Hell is not frozen yet! (Diablo 3)

I don't find anything wrong with the feel of the game. feels plenty Diablo to me. like I said earlier, it reminded me so much of Diablo 1 that I went from slight interest to slight extacy.

but I do get the complaints about difficulty. granted, this is the first part of the game and it's still giving you tutorial tips right up until the end. but with my first character, a Demon Hunter, I didn't use one single health potion during the entire beta. as someone who normally doesn't play these types of games, I found that a bit odd. I was only below half health maybe once or twice. with the Mage I had to use some early on, however, so it could be that the DH class simply suits me very well or is actually an easy class to play. either way, it's still too early to tell and I can imagine the game getting a lot more difficult later on. enemies seem to do a lot of damage if they actually get to hit you. with the DH it was pretty easy to avoid that, though.
 
I've maxed all the classes and didn't have to use a single potion either. It's just the health globes which reserve potions for really dire situations, situations that beta lacks due to aforementioned reasons
 
Just finished the Demon Hunter playthrough.

All in all, much, much more fun than the monk, and even more Diablo'y for some reason. In comparison, playing a monk was pretty boring. The Demon Hunter at least has a clearly defined play style. Stay ranged, snipe, root enemies, and do a heck of a lot of damage. Perhaps too much, cause it was pretty easy. I also got different enemies than with my monk, some nice random encounters that were fun, and a 'jar of souls' almost had me swamped with a room full of skeletons; ended up killing 40 in a row.

Strange how one playthrough can be so different from another. Perhaps the monk class hasn't received a lot of attention yet; it just felt unfinished and I kept using just two skills pretty much from level 3 to 10, with the occasional heal or so thrown in. Even with just 4 skill slots available, the demon hunter makes things a lot more interesting than the monk.
 
Played with some more.

Thw Witch Doctor was slightly boring. He does not do lots of damage, but he simply cannot die. So many summons, distrupts, slows and ways to keep enemies off his back. Of course this is at the exense of damage, but I liked his playstyle nonetheless. And Necro was my favourite in D2, so it's similar enough, and the WD's high-level skills seem really nice.

Barbarian was very different. Really, really damaging, once I found a good two-hander and used the Rupture rune on the Cleave skill most enemies died in one hit, even bigger ones took three or four max. Conversely, much riskier, died once to a pack of unique Unburied. And I got to use Leap again. Fun fun fun.

It seems to be as Garlic says, outdoor levels are mostly set in stone, with a few random events/dungeons sprinkled for good measure, and dungeons themselves use templates like in D2.

Enabling elective mode removed most of my complaints about the gameplay. It's much tighter than the somewhat obscure D2, where only a select few builds were considered worthwhile and where putting one point into Energy was punished by virtual death penalty. Really on the easy side, but the first portions of Act 1 Normal until Andariel (at least) were also cakewalks in D2, so no worries. King Leoric almost killed me twice, nice boss there.

Also, I really liked the artisan. A good sink for money and magic items, and he crafted a worthwhile thing or two within the beta for me. Good call from Blizz to make gold useful.

Al in all, very promising beta. Can't wait for release.
 
yeah well I am not so worried about the maps, its not like D1 or D2 really have been that huge in that part. It is not an open world game after all. And I am slowly getting sick of all this "wannabe" open world games that tell you how huge and big they are but ... just full of generic content doing nothing at all and featuring a life less world because its TO big for its own good.

Not that Diablo 2 was that small either. I think it was a good mix between size and gameplay. You had the feeling like exploring a somewhat huge world. Particularly since the game was divided in different regions. Most important was the progress made somewhat sense. But I am one of the few people that beliefs Diablo has a decent story.
 
I made a Barbarian, Monk and Demon Hunter; in that order. The barb and Demon Hunter I did one play-through with, the Monk I leveled to max (lvl 13).

I liked the barb a lot; has kind of a familiar feel to it. Pure Hack and Slash as I expected it to be.
The Monk I ended up liking best of those three. I love the way (s)he zipped around the screen: she has 2 kinds of teleport-up-to-the-mob-and-hit-it in 2 different slots, so even after switching skills around, you still had that mobility.
Also the Monk gets a cool bell-type AoE at lvl 12 that's pretty awesome. (check here for a look at that bell-move).

Demon Hunter I didn't like as much. Maybe I'm not a ranged type of guy though. I also played this class only in public games and I think it really shines when solo and when you actually have to use the roots, traps and slows that most of your skills are. Not very fun to play in a group since I found only one skill to be good in groups and that's the rapid fire type attack that makes your bow fire like a machinegun.

As to the game, I didn't get the same "vibe" as in D1, but then again, nothing will ever make me feel like that again. The game is fun however, and I'm also very interested in the story. Some annoying retcons have become apparent from this small piece of the story so far: apparently the Skeleton King (one of the first bosses in D1) wasn't killed by The Lone Wanderer, but by the king's older son, Aiden (Aidan?). That's kind of lame and seems unnecessary to me.

Other gripes with the game are the voice acting. They had to up the amount of voice actors (like in every game) but sadly not all of them are of the same quality. I kind of hated all the female voices in the game; npc's and pc's alike. The male voices were slightly better overall, but some of the npc's had really stupid lines that didn't even add anything to the game or the story. Just random "float" type things if you will...

Still, I pre-ordered and I'm not going to cancel. Don't know if it'll grip me as hard and as long as D2 was able to.

EDIT: tried to take a screenshot in game but couldn't.
 
