The PS4 version is so much smoother than the PS3 version. I originally bought the PS3 version, but was disappointed by the low resolution and janky framerate.

On the PS4 Pro, everything is buttery smooth and gorgeous. The gamepad controls also work really well. As fond as I am of the original Diablo, I really don’t like the click-click-click mouse interface. This is the best of both worlds: the arcade control scheme of something like Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, but with the depth, scale, replayability, and polish of Diablo.

I must have started this game about 4-5 times, but kept getting bored within an hour. I was about to abandon it completely, but then I switched class from Barbarian to Wizard. Suddenly the DPS is much better, the skills are varied and interesting, and now I'm actually enjoying this demon lawnmower simulator.

I still have zero interest in the endless loot treadmill endgame (to diehards, the endgame is the game, and the campaign is just a long tutorial), but I enjoyed going through the story.

The problem is that they’ve streamlined so much, the game is frankly boring. There’s no inventory management, just a hard limit of 60 items you can carry (which is plenty). There’s no potion management—mana recharges on its own (with some slight variations depending on the character class). For health, you get one pot that refills itself on a timer, but you’ll hardly ever need it, because lots of gear will refill hundreds of HP every second or on every hit, and enemies drop red health orbs all the time. There’s no item identification, or rather, occasionally an “unidentified” item will drop, but you can just warp back to town and use the Book of Cain to identify it, or just identify it yourself in the dungeon if that’s too inconvenient. Oh yeah, and warping is free, so no need to worry about Town Portal scrolls. Your equipment can be damaged apparently, but the UI doesn’t show you a durability stat, and the repair cost is miniscule (right now I have around 20,000 gold, and the cost to repair all of my equipment was just 66 gold).

There’s no stat point assignment, although in the endgame I guess you can earn Paragon Points to enhance your character. Skills are learned automatically on level-up according to a predetermined sequence, and can be freely switched around whenever you want. That’s nice for experimenting with different loadouts, but it kind of obliterates the concept of creating a character build with long-term strengths and weaknesses that you need to adapt to. In D3, you can play however you want, and switch things up whenever you want. It’s all just so convenient.

So there’s just not much of an RPG going on, and the game doesn’t ask you to think about anything, just run out and slay monsters over and over and over again. You never have to go back to town unless you want to.

On the default, Normal difficulty, this is one of the easiest games I’ve ever played. I mean yeah, there are like 20 difficulty settings that you can ramp up after a few playthroughs, but on normal, it’s almost impossible to die. I’m supposed to be a squishy mage, but I just run into the middle of an enemy horde and explode them from within. It’s a fun power fantasy, but there is no challenge and barely any tactical thinking. It’s all just pretty lights and big numbers as you wait for the shiny loot to drop, like a slot machine.

I don’t have much to say about the loot system, other than that it’s a gameplay mechanic that doesn’t really grab me the way it does with other people. Personally I find it tiresome to be constantly sorting through junk, or comparing a set of 4 random bonus attributes to another set of 4 random bonus attributes, and trying to decide which one is “better”. Since the game was so freaking easy, I basically just ignored defense and regen, and just equipped whatever maximizes DPS.

I definitely like the graphics and sound design. The graphics have a hand-painted sort of feel, clearly an evolution of WoW’s look, but with a darker tone. There’s a good variety of environments, with a nice sense of scale. It's not nearly as menacing as D1 and D2, but well done nonetheless.

The sound design is terrific, and one of the signature strengths of the series. It’s so satisfying to hear the barrels break, the plates smash, the spells sizzle, and the enemies crumple, all of which is complemented by the swell and ebb of the spooky atmospheric music.

But the fact remains: I have literally fallen asleep playing this game. I mean, it’s fun for a few minutes, and I love the wizard’s arsenal of destruction, but the gameplay is just so brainless and boring. It’s nothing like the nailbiting suspense of the first game. I really should have started on a higher difficulty.

Act V was loooong, but the Westmarch city map was cool. The music switched to a more classical style, which is not terrible by itself, but it gets distractingly loud at certain points, and it carries on for a long time.

The story is this grandiose thing of angels and demons locked in eternal war and blah blah blah, punctuated by audio logs of lore dumps you find along the way. It’s okay for what it is, but not terribly compelling. Nobody plays Diablo for the story anyway.

If anything, playing Diablo III just makes me realize how much I enjoyed the original Diablo, which has much more in common with old-school roguelike dungeon crawlers. In boomer Diablo, the loot is just one aspect of the whole, sitting alongside things like potion/scroll management and long-term character advancement. In Diablo III, loot is everything, and it’s all just slot machines within slot machines. If you love that kind of thing, dig in! But for me, Diablo III is scratching an itch that I just don't have.