The biggest change reflects the biggest obstacle when porting any hardcore PC game to consoles: the UI. They can be swapped out as often as you like with no penalty, so while you will be locked into a class and gender, you can still experiment with the finer points of a given build. While skills and hot-key slots unlock at predetermined moments, seemingly restricting the wonderful build freedom of Diablo 2, customisable salvation comes in the form of Skill Runes, modifiers that can completely alter the effects of a given ability. Replacing the last instalment’s element-based Sorceress is the Wizard, whose frail form hides a devastating destructive power, and finishing off the line up is the intoxicating Witch Doctor, a slow-burn killer specialising in DoT (Damage over Time) skills.Ĭharacter progression is intriguing. The Demon Hunter is designed to be played at range, laying traps like Diablo 2’s Assassin and rocking dual-wielded crossbows. The Barbarian and Monk are your melee classes, the former exhibiting the same powerhouse characteristics you’ll remember from Diablo 2, and the latter specialising in lightning fast jab/kick combos. Never afraid since Diablo 1 to think outside the box when it comes to classes, Blizzard have again presented us with an eclectic and unpredictable bunch. The character roster is a robust mix of melee specialists and magic users. It saves you a lot of looting time, if nothing else. While lore entries are added to your journal with every new enemy encountered, lengthy expository codex entries are replaced by short memoires read out like audio logs. The world of Diablo is vast, so much so that the entire trilogy to date has left a great many mentioned locations shrouded in mystery. Along with Cain, his niece Leah, the ever-dependable Archangel Tyrael and a handful of other allies, you’re then thrust into a desperate race to prevent the resurrection of the Demon Diablo, Lord of Terror.ĭiablo 3’s main quest will see you catapulted back and forth across the land of Sanctuary, with exposition divulged by way of NPC interaction, cinematic artwork and stunning CGI cut-scenes. The protagonist arrives to investigate, and finds series stalwart Deckard Cain on his last legs. It begins with a fallen star smashing through the cathedral in Tristram (the legendarily troubled village that has seen more death and destruction than Midsomer during its tenure as the lynchpin location for the Diablo series). Even in terms of high fantasy, Diablo 3’s narrative takes few risks, offers few twists and manages to be precisely angled to bounce the action from inception to conclusion without ever becoming boring. So, what do we need to divulge about said story? Actually, very little. ![]() ![]() That it feeds this desire while narrying and forsoothing around within its knowingly hammy story simply gives it all context and makes it all the more fun. This is a game about loot, about feeding that unexplainable urge to hoover up scattered gold pieces and trinkets to improve yourself enough that the next rampaging horde of enemies scatters more gold pieces and trinkets as you split them all open from crotch to gizzard. It’s loud and bright and fast and brutal, and no amount of PC posturing will change it into a considered strategy title – it is what it is and, by God, it knows what it is. What was not broken has been left untouched and, rather impressively, Blizzard have transferred over every patch and update that the PC community has enjoyed, too.Īt its very heart, Diablo 3 is an incredibly simple game, and so it’s no surprise that it ports to home consoles so smoothly and so comfortably. The story is the same, the world is the same, the core mechanic is the same – the main alterations are to be found, quite expectedly, in the UI and the control scheme. I should point out right away that, to all intents and purposes, this is the same game as the PC version. Those of us “casual” gamers who forgo the superior PC for these primitive console thingies have been waiting for what seems like three times that for the game to finally make it to our preferred platforms – but now it’s finally here, was it worth the wait? It’s now been more than 18 months since the long-awaited, much-delayed PC launch of Diablo 3, the third instalment in Blizzard’s seminal dungeon-crawling series.
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