Member the games you used to play? We member. The basement at the Hardcore Gamer office has a section known as the Crust Room, with an old grey couch and a big old CRT TV. All the classic systems are down there collecting dust, so in an effort to improve the cleanliness of our work space, we dust off these old consoles every so often and put an old game through its paces, just to make sure everything stays in working order. We even have a beige computer with a floppy disk drive.

Blizzard was known for taking their time with games, releasing them “when they’re ready” and not churning them out half finished to meet a deadline. This approach is a good way to help ensure that the game is ready to go when it reaches the consumer’s hand but can lead to some very long waiting periods. Diablo II was released in 2000, with the Lord of the Destruction expansion finishing up the saga in 2001. A decade passed before players were invited to return to Sanctuary, and because of this Diablo III was a highly anticipated game for many in 2012.

Diablo III is set twenty years after its predecessor in the world of Sanctuary. Deckard Cain is in Tristram, investigating ancient texts with his ward Leah. During this investigation a star falls from the sky, crashing into the Tristram Cathedral. Cain being a constant source of new quests for adventures in Sanctuary disappears into the crater, which becomes the beginning of what turns into a quest that spans several acts and countless demons to be slain across many different realms in Sanctuary that culminate when the battle goes to an invasion of the High Heavens. The player assumes the role of the Nephalem, which can be one of several available classes.

At launch there were five different classes the character could choose. There is the Barbarian, a powerful warrior who relies on Fury to power his skills that involve leaping across gorges and doing whirlwind attacks with axes. The Demon Hunter is a skilled archer and layer of traps, with Discipline and Hatred being her resources for special attacks. The Monk is a martial artist that relies on quickness and Spirit to cleanse the demons from Sanctuary. The Witch Doctor uses Mana to power her Voodoo and shamanistic magic to summon monsters, harvest souls and concoct poisons. The Wizard uses Arcane Power to summon magic in the form of lightning, fire and ice, much like the Sorceress in Diablo II.

The five initial classes are varied enough where multiple playthroughs are encouraged but this is one area where I feel Diablo II handled character classes better. In Diablo II each class had a skill tree and it was up to the player to plot the growth of the character, which could result in very different versions of each class with the customization leading to unique characters. In Diablo III all skills are accessible whenever the character reaches a certain level, so aside from equipment everyone's Barbarian will be exactly the same at a certain level. An argument can be made that this approach makes the game more accessible and gives the player access to all skills, but one of the things that led to replaying Diablo II so often was trying out different builds, like experimenting between a powerful Werebear tank Druid or an Druid that specializes in summoning animals for example.

Two new classes were later introduced to Diablo III. The Reaper of Souls expansion was released in 2014. As is tradition, this added a fifth act that takes place after the slaying of Diablo and introduces a new class. The Crusader is similar to the Paladin, where he is a holy knight typically armed with a flail and shield. Interestingly enough, the holy Crusader powers his skill through the deadly sin of Wrath. In 2017 The Rise of the Necromancer was released, which doesn't add a ton of substantial content beyond some cosmetic items and the character class Necromancer, returning from Diablo II. The Necromancer uses Essence for his fun with corpses skills, that range from raising the dead into his servitude to use corpses as magical vessels of destruction.

Diablo has always focused on the war between Heaven and Hell with the player descending into Hell to kill Diablo himself. The first two games nailed the aesthetic for this perfectly: the games were dark and foreboding, where simply looking at the screen would lay to rest any doubts that these games weren't living up to their namesake. Diablo III dealt with the same subject matter but early press screenshots showed a brighter and more colorful palette that was accused of trying to turn Diablo III's image into something more akin to World of Warcraft. While brighter in tone than the previous two games, the initial backlash at the art direction was harsh. What seemed like a response to this was the bonus level, which was the equivalent to the joke cow level in Diablo II. Whimsyshire was a land that opened up when the proper loot goblin was killed, which is filled with rainbows, unicorns and enough bright pastel colors that would even make the Easter Bunny puke.

The brighter color palette was the lesser controversy when Diablo III launched. It is one of those games that has that online only DRM. This is an antipiracy measure that is most successful at punishing consumers who attempt to purchase the game through legal means. Regardless of how good a game might otherwise be, requiring it to have an internet connection even during single player sessions is asinine. People who purchased Diablo III at launch will likely remember that the first few games it was very difficult to play the game because the servers were bogged down. This is frustrating when trying to play an MMO and downright infuriating if this is preventing the playing of a single player game. This actually caused some trouble for Blizzard in a few countries where legal action was threatened against them for not clearing advertising this feature on the box. With each passing year this becomes less of a practical issue as a constant internet connection becomes more and more regular, it is the still irritating in principle that without a fast internet connect the consumer is unable to play the pay they paid for. This always online connection doesn't seem to be an issue for the console ports.

The gameplay of Diablo III is similar to its predecessors in that it is a repetitive clickfest that involves a lot of loot chasing. It is a simple formula but also very addictive. Instead of offering up Nightmare and Hell difficulty levels for subsequent players, Diablo III instead unlocks 16 different difficulty levels once the player reaches level 60. These difficulty levels allow the player to pretty choose exactly how difficulty they want the game to be, but like always the greater rewards come with the greatest difficulty. The different characters are all balanced where none really seems greatly easier or more difficult than one another, where physical strength seems to be of lesser importance than in previous games where the player can rely almost entirely on their special skills making normal attacks generally obsolete except for filling the pool of whatever resource is used to activate the more advanced skills. Compared to the previous entries Diablo III is easier even on the higher difficulty levels. For players seeking additional challenge they could create a Hardcore character, where once that character dies they are permanently gone. Even with the easier difficulty there were some stressful moments trying to beat the game and reach level 70 with a Hardcore character.

Diablo III wasn't without its issues but it still ended up being a lot of fun to play once I was able to connect to the server, though that problem got a lot better after the a week or two. While not quite as captivating as Diablo II was in 2000 it was still fun to play through a couple times, especially with friends over Battle.net. A couple years later a second copy was acquired that included the Reaper of Souls content for PlayStation 4, which happened because Fry's had a promotion where purchasing the PS4 console included a copy of Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition which provided a good excuse to play through the game again with the new character and check out the fifth act. It was nice to see nods throughout the game that harkened back to the previous Diablo games, such as the return of the Butcher as a good.

Debating on which Diablo game was more significant relative to their time is a fairly subjective matter where nostalgia could play a major role in shaping one's opinion. While there are many ways that Diablo III did improve on its predecessor there were a few areas where it seemed to take a step back. In spite of the criticisms, it is among the better loot collecting dungeon crawlers of its era and a worthwhile adventure for fans of such things. Diablo III with its expansions and horrid online only DRM (to my knowledge they haven't removed that from the PC version) is still available on PC where the mouse and keyboard set up is the ideal way to play it. But since then it has been ported to PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch where the console versions can be played offline.

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