Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition Review - A Reaper Hit
Still a wonderful loot-grabbin' time, whatever box it's rockin' on.
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Still a wonderful loot-grabbin' time, whatever box it's rockin' on.
Read Full Article
Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition Review - A Reaper Hit
- Thread starter Jimothy Sterling
- Start date
Well, that is good news.
I am with you in that first boat you mentioned Jim. Both my best friend and I played Diablo 3, and completed it. For both of us it was some grand fun. Yet we noticed many things missing, a couple of classes and such. Hopefully these things will be sorted out with the included "Reaper of Souls" expansion.
Hopefully, we may buy it, and once again enjoy murdering the hell out of some demons.
I'm going to acquire it on the PS3, sure, our current characters are not on there, but it will be my copy, and we will gain a few pluses. (Apparently, according to the game's information)
Edit: A nice review, I shall trust both your and my judgement.
Now ... [sub]maybe we should vote to have you rhyme in the next article Jim. ;P[/sub]
I am with you in that first boat you mentioned Jim. Both my best friend and I played Diablo 3, and completed it. For both of us it was some grand fun. Yet we noticed many things missing, a couple of classes and such. Hopefully these things will be sorted out with the included "Reaper of Souls" expansion.
Hopefully, we may buy it, and once again enjoy murdering the hell out of some demons.
I'm going to acquire it on the PS3, sure, our current characters are not on there, but it will be my copy, and we will gain a few pluses. (Apparently, according to the game's information)
Edit: A nice review, I shall trust both your and my judgement.
Now ... [sub]maybe we should vote to have you rhyme in the next article Jim. ;P[/sub]
Reaper Of Souls just adds one new character class.StormShaun said:
Speaking for myself, my opinion of D3 is very mixed. It's one of those cases where I feel people are justified in hating it because there is no reason why it should have been called "Diablo 3" given that they simplified everything greatly from the previous games, removing a lot of the depth from character building and such.
While I know not everyone agrees with me, one of my biggest issues with the games industry is the desire to tack a big series name and a few established IP trappings onto everything, even if they are making something different. Then of course the industry and fanboys go on the warpath when people complain about people comparing the game to previous ones in the series, when they themselves encouraged the comparison by using the name and a sequel number to draw people in. This usually goes along with people claiming that those complaining just hate innovation or whatever, when in reality nobody probably would have cared if they had just started a new franchise to begin with. As a general rule when people by numbered sequels they pretty much do it because they liked the previous ones and wanted more of the same.
I don't think Diablo 3 is bad, but I do not think it feels much like Diablo without the skill trees, and just swapping out the moves and mods periodically. It's shallow, much like what they did when they removed a lot of the customization and building from WoW.
Right now though my current hate target is "Sacred 3" which I think was in part ruined by Diablo 3. Basically Ascalon who made the original "Sacred" games ran into financial problems and had to disband and reform. A new group of devs decided to take the "Sacred" franchise and pretty much turn it into a linear hack and slash game, removing all of the skills, customization, and most importantly the open world, which pretty much gave "Sacred" it's identity in the market by doing things other games didn't have the guts to do. It's pretty much now a sort of D3 knock off, because despite the criticisms D3 apparently sold pretty well.
Of course what makes this one worse is that the original devs are still around, and are actually making a true Sacred sequel, except due to legal garbage they can't even use their own name, and wound up having to call it "Unbended" because they couldn't even call it "Unsacred". If it was more well known I'd have expected Jim to have made some comments about this little mess.
One of the odd things that goes along with this story is a lot of people who bought "Sacred 3" didn't feel they really needed to check it out in detail because hey, it's "Sacred" they know the series. I admit I sort of fell into this myself. As a result a lot of people feel cheated. While on some levels I can understand the whole "do your research" thing there should be some degree of confidence that goes along with someone using a well known series name, at least
in terms of the things that defined that series. It's sort of like say Disney making a movie called "Guardians Of The Galaxy 2" showing a picture of Starlord's helmet on the poster, and then releasing a movie about a bunch of neighborhood watch dweebs who hang out at "The Galaxy Pub" one of whom happens to be a huge Starlord fan and wears a helmet that looks like his while riding his bike. I mean sure, technically you can say the guys should have done research before going to see the movie and not simply taken it on faith that it was going to be a comic-book based space opera just because it's officially being called the sequel to one.
I guess the point is more or less that I'm getting sick of the overuse of franchises, and the deceptive marketing, which are things Jim goes on about all the time. I'm increasingly getting irritated that it seems digging is becoming necessary to buy games, as opposed to something you can do. I shouldn't feel like I need to double and triple check every bloody thing, and then be considered an idiot because I'm say playing games rather than stalking every bit of info about one I might want to buy, and to make sure that a game presenting itself as the continuation of a series is actually doing that... which I've run into a few times, but it seems to be happening more and more where a numbered sequel is nothing like the rest of the series. I sort of blame "Fallout 3" for it honestly, which got away with it by being a kick arse game that pushed the limits for it's time... now it seems a lot of series are doing the same thing, but do it in order to cheapen and dumb down the franchises.
