon dmg therefore being valid all the way through. Certain skills are better for 2hander (long cooldown),
others are better for dual-wield (no cooldown, dmg ~ weaponspeed).
I especially loved the monk and demon hunter for their mobility and easy setup of chainexplosions for "mighty blows" ( x amount of monsters killed in one blow).
The barbarian is the barbrian, no real changes here, wizard ... I am not that impressed, maybe past level13 and the witch doctor seems ok, I just do not like gameplay with dozens of minions.
The inclusion of events and randomized dungeons is nice.
Jar of Souls: 45 killed, that was pretty satisfying
Still, I can see no feature that justifies having a single-player campaign (complete with follower) that requires internet connection and giving us no lan
and I am not feeling the immediate urge to buy it, so many other games are on the horizon......so I will pass
Koki on 24/4/2012 at 10:20
Quote Posted by mothra
I played with 3 other guys and they just stayed idle in town.
That way the monsters are "buffed" for 4 players but you fight them alone.
/players 8
I guess there's no point in even hoping for that lol
Avalon on 24/4/2012 at 17:39
I played the beta and I have no idea how the whole campaign thing will work on live (I haven't read a whole lot about their intentions either), but I will be displeased if I have to log in to Battle.net to play the game in single player. The whole always-on internet requirement for video games lately drives me insane, but the Battle.net thing and its implementation in Blizzard games takes it to a new level - no, I don't want my Battle.net friends to know I'm playing a single player game, and most importantly, I don't want to god damn talk to them. Go away. Not everything has to be an annoying social networking experience.
Gameplay wise, the amount of clicking in Diablo games has always kind of irked me, but the clicking of Diablo 3 combined with the huge amount of spawning mobs to click on makes it something else entirely. After 4 hours of Diabloing my wrist was crying like a little bitch.
pwyll on 24/4/2012 at 17:59
I played with Barbarian, Wizard and Witch Doctor. I like the game - the graphics are not impressive but the gameplay is great. I pre-ordered it and can't wait until the release. My first champ will be Wizard.
The most impressive thing in Diablo universe by my opinion is - a skeleton coming out of a barrel! :D
Koki on 24/4/2012 at 18:22
Original Diablo had best out-of-barrel skeletons because their "coming alive" animation was their death animation backwards.
mothra on 24/4/2012 at 20:26
well, then you will be glad that they greatly expanded on that if you watch carefully.
skeletons trip, crawl out from cracks, splinter and their head rolls over the floor, depending on the attack they get launched, crushed or pulverized. They are almost as good as the draugrs in Skyrim
(I think the draugrs are the best "generic" enemy in recent times, I love those guys)
The Artsytle is rather conservative and therefore "boring", the videos for armor sets for the classes
looked rather .... colorful, somehow disconnected with the tone of the game I got from the demo area. Anyways. Torchlight2, everybody should get it.
justmea on 6/5/2012 at 05:54
I do not see the funny.
ANyway, someone "leaked" all the armor tiers for each class, last 2(inferno difficulty) for demon hunter win hands down (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i3gAg7vP7o)
Also, females always look better in armors than males in these games for some reason to me.
Koki on 7/5/2012 at 13:42
These are... pretty bad for sure.
