Diablo 3 review

Diablo 3 review

It's an action RPG, so don't expect reams of complicated stats. The raised camera angle gives it an old school feel and the controls are simple, using only the mouse and a few keys.

 When your character levels up, and enemies get smarter, that the combat comes into its own. 

At first you only have a pool of basic offensive attacks to choose from, but as you gain XP, you get access to a wealth of unique abilities.Y ou attack enemies by clicking. Lots and lots of clicking. Hold the mouse button down while hovering over an enemy and your character will repeatedly attack it until it dies. Powers are assigned to the number keys, and have an MMO-style cooldown. Mixing the two forms the basis of the combat, and it rewards experimentation.

There are five classes. The barbarian is self-explanatory. They use brute force, wading into battle with heavy weapons and strong offensive powers. Witch doctors summon undead minions to do their dirty work, and weaken enemies by cursing them. Wizards, predictably, are experts with magic, and have a variety of ranged and defensive spells at their disposal. Monks engage enemies in hand to hand combat, and are incredibly fast. Finally, demon hunters are a pure ranged class, and use dual crossbows and launch explosives.

The combat feels great. Even though you're only clicking a mouse, there's a great feeling of weight behind your attacks. In later levels, your foes become more intelligent. Some wall your party in, rapidly teleport around the level to confuse you, or knock you back when you approach. Bosses are tough, but only because they have insane amounts of HP. Most can be bested by simply dashing around, avoiding their attacks, and spamming them with ranged magic.

There's a story, but it isn't crucial to the experience. If you've never played a Diablo game before, the mythology can be quite confusing, but it's a fairly simple fantasy tale at its heart. 

Voice acting is a mixed bag, but overall the presentation of the game is of an extremely high quality. The music is atmospheric, and the visuals - which have the same stylised textures as World of Warcraft - are richly detailed. There are loads of neat little visual touches, and environments are varied: from sun-bleached deserts and snowy mountains, to rain-soaked fields, and the bowels of Hell itself.

One thing we love is that whenever you replay a quest, it's always different. Levels in the game are randomly generated, which means you never feel like it's a burden having to go through a level you've already done in co-op. Even if you think you've finished the game and seen all there is to see with one class, there are still four more to master. Items and gold can be shared between all of your characters (who are stored online, so you can access them from any computer), which doesn't make sense from a story perspective, but is hugely convenient.

 Crafting gives you something to do between bouts of dungeon crawling. The town hub - a safe area where you can store items, get healed, and trade with merchants - has a blacksmith that can break down rare items into materials. You then use these to craft new weapons and armour. The quality of the recipes you have available depends on how much money you've invested in the blacksmith's shop.Blizzard have taken the seemingly tedious act of clicking repeatedly on a goblin, and turned it into one of the most

entertaining RPGs of the year.