After a year or two I've returned to Diablo to fix my need for a good hack and slay, and after playing many different games and genres the last couple of months I must say I'm somewhat disappointed with Diablo.
First thing I want to say is that the core gameplay still holds up very well: lots of different abilities and classes and builds to choose from; many mechanics to improve your stats and gear, your entire build. I really like how complex you can go if you want to: extract different stats and bonuses from items, apply them to other ones; change the rarity; insert gem slots; combine gems and upgrade your gear how you see fit; crafting and salvaging; re-roll stats.
I love in how many ways you can tinker with your whole gear and you don't grind only one resource to increase only one stat. To make the best out of your character you can really spend a lot of time tinkering and thinking on how to achieve better stats.
You said something about loot?
However, I realised this already back then that all these clever and interlocking mechanics, better stats, lead finally to nowhere. It's only about higher difficulty or rifts and the endgame cycle is simple as that: do a rift or bounty hunt, improve you gear to beat a higher greater rift. Repeat. The ultimate goal is eventually reach the highest rift possible (with that specific build). It's like a high score. Beat Greater Rift 70? Repeat aforementioned process to beat Greater Rift 75. All those tools they give you serves the sole purpose to increase that rift number and it really feels like running a hamster wheel.
And this ties into what I only realised now as I was playing for the last couple of days: the story and actual content is so, so bloody shallow. The story isn't actually that bad although it's the same old trope with a twist (Leah). It's not particular original but it doesn't feel like an epic journey full of interesting characters, intrigues and drama (apart from the narrative around Deckard and Leah). It would have been great if there had been more stories, more quests, more locations to unlock by increasing your gear and stats. I'm coming from games with no enemy scaling and locations and quests often being way above your level, skill or equipment. And you would often return later with better stats to tackle these missions, quests and stories. And it felt super rewarding because you get to know more and different characters with interesting stories – the perfect balance of gameplay and narrative. It's like when people used to increase the Wisdom stat to the max in Plancescape: Torment to get all the dialogue. Improve your character to get more out of the game. If you take joy in beating every increasing Rifts and that's all what the game needs to offer, more power to you. Whatever floats your boat and I'm not saying you shouldn't enjoy that. It's just that I expect more or different from a game.
And when it comes to the level design Diablo 3 falls short as well. The visuals look beautiful and I love to stumble across old village ruins, roaming through dark forests. But the underground levels are sooo generic and everything in this game screams "I'M A GAME!". Immersion? What's that?
Quite gritty, gloomy at times. Dense atmosphere.
First: It's how levels are connected. After playing Dungeon Siege 1 and 2 I noticed how awesome these games are in that regard. Everything is connected and there's no loading screen. If you go down a cave, you actually go from the forest down into a cave without the need to interact with a door-like entrance. You just go down, whereas Diablo is more like Elder Scrolls: enter a house by clicking the door and being spawned somewhere else. It could literally be anywhere. Then you have let's say the cathedral in Diablo with a layout that's impossible. It really feels like a dungeon from old school dungeon crawling games with complex interior textures painted on so it kind of looks like a cathedral from the inside but it doesn't feel like it. No amount of book shelves and destroyable tables and chairs change that when you have literally hundreds of rooms and what feels like a square kilometre of interiors. You know that scene from Loaded Weapon 1 where they enter his trailer and it suddenly becomes a palace inside? That's how Diablo 3 feels like.
Everything feels so gamey despite the intricate lore they tried to add by journals and books you can find along your way. But it's not only the level design and how it's connected. On console you have permanently this circle around character, numbers and stats and effects popping up left and right. I already disabled every meta information possible in the options menu but you can't get rid of the player circle (Pillars of Eternity offer that option, for instance). Then there is no block or dodge animation and instead there's a floating text telling you you "blocked" or "dodged". I see that additional animation could have impacted the desired ultra-fast paced gameplay flow but that's exactly my problem with the game: everything is trimmed for the gameplay and everything else goes out the window.
Another example of immersion going south: Diablo with the same three voice lines he throws at your the whole time. And then what he actually says, something "I smell your fear". Yeah right. I'm about to wipe the whole hell with him and he doesn't even realise it.
On the other hand is Diablo 3 an ultra-polished game with a great interface (even on console), a beautiful interface that is to say, and stunning visual effects and high quality voice-overs and render-sequences.
Of course you could say that you don't play a hack and slay for its story, its immersion and its characters. Why, though? I mean, you have Tyrian 2000, a bloody vertical shooter with tons of texts and story and lore; it doesn't need it to to be a fun game but it's possible. And I think I would enjoy Diablo 3 a lot more if it borrowed more from other games without sacrificing its hack and slay nature.
If you look at the recent hit Hades, you can see how they even incorporated the ever changing procedural generated rooms into the story and have characters address it. This is amazing because although a total gamey thing it stays true to the world and story the games weaves and presents to you. What a fucking amazing game and the gameplay is ultra-sharp and on point as well!
Where is my Hades as a classic loot-based hack and slay like Diablo 3?
