GB Feature: Diablo III Review

After waiting so many years to play Diablo III, we’re going to ask you to spend a little more time away from the action RPG threequel in order to take in our full six-page review. A lot of time, effort, and deliberation went into its contents, so I’ll just leave you with a couple of paragraphs to help set the tone:

While the character classes are more or less the same as they’ve always been, Diablo III has a number of changes under the hood, including a complete restructuring of the way the game handles attributes, leveling up, damage, and so on. While it all can be said to work (mostly), I still find myself unconvinced that the changes made are for the best, or that they necessarily solve the basic issues that Blizzard set out to solve in the first place.

The most controversial of these changes is that “manual” leveling has been removed. Instead, the character advancement system has been set up in a way which, frankly, resembles Call of Duty’s online multiplayer more than anything else. Whereas in Diablo II, leveling up provided a skill point and five attribute points to allocate, Diablo III has attributes increase automatically for each character class, and new skills or skill runes open up every level on their own. It’s a drastic change which has both upsides and downsides.