The good: graphics
The bad: pretty much everything else. itemization is garbage. always online DRM for a single player game is a joke. Their flimsy excuse that it's to stop botters and cheaters is a farce, as the game is rampant with botters/exploiters/duper. 4 player only? 6 skills at a time? designed with console in mind. no skill tree, no character customization, mostly useless skills leading to no build diversity. terrible story which you're forced to repeat forever. A supposed ACTION rpg without much action. cooldowns? seriously? This is what happens when you have WoW designers work on the game instead of the original D2 team.

A lot of features of D2 were left out. (jewels, runes, runewords, cubing, secondary weapons etc etc) It's a massive step back in so many ways, and it's pathetic that they couldn't come up with anything new, and have to save old features for an expansion.

The worst problem of all is that the whole game is designed around the rmah, to generate revenue. It is the single most retarded decision they could have made. Having the rmah itself isn't bad. People would have spent money on the game on 3rd party sites anyway. But designing the game and drops based around rmah destroyed the game and any fun factor it could have had. The drop rates are abysmal, and there is no way to really find your own items. The poor itemization means 99.99% of what you find are garbage. Rarely do you find something that can even be sold for a pittance. Even the few good items are garbage without great rolls. It's a loot based game without loot. As many people have said, it should be called "auction house adventures"

a couple of the patches have improved the game a bit, but don't amount to much more than a facelift. until they fix the core issues the game can only be considered terrible.… Expand

This is I believe the worst video game of all time, because of its failure to live up to its potential. The game is just NOT FUN. All your upgrades must come from the auction house or crafting.. boring!!!!!!!!!! Its a boring money pit.

I wrote a 5000 signs review, but I'm editing it down: The good: -Nice graphics -Fluid gameplay The bad: -The story -The items -New item slots that add nothing to the game but graphics -The character offensive skills all being completely dependend on and fully based on weapon damage -Even spells being completely dependent on weapon damage -The taste in my mouth when a hammer with 500 fire damage makes my cold spells stronger simply because it deals more damage than the wand I had before
-The lack of ANY actual character development beyond the CoD unlock-on-level model
-Better items being a nonfunctional replacement for character development
-The cartoony monster affixes (Arcane Sentry, reflect damage, invulnerable minions)
-The cheesy NPCs
-The cartoonish and childish style, dialogue and plot
-All characters are the one and same with different colors of sparkling on their attacks
-The auction house made necessary to have any fun what so ever
-The real money auction house giving botters incentive to bot
-The odds of finding useful items you need without using the auction house
-Difficulty solely being the grade of your equipment in any given encounter
-Bosses never drop anything useful
-Nephalem valor band-aid on the broken spine that it the game's itemization
-Paragon levels band-aid on the buried corpse that is character development
-Maps are all small mazes not large open spaces.
-Maps are not randomly generated.
-No functional PVP
-PVP gameplay being displayed in 2010 but scrapped
-Areas and mechanics in gameplay videos getting scrapped
-Diablo II and Lord of Destruction gameplay and mechanics getting scrapped in favor of WoW mechanics
-Diablo II enemies and lore getting completely scrapped in favor of all new enemies
-The british skeleton archers. Talking. Skeletons. Talking british. SERIOUSLY?!?!?
-They were WARNED about all of this in the beta OH SO MANY TIMES but did nothing… Expand

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Worst game ever! Worst game ever! Worst game ever! Worst game ever! Worst game ever! Worst game ever! Worst game ever! Worst game ever! Worst game ever!… Expand

Potential was wasted, game is currently destroyed by bots, ah/rmah. PvP is a mockery of the players. Randomness map? no such thing exists. Maybe Expansion will repair this destroyed game. Now waiting for PS3 version. Playing is wasting the time its Pay2Win. Only 3 for initial good impression.

I don't think I need to repeat what the whole internet is saying. Some points for the graphics, cinematics and soundtrack. This game took me to the highest highs and the deepest lows (in a very specific segment of my life, of course): most excitement I ever felt about the launch of a game, then gradually but surely descending to the most disappointment I've ever had from a game. Now I just don't care, uninstalled it.… Expand

Just the worst game I ever played in the whole world. The story suck as hell really and gameplay sucks like the story. The graphics.... Every thing just suck in this game (I want my money back).

DO NOT BUY, Waste of money.
YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.
Wish I had listened and not wasted my time and money,
never purchasing anything from Blizzard again.

Game made around the Auction House.
Made so player could sell other players items for real money and blizz gets a cut.

Worst thing i played in years. And unfortunately i pre-ordered so there's some money i'll never see again.

Initially, this game was quite fun. Maybe it was the fact that I had waited for 4 years constantly checking the news for any indicators on its release date. Pros: Great graphics. Combat feels good Great character animations Fluid combat Negatives: Terrible endgame Lack of 8 player games you can name create yourself like Diablo 2 had Awful gear and droprates No PVP at release big letdown
No harassment pvp like Diablo 2 had
No open world PVP like Diablo 2 had

The number one disappointment for me though was the lack of a Diablo feel. The story was laughable. The villains were just ridiculous and cartoony, in a bad way. The music was overly epic and didn't fit the Diablo feel. A lot of the game felt a bit like World of Warcraft. In fact there were even naga type enemies in Act 2. One of them had a laughably awful line, "YOU WILL NOT GET INTO THE AQUEDUCT!" or something along those lines.

Overall, just skip the game if you loved Diablo 1 or 2. If you never played the original Diablo games, this is a pretty average game, but I think everyone expected better from Blizzard.… Expand

At the sight of the Box as a new comer you are em-bottled with ideas of your wonderful experiences with the previous series, it was "Diablo 1" and "Diablo 2" that has poised your very soul to enjoy the next installment, you throw in that CD and you start playing.

one cool feature you notice is your tab space seems to have improved, as you venture further into the game you realize the unquestionable amount of rares that drop this is indeed an improvement, you also notice that the main attribute stats seem to accumulate as well, 100 str on an item at level 11... okay lets put it on!

You will spend hours on in fighting through the mechanics of the game only to get to where we are all at, level 60, so whats next? you notice as you grew in-dept with the game there is no more hostile button its been replaced by a NPC that allows you to teleport to a short term map that is hardly worth staying more than 30minutes, and you will soon become disappointed by the amount of skills you through off of your list due to common sense in terms of damage defensive calculating.

just to break it down for you in a TL:DR Version
as of 4/29/2013 review

# Barbarians Spin to win are the top for Monster Power 10

# Witch Doctors are the best in terms of PvP for the Dot damage and Survivability

# Echoing Fury, Skorn, Calamity are the most strive for items

# There is Duping we wont lie about that both RMAH/AH

# 24/7 Trolling on the forums (mainly upset gamers)

# Untrusted Hardcore players

# An item system so bad it tries to compare its stats to World of Warcraft. (ex: 1.08 Item has