I'd like to add that I enjoyed the more linear maps. I loathed the exploration in D2, as the maps lacked direction which made exploring them tiresome. you had to zig-zag across the map to cover all the ground and not miss anything. it's not like there are interesting things to find while exploring anyway - the game is all about killing enemies and looting their corpses, so linear maps is not a problem for me. it's a time saver and lets me stay focused to the combat. plus, it makes more sense that not everything is built like labyrinths or simply open fields. the maps in D3 allows for nice locations that simply make more sense.
 
clercqer said:
Some annoying retcons have become apparent from this small piece of the story so far: apparently the Skeleton King (one of the first bosses in D1) wasn't killed by The Lone Wanderer, but by the king's older son, Aiden (Aidan?). That's kind of lame and seems unnecessary to me.
Click to expand...

That's not a retcon, Aiden is the Warrior from Diablo who then became the Dark Wanderer that we see in Diablo 2.
 
Uh, that's what they made of it in D3. The Dark Wanderer (not Lone Wanderer as I wrote earlier - my bad) was the unnamed hero of D1 that plunged the soulstone in his head at the end of the first game. Nowhere in the first two games or outside of it was he described as being a prince of some sort. They all fabricated that after D2, to make D3's story fit.
 
aenemic said:
I'd like to add that I enjoyed the more linear maps. I loathed the exploration in D2, as the maps lacked direction which made exploring them tiresome. you had to zig-zag across the map to cover all the ground and not miss anything. it's not like there are interesting things to find while exploring anyway - the game is all about killing enemies and looting their corpses, so linear maps is not a problem for me. it's a time saver and lets me stay focused to the combat. plus, it makes more sense that not everything is built like labyrinths or simply open fields. the maps in D3 allows for nice locations that simply make more sense.
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This. I haven't played Diablo 3 yet, but I feel the same way. I still think Diablo 1 had the best atmosphere though. I loved exploring deeper and deeper into Hell. Diablo 2 never gave me that feeling.
 
clercqer said:
Uh, that's what they made of it in D3. The Dark Wanderer (not Lone Wanderer as I wrote earlier - my bad) was the unnamed hero of D1 that plunged the soulstone in his head at the end of the first game. Nowhere in the first two games or outside of it was he described as being a prince of some sort. They all fabricated that after D2, to make D3's story fit.
Click to expand...

They did the exact same thing with D2. They took the story and worked with it, filling in some blanks here and there and built upon it. I don't see that as a negative at all, as just like D2; previously established lore isn't being sloppily altered (Like they've done with Warcraft), it's merely expanded upon.
 
what kind of blanks? I mean its not like D1 or D2 have been that complicated when it came to the story. Even though I liked it.
 
I don't really put a lot of faith into Blizzard when it comes to lore and story. I saw a video of some guy on youtube completely stomping them at Blizzcon regarding a WOW plot point (can't be arsed to find it, sorry) and then some other guy asked them about a plot hole in Starcraft II and they were like "umm... yea that's a plot hole."

I just hope they get the atmosphere right.
 
The only think that puzzles me a bit is a level gaining curve. In Diablo 2, one finished Act 1 on normal about lvl 15 (with exploring most parts, of course 12 is possible rushing a bit, as well as 18 playing on P8). On the other hand , hell was completed usually around 75-80. In D3 the maximum level is 60 (expansions will probably raise it though). With the SK in beta usually compared to be Blood Raven in D2 and the beta content being 30-40% it's surprising for me that one finishes it around lvl 9-10. If the levelling speed is so fast so early in the game (my guess is finishing Act 1 in the final game at least lvl 15) I'm wondering how will the levelling curve slow down in the harder difficulties.
 
Phil the Nuka-Cola Dude said:
They did the exact same thing with D2. They took the story and worked with it, filling in some blanks here and there and built upon it. I don't see that as a negative at all, as just like D2; previously established lore isn't being sloppily altered (Like they've done with Warcraft), it's merely expanded upon.
Click to expand...

I agree that for D2's story, they took the story of D1 and worked with the elements that were already established.

End of D1:
A random nameless adventurer (the PC is actually being referred to as such) vanquishes Diablo and to prevent the Lord of Terror from going ape on the world (again), he wedges Diablo's soulstone in his own head trying to contain the evil.

Beginning of D2:
The hero from D1 is shown to have a lot of trouble restraining the Lord of Terror who is (presumably) going ape inside the hero's body. The hero of old is now referred to as The Dark Wanderer and will eventually turn into Diablo himself.

Diablo 3:
The random nameless adventurer who destroyed Diablo in D1, who became the Lord of Terror in D2 is now suddenly some princeling, son of the King of Khanduras (aka the Skeleton King - a boss in D1 and D3). How is that not retconning? How is that "working with the story"?

That you don't mind Blizzard doing this is an entirely different matter and largely a personal preference, but don't try to deny what it is: a blatant alteration of the previously established story elements in favour of the new game. Something they indeed did with Warcraft, but hadn't before with the Diablo franchise.

I for one, do mind about that element. As someone who played the older games and loved the story, this change doesn't feel right. I "lived" through the "history" of the stories and it feels like Blizzard is re-writing the history books.
 
well, it's not like they ever said the Dark Wanderer isn't the King's son. maybe people didn't know until later? maybe he didn't even know himself?

I don't see this as changing establisher lore, it's simply adding to it.
 
I expected this argument.

If that were the case, why didn't anyone in D1 address the warrior as their prince? Why did they instead refer to him as one adventurer among many who were drawn to Tristram by the tales of treasures in the labyrinth?

Exactly, because back then, it wasn't the prince. The PC was just that: an adventurer.
 
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