In short D3 and S3 seem to be soul mates, I feel like they did the same thing, and I feel S3 happened pretty much because of D3 doing it and making boatloads of cash even with the AH fiasco.
But enough rambling, I doubt many people care.
I have the PC version. I hate the controls, I really dislike that clicking is both moving and attacking. Anyways, I still played it for like 400 hours. I would like to get this one, just to play couch co-op with my kid.
The biggest problem I've had with D3 is that the expansion felt really underwhelming for $40. When it comes down to it though, I guess I've played enough hours to justify the money I spent.
Question! Is the expansion going to be sold separately, like as a download on the PS Store, or will I need to buy the full PS3 edition again? No one really seems to have the answer for that one.
i know that people like to customise their characters and stuff with skill trees but the problem is, there are a lot of ways you can mess up your build and make your character worthless and the only way to be succesful is to follow a predertermined class set up. sure your own build can work, but it wont be on par with a tested and proven build.Therumancer said:
That's part of the skill involved in these kinds of games though, not everyone will be able to figure out how to make the most awesome character possible, which means different people wind up with different results. The base games have still been quite doable even without "perfect" characters or some kind of gimmick build. Making new characters to try different builds is also part of the replay factor.gonzo20 said:
Part of the problem with games like this being simplified is that it involves a sort of "everyone is a winner" mentality which defeats a lot of the point of gaming, and the competitive scene where things like this most matter. Half the point of games like WoW (before they changed it), Diablo, Sacred, and other games is that when stats matter as much or more than your particular reflexes, the skill becomes a matter of knowing how to "cook the books" so to speak. It's also why people can get respect when the figure out something counter-intuitive and epic. In arenas and such of course a lot of people get upset when they lose because someone else is smarter and better at theorycrafting than they are, while they can twitch harder.
It's kind of annoying for a lot of people when all games, especially multi-player ones, become dependent on the same reflexes/coordination factor rather than a mental exercise, especially in generas like RPGs which are supposed to be defined by that difference. A lot of people who play RPGs are people who say like to read, but don't have quick fingers (or don't have them anymore), a lot of the anger comes from people like this increasingly having absolutely nowhere to go. With simplification like this you can't say wind up equaling or dominating a "shoot bro" by simply being a lot smarter in setting your character up, especially when he can just go into the configuration screen and grab all the same stuff any time he wants.
It should also be noted (going back to the "everyone is a winner" thing) that the lack of any kind of meaningful fail state makes success in a game mean less. Outside of "hardcore" type modes (which are vulnerable to system error, especially when games force you online) the only real way to fail in a game like this and "lose" is for you to build a character who say is unable to progress to the next higher difficulty modes. Part of the point, especially when respeccing is not allowed or prohibitively expensive at the very high levels, is that it's basically a "game over" screen. At that point the idea is to go back and make a new character and think ahead to what you learned with that one, if you really want to head up into the next difficulty level that is. You might say "nobody wants to see all that work go down the toilet" and retire a favorite character, but then again nobody intentionally wants to lose, and the fact that this can happen is what makes succeeding, or doing better next time, so rewarding, especially in a game where progression and more entertainment is the only real reward (what you do in a game in no way impacts real life). Sure it can be poignant to realize that your favorite Paladin or Seraphim isn't going to be able to play on the top difficulty level, but that's sort of like having to retire a favorite RPG character, maybe because he hit is racial level limit and just can't become strong enough to fight demons on their home plane, maybe aspects of the character like 2E D&D kit drawbacks hold him back after a point, maybe he dies, maybe aging just catches up due to too many Haste spells, or maybe the type of character just isn't viable when the levels get too high (say a direct magical attacker getting to the point where nearly every monster is loaded with magic resistance and only needs to roll a 2 or higher to save, and the character hasn't learned any indirect spells or tricks to get around those problems) which is perhaps most accurate to the "Diablo" issue. If you never fail, and everyone is a winner, what's the point? Besides, being a game, you can always try again.
My issue with D3 was that, for me, the thing I like the most about ARGPs isn't the loot, it's the ability to create new and interesting builds with the various character classes. D3 took pretty much all of that flexibility away, so essentially, your level 30 monk is exactly the same as my level 30 monk except for equipment, while in Torchlight 2, your level 30 Berserker could be completely and utterly different than my level 30 Berserker (in addition to the equipment differences).
I get this, but don't feel my enjoyment of the game is being hampered by comparisons to other games. I don't play a huge number of ARPGs because generally I prefer a slower pace, but I have thoroughly enjoyed D3 RoS UEE so far (level 30 Crusader) for much the same reason that I loved both Borderlands. I think it offers enough build flexibility, along with followers when playing solo, to keep me happy. The pacing of quality loot is pretty good, if a little generous. In fact I'd say the game is a little easy on Expert, so I'm disappointed that higher difficulty levels are locked for now (not that I haven't died!). I would say that the addition of the Crusader is a game changer. It gives the game the extra kick I'm sure it was missing in terms of classes, although it seems a little too strong. Anyhow, overall it's a winner with far more upside than not in my opinion.Ihateregistering1 said: