Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Total letdown"

Having bought every Blizzard game since Warcraft II, and enjoyed each one immensely,I thought Diablo III would surely be another classic. It's actually a fairly good game, but far from a classic. I've fully played through on Normal difficulty as a Witch Doctor and to be honest I'm not sure I'll bother with the other difficulty levels and character classes. Firstly, the game is plagued by technical issues, all of which are quite unnecessary and a result, it seems, of a crazy new DRM policy at Blizzard. Having played the game for a couple of weeks I've already had my account hacked once, inexplicably lost all my gold a separate time, had a completed boss quest reset and spent almost as much time trying to log onto the game as playing - and all I want to do is play the single player campaign! Why I keep getting kicked out of a single player game because Blizzard are having lag issues with their servers I cannot even begin to understand. Steam sometimes gets a bit of flak for this kind of thing but I've never seen anything this bad.

The game itself - well, it's pretty good but that's about all really. Playing as a Witch Doctor I've struggled to figure out how to best use skills - should I go with the Poison Dart or the Plague of Toads? In-game there's only a general description of each, with no explanation of different damage levels etc. I'm sure I could go look it up someplace but I'm not sure I could be bothered (or should have to). Gameplay is pretty decent, graphics are OK but nothing to write home about. In short, what you'd expect from a good budget game - but this ain't no budget game!

I always thought Blizzard games were a sure bet, but this game is one I wouldn't recommend to a friend. Seems like a major missed opportunity, let's hope Blizzard learn from this one.