Diablo III

Disclaimer: I played a witch doctor to 22 and a monk to 32 so far, have not finished the game yet(close though).

So far i love the game.

Visually it looks good, there are some rough edges, especially characters look a bit low poly, but the world looks great, and it has atmosphere. The game is not Diablo1 dark, but it still has that gothic feel to it a lot of the time.

Music is absolutely awesome. By this point i would have turned it off in most games to listen to mp3s but im still enjoying it here. Voice acting works, but it's hit or miss. Sometimes it's terrible, other times its good, but never manages to escalate to excellent.

Story is... does anyone really care about the story? It's there. It's servicable. Really cool cutscenes. But thats all. It really isn't what you play Diablo for, and it works for what it really is.

Gameplay is mindblowing, it's quick, it's fun, it makes you feel badass, even when you are clearly not. A lot of fun to be had with unlocking and exploring different skill/rune combinations, serching for one that works for you the best. There are always options to choose from. I wish there were 2-3 ability sets that you could switch on the fly to(even with skill cooldowns triggering). It's sometimes a bit tedious to reset your skills before a bossfight, just to revert afterwards. I like the fact that you don't have to restart a character because you levelled up wrong. If you fail you can always go find another skill combo that may work better than what you had. Overall the combat is fluid, satisfying and there's a lot of customisation to be had here(a lot more than in D2, regardless of what people are saying).

Loot looks cool, and can have a major impact on your character. I wish there were a bit more stat types on items, than there are now. I bet they are gonna patch something in over time. Crafting is cool, i just feel like it takes longer to grind down the items, and make a new item that you might end up grinding down again. There's a certain amount of grindiness to it.

Now onto the big issue nowdays. DRM. Yes, it sucks there's no offline mode. It sucks the servers are going down constantly. It sucks that there's lag in singleplayer games sometimes. These issues will go away in a few weeks, the crowd of sheep that plays the game, and then goes on to give 0/10 reviews will be gone, people will not play 15-20 hours straight to get THERE first, so the server load will cease, and so will the issues. I had 3 disconnects, and this sunday afternoon the game was down in europe for about 4 hours. It sucked, but it will improve.

All in all the game is terrific. It looks well, it sounds well, it plays excellent. But it's not for everyone. It's a crack addiction of a video game. It's just getting one more level, it's "what if the next enemy drops a legendary?", it's playing through over and over and over again, until you are sick and tired of your character, and then it's the same with a different one. It's a crazy, mindnumbing, life ruining lootfest, and i love it.