Addictive gameplay meshed with fun unique classes in an all familiar setting. It's greatness outweighs any flaws.
Story:
Diablo 3 covers the story of a lone hero who is drawn to a fallen comet. Upon arriving at a town nearby called New Tristam, the hero meets Leah. She claims her uncle Deckard Cain had fallen into a hole produced by the fallen comet and fears the worst. The hero aids Leah in finding Deckard Cain, all the while the forces of hell rise up around them. This all later turns to a larger scheme as the player discovers a soul stone that encapsulates the souls to bring greater power to the humans. The use of it could bring salvation to mankind, or it's destruction.
The story's was a decent one. While not huge or deep, it managed to fuel the progression of the game and provide great narrative for pushing the player forward. There's also plenty here for the die hard Diablo fans to enjoy, as they will see familiar faces and some major plot turns.
Graphics:
While Diablo 3 doesn't push the bounds of visual technology in any way, it still manages to produce an experience that is pleasing to the eyes. It does seem like Blizzard chose to produce a game that ran smoothly and was accessible to more people rather than make sweat sweat. Diablo 3 still manages to provide great spell effects, great character animations, great action, dark environments, and crazy demons. A new feature Blizzard included with this iteration of their custom engine is the advancement of physics. Enemies as well as characters can be smashed, diced, and thrown across the map when struck. This adds an element of surprise to combat when you're thrown about, or pummel an enemy so hard they fly off a cliff. On top of the gameplay visuals, Blizzard serves up the usual breath taking CG cut scenes. They are beautiful and stunning as ever.
Gameplay:
So on to the meat and potatoes of Diablo 3! Diablo 3 borrows the same amazing formula of it's previous smash hits. Your take control of a character from a birds eye view perspective by clicking with the mouse at a destination. The game is comprised of 4 Acts and each act has a central hub in the form of a town. Players generally get quests from towns or areas outside of the town, and upon completing these quests, are granted experience. Slaying monsters also gives experience as well as possibility of loots from gold to equipment.
The control works well and are very simple to pickup and enjoy. You can click a location or object to move your character and clicking a target will attack it. Abilities can be assigned to left or right mouse, along with the 1-4 number keys. For most of the game, these controls are solid enough. However over time the controls progressively seem flawed as the game gets progressively harder and character more fragile. Ground hazards can kill a character in a seconds time, and trying to get your character to move with the same button as attacking will often register your character to stand still and die while attacking.
The game progresses through many locations similar to previous installments. From grassy plains, deserts, crypts, tombs, hells, and even some surprising new locations. Locations of dungeons and even the dungeons themselves layout randomly, providing surprises and keeps the game fresh. Monsters as well are randomly placed and even have elites packs that exhibit rare traits and loot to break up the mold nicely. With such unique monster placement and traits, the dungeon crawling never gets old. Rather creates a bit of anticipation for what you'll run into next.
The classes you can adventure with are very well crafted and each feature unique abilities and resources. Monk is a fast melee based class that builds spirit as a resource to unleash specials. Barbarian is a brute melee class that builds fury with his attacks and damage taken to deal massive attacks. Wizards have a quickly refilling arcane power that they use to cast powerful spells. Witch doctors use mana to summon undead and cast pestilence upon their victims. Finally the Demon Hunter balances discipline and hatred to trap, avoid, and destroy their enemies.
Your character's class has stats that better suit them for damage and survival. Strength is for Barbs and increases Armor. Dexterity is for Hunters and Monks as well as increases dodge. Intellect is for Wizards and Doctors as well as increases Resistances. However that's about as far as itemization is unique. All weapons are polarized to the point that everyone just needs a high DPS weapon. Apparently how hard a weapon hits is how much it makes a spell hit. There's just no fun to items once you realize every weapon is trash unless it has +Damage modifiers and every piece of gear is gimped if it has +MagicFind or +GoldPickupRadius.
Diablo 3 introduces a new auction house accessible from the character selection screen. There you can sell items or buy from other players. While I never found this feature useful in any way while leveling up, it became apparent upon reaching Hell difficulty that unless you wish to spend hundreds of hours farming, you have to instead buy your upgrades from the auction house. It's not as if it's required, but you just run into a brick wall where you're not finding gear and things are becoming unkillable with your Nightmare gear. The auction house is so saturated with goods and it becomes so much easier than finding it yourself, that it just seems to cheapen the experience. To make matters worst, Blizzard seeks to have real money used to buy goods on the auction house, which is just a terrible thought in my opinion.
Aside from some control, stat, and auction house based complaints; Diablo 3 delivers hours upon hours of addictive gameplay. Just like it's older siblings. I had no problem dumping several weeks of my time into this game. Grouping with my brothers and friends to slay endless spawns of enemies was great.
Sound:
The music for Diablo 3 seems to be strictly for ambiance. Having my audio not very high, half the time I couldn't even hear it. Sound effects themselves were done great and definitely added to the experience. The voice work as well was excellently done and provided for some deep rich immersion into the Diablo world. I also enjoyed the random mock interactions between the character and hired NPCs. It was a surprising bonus when playing single player to get some actual insight into a hire as a person rather than just a hired hand.
Networking:
Unlike their previous titles, Diablo 3 is a strictly online experience. Registering your product, you're required to log in to Blizzard servers in order to access your characters and play on their servers. That means even if you only want to play alone, you will be required to play it on Blizzard's servers. This may not be an issue for many people, but it's something to keep in mind for some. Especially those without stable connections or connections at all. While Diablo 3 had a very rough start, they have recently gotten their servers quite stable and I've experienced very little issues as of late.
For the fact that Diablo 3 has no offline functionality, I cannot recommend this game to anyone without a stable high speed connection. As the play experience will most likely be terrible. If your connection is strong and stable but you want to play Diablo 3 alone, just be aware that Blizzard servers do see maintenance times and server instability is still a possibility.
For those that desire to play Diablo 3 with others, this game hits the nail on the head. Friends have the ability to hop right into your game with little restriction on level and quest progression. Players joining your game are immediately placed on your quest. If your friends are offline, you can toss your game into public to allow anyone to join. Loot is all separate so there's no fear of hoggers. It's a very finely tuned online experience. My only beef is that they did not include a private chat channel functionality for you and your friends to talk outside of party.
Conclusion:
Diablo 3 manages to bring the Diablo franchise to the next level. While the aspect of no Offline play is a huge annoyance for someone like myself, the things Diablo 3 does right just outweighs it all. I thought long and hard on my rating for this game. In the end I settled on an 8. Mainly because in the end when I think back, I would have given up on the game a long time ago if it weren't for playing it along side my brothers. Even when playing with my brothers, there's no stories to take from it. The gameplay just blurs together like a generic mow fest that has no feeling of accomplishment after so many hours of play. I still enjoyed the game and recommend it to any dungeon crawling fanatics. Especially to those that enjoyed the previous Diablo titles. It's just not a fulfilling experience in the end and brings nothing new to the table.