Edit: It's with a heavy heart that I have to edit this review. Unfortunately Blizzard did that thing they do best and decided to make their game worse in order to maximize player engagement and they hope microtransactions.
All sorts of baffling decisions like lowering player power, further limiting storage, adding more load times, and reducing rewards have made this game significantly less fun to play.
Despite my original review, I no longer recommend getting this game.
If you're interested, original review can be found below:
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I'm a big fan of this series, and still actively playing it. It's exactly what you'd expect from Diablo with a very addicting gameplay loop. The overworld map is significantly more interesting than most Diablo maps of the past, and the story is more interesting than prior Diablo games (At least it was to me). The story bosses and scenarios are also quite fun to play, and I hope more of the story bosses find their way into post-game dungeons.
As for the classes, they feel very unique, and even builds within the same classes differ greatly. I have yet to try any character I didn't love, and it takes very little time to unlock the "sauce" with each character, especially when making alts who benefit from universal boosts you can unlock through various tasks.
I'm also a big fan of world events, from random zone events that anyone can participate in which drop reward chests, to post game legions and helltide events, to massive world bosses that can spawn. This world map is full of things to find and do, and these events just add to that.
When all these things come together, as well as varied enemy factions, the gameplay loop ends up just being plain fun. If it's any indication, this is the only Diablo game where I have stuck with a character all the way to the Torment difficulties. The wealth of post-game content, the paragon boards, and the gameplay loop staying fun has kept me engaged and likely will continue to do so for quite some time.
That said, it does have some flaws. One of my favorite mechanics, being able to respec at will, becomes more tedious and expensive than fun in the post game since you're not able to save "builds".
Additionally, the game is always online and using a lot of MMO mechanics, but lacking basic tools that usually come with them, like group finders or synching the game world to the host/opening Host's instanced dungeons to party members.
I've also heard complaints about post game farming, but they are ultra-late game and won't affect a large majority of the community I think. Another issue only really seen in ultra late game is you start to see where monetization might end up showing its ugly face in the future, especially when around gold, exp and glyph exp farms. It hasn't yet, but the ultra late game farm for these gets pretty brutal.
Overall a great package that I hope Blizzard won't mess up like everything else they've touched recently.
All sorts of baffling decisions like lowering player power, further limiting storage, adding more load times, and reducing rewards have made this game significantly less fun to play.
Despite my original review, I no longer recommend getting this game.
If you're interested, original review can be found below:
_________________________________________________________
I'm a big fan of this series, and still actively playing it. It's exactly what you'd expect from Diablo with a very addicting gameplay loop. The overworld map is significantly more interesting than most Diablo maps of the past, and the story is more interesting than prior Diablo games (At least it was to me). The story bosses and scenarios are also quite fun to play, and I hope more of the story bosses find their way into post-game dungeons.
As for the classes, they feel very unique, and even builds within the same classes differ greatly. I have yet to try any character I didn't love, and it takes very little time to unlock the "sauce" with each character, especially when making alts who benefit from universal boosts you can unlock through various tasks.
I'm also a big fan of world events, from random zone events that anyone can participate in which drop reward chests, to post game legions and helltide events, to massive world bosses that can spawn. This world map is full of things to find and do, and these events just add to that.
When all these things come together, as well as varied enemy factions, the gameplay loop ends up just being plain fun. If it's any indication, this is the only Diablo game where I have stuck with a character all the way to the Torment difficulties. The wealth of post-game content, the paragon boards, and the gameplay loop staying fun has kept me engaged and likely will continue to do so for quite some time.
That said, it does have some flaws. One of my favorite mechanics, being able to respec at will, becomes more tedious and expensive than fun in the post game since you're not able to save "builds".
Additionally, the game is always online and using a lot of MMO mechanics, but lacking basic tools that usually come with them, like group finders or synching the game world to the host/opening Host's instanced dungeons to party members.
I've also heard complaints about post game farming, but they are ultra-late game and won't affect a large majority of the community I think. Another issue only really seen in ultra late game is you start to see where monetization might end up showing its ugly face in the future, especially when around gold, exp and glyph exp farms. It hasn't yet, but the ultra late game farm for these gets pretty brutal.
Overall a great package that I hope Blizzard won't mess up like everything else they've touched recently.