Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition (PS3)

I remember Diablo 2 quite well. This is because I recently turned 18, was a senior in high school, and was looking for something new to play on my computer at the time. I wasn’t exactly coming out of gaming shell, so to speak as I was looking for something new to expand it. I recently beat the living daylights out of Soul Reaver and loved its gothic universe. It felt oppressive. It was dark. And it was well told. This was the beginning of something new in gaming to me. It was the fact that games could begin to use their powers to tell potently emotional stories. Diablo 2 wasn’t one of them. Man, was it fun.

However, this is about the third installment of the series. The story, while taking things very seriously, is very simple. Diablo and his bretheren have returned and it’s up to your hero to stop him. End of story. Full stop. Forget any potential plot twists.

I played through the game [up to Act 3] as the Wizard. It’s interesting how they tried to give him a personality. Yet they failed. He didn’t feel human to me. I felt more connected to the Druid and Sorceress from the second game than my Wizard because they didn’t talk. Furthermore, he just isn’t interesting. I have no clue if this true for the other character classes. There’s something wrong when Leah, Deckard Cain’s “niece,” is more interesting than the protagonist.As such, this made the world feel contrived to me. I didn’t want to play as my Wizard. I wanted to play as Leah. I wanted to customize her to my play style. I wanted to hear her story because she seemed real to me. Especially since she seemed to be the most consistent thing in the world. (Major spoiler: the barbarians of Mt Arrat are no longer barbarians. No wonder they die so easily.)

This doesn’t mean that the gameplay is bad. Or the controls don’t work for the system. This couldn’t be any further from the truth. Using six of the buttons on the controller for skills, and the L1 for potions makes playing the game a breeze. In fact, this is better than the PC version of Diablo 2 as it let me use skills on the fly. The trade off is simple: I can’t assign more than six. Furthermore, since the X button is also the investigate/talk button I “clicked” out of a dungeon a few times more than I would have liked. It isn’t game breaking, just annoying.

Since this is a Diablo game, you can expect a decent amount of customization. I’m very thankful that the patched version that I played had loot geared for my hero. This made grabbing gear and feeling properly prepared very easy. I’d actually call the game “easy.” Diablo games, at least the first two games, have their legacy based upon “hard” monsters and “hard” decisions. These two concepts fed off of each others. It was “hard” because stats could be customized however one desired. Does one make transform the mage into a warrior? A balance between magic and melee? The second game made it even tougher with the three different skill trees.

Speaking of skill trees, they’re gone. Seriously. Gone. Each time the hero levels up, he (or she) gains access to at least one new skill, no points required. Each skill is assigned to one of the six buttons on the controller and represent different skill sets (direct attack, or defense, or summoning). And while there is a decent amount of mixing and matching (especially with powering up the base skill with a different learned rune), you can’t have all the armor sets assigned, or  a few different base attacks of magic missile saved. Or have all the buttons assigned with summons.  Due to the lack of skill points powering up the character’s skills, this makes what weapon the hero wields all the more important.  It doesn’t make the skills chosen any better or more important than any other. I think the purpose was to allow players to customize the hero to fit their personality.

This breaks the second reason mentioned about the previous game: hard monsters. In Diablo 2, how one powers the skills and boost stats determines how difficult the area could be for the class. Thus when the legions of monsters were crushed and the boss was defeated, there was a sense of accomplishment and relief. There was this rush of euphoria for conquering a foe of insurmountable odds. I liken it to beating a boss from Demon’s Souls/Dark Souls. Diablo III skips that. I found it easy on the standard difficulty. Just press the appropriate button, hit everything with disintegrate [Wizard skill], recharge, and repeat. To me, that’s sad. This doesn’t fit the legacy that Diablo created from all those years ago.  I challenged the hoards of hell and they fall this easily? Someone’s not training their hoard correctly. Or the guards for that matter. This isn’t a Diablo game. This is a Skinner Box with the only reward of grabbing more loot and even more effective manners of destroying the enemy. Forget finding a reason to fight demons or discovering that perfect skill build. Just press R2 and watch the supposedly epic boss fight (on normal!) be finished in under three minutes.

Graphically, the game looks dark and gritty. This is leaps and bounds above what the second installment offered all those years ago. And it’s glorious. Horrific zombies, translucent ghosts, imposing demons, skeletal remains of animals from long ago littering a desert….It may not look as detailed as the PC version, it gets the job done. I have 2 main complaints. The first is that the brightness is on the dark side, so it’s very difficult to tell where I can go and see what I’m doing. This feeds into the second problem: I feel like I can’t read anything. Is it because I own a modestly sized wide screen TV or is the game’s camera just too pulled back to be of use? The world may never know. It’s just hard on my eyes.

So is this game worth your money and time? I’m somewhat split. On the one hand, crushing hoards of demons feels satisfying, and the loot system is almost as addictive as the original games. The environments are varied and interesting to look at for the time spent in them. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t nice to crush hoards of demons after a hard work day.

On the other hand, this doesn’t feel like a Diablo game to me. This feels like one of the generic clones that the first two games inspired all those years ago. It’s mainstreamed the fighting to make fast progress for those of us who don’t have the willpower or energy to devout to a 30 hour campaign. The complexity that kept me coming back to Diablo 2 off and on for years is gone. In other words, the drug is delivered faster and the crash comes just as quickly. Yeah, it scratches that hack and slash itch.  Something is missing. And I think it’s because it lacks a soul. If you find it on the cheap, grab it. Those looking for a more complex game on any level, look elsewhere. It shouldn’t take an entire game for it to become complex and rewarding.