Diablo III - PC - Review/Guide [View all]

Well... This will end up a big one

OK... Lets start with what this is going to be. Below is the initial review, I'll be adding, as replies to the OP, various Guides... Character, area, boss, items, blah blah blah. Please feel free to add your own or to reply with corrections to whatever you crap I get wrong. This being a Blizzard game, it will get a number of patches that will change various spells/abilities over time so I'll also update as best I can (at least put in a patch note) when they occur.

On to the review...

For anyone that is unaware of what kind of game Diablo is (skip this section if you already know) - Diablo is an Action Role Playing Game (ARPG). You control your character through a third person overhead view, taking quests, killing hoards and hoards of monsters, leveling up your character and collecting loot. The story, as with pretty much everything Blizzard does, is not new but very well done. Evil coming, must save the world, etc, etc, etc. It is worth listening to everyone as there is some good stuff here... Eventually you have heard it all though and you skip over it and get to the meat of the game genre... Leveling up and loot. Killing monsters and completing quests gains you experience points and they drop loot. With enough experience points you level up... At level up you get to something to do with your spells, either a new one or a modification to one you already have. Loot can be many things... A quest item, an equip-able item (weapon, armor, rings, etc) or a consumable (potion... not sure what others there are yet). Get better loot and you can kill more monsters... to get more loot... to kill more monsters... and on and on and on... It is kind of like crack. Blizzard is the king of the ARPG genre... Read on for details on their latest monster

Wow... A rocky start... I think anyone who has played a Blizzard game before was expecting it. They suck at launches, always have, it is just something I have come to expect. I am very dis-appointed they were simply deleting anything that had the word 'Vista' in it from their Forums... Especially since I was running Vista... At some point I hope to get my now bricked laptop fixed... Fuckers.

Graphics - Blizzard took a lot of shit when they first showed off their new engine, 'It will be too bright and cartoony'... Nope, it's dark... A little too dark for my tastes, turn up the gamma a little. It does look great though with tons of eye candy that only makes it hard to tell what is going on sometime after the third bowl

Control - Standard controls for this type of game... Point and click to move/attack/cast spell. A nice key mapper to hot key everything how you like it.

Characters - There are five characters in the base game (I expect at least one expansion with at least two more characters), they are:

Barbarian - Melee character.
Demon Hunter - Ranged bow/crossbow.
Witch Doctor - Ranged magic/summoning.
Monk - A slightly... off... detective... heh, no, a martial arts expert.
Wizard - Ranged magic user.

That is, in general, what these characters are. Each has a variety of spells, modifications to spells and passives (I'll get to these later) that can be used to modify the character in many ways giving a huge variety of character types. Look for character guides to be added over time.

Spells - By the time I had gotten my first character to about level 7 or 8, I was thinking... WTF? I'm not seeing where there is going to be very much variety to characters... Then I got to level 10 and opened up my first set of passive skills and Holy Shit... The possibilities are going to be many There are several spell types, they are:

Left mouse spells - These are your main attack. Each character has four to choose from.
Right mouse spells - These are your secondary spells and again there are four to choose from.
Action bar skills - There are four action bar skills, these are skills bound to key strokes (default is 1,2,3,4 but you can change it). Each action bar skill has four skills to choose from.
Passive skills - There are three passive skills. You do not have to do anything for a passive skill to work... It is just 'On' all the time. There are lots and lots of passive skills to choose from for each of the three.

In addition, there are modifications that can be made for all spells except passives. There are five mods for each skill (I think only one mod can be active at a time... Gotta check that).

Start doing some math and you will see there are a lot of possible character types. Some will be 'stronger' then others but... This being very much a multi-player game only (if you want to really survive at the highest levels and/or go hardcore) the real trick is putting together teams that are designed to compliment each other making true godliness.


Cinematics - Really well done, some of their best work yet and there are still plenty I've not seen yet. They badly need a patch though, let me skip the things if I want to, they are going to get very old very quickly if you keep making me watch them. I hate that shit.

Battle-net - I am not one bit happy about having to always be connected to battle-net in order to play... Fuck you Blizzard for doing this, it's a shitty idea. I paid for the fucking game, let me play it when and where I want, not only when I can connect to you. At the very least you could have had the battle-net commands working. Also... Get rid of the fucking 'social networking' crap... I don't want any part of it.

So... I have these friend invites sitting there the last two or three days and I've had no idea what to do with it. I see it there when I log on but I'm thinking... Shit... I want to accept it but I also want to do some single player here and gather up some info to do the review but I also don't want people to think I'm ignoring them but I also don't want them sending me messages while I'm in game because I can hardly see the little fucking window that has all the words from the game as well as messages (and battle-net does not have the /dnd command yet) and I also... Fuck. So I decide to send a PM when I finish but by then I've smoked a number of bowls and have completely forgotten and don't remember till the next time I play and go through the same shit again... grrr... Fucking social media shit... Battle-net was fine before dammit. So I am going to accept the friend requests I have now and send some to those here I've seen... If I message to join a game and hear nothing back, I'll assume you did not see it and are playing... If you message me and hear nothing, assume the same, don't take any offense if I don't reply.... And for the love of god don't start spamming me with messages I've heard Skype is the best thing to use for in game chat without typeing... I'm know nothing about it at the moment but will be downloading it and setting it up this weekend (I hope... Soon anyways) and will add a section for it.

Items - Items come in a huge variety of types... More then belongs in a review paragraph. No issues with Items... Look for sections on items to come later.

Fun Factor - This is the shit. Crack-in-a-box. Don't be one bit shocked if I'm still making updates/additions to this several years from now.

Bottom line - Blizzards paranoia about character security and the whole stupid social networking crap have now reached the point that if either gets worse I may give up on their games... They are a serious pain in the ass. Once you get past them though, this game is a real treat. They are not doing a whole lot that is ground breaking but they have taken their tried and true formula and turned it up to eleven. Go buy this now.

I have several parts to several sections that I've already begun work on for additions to this (including the first character guide for the barbarian). Again, feel free to add your own sections, give it a good title so people looking for info can jump to it quickly.... Look for more in the coming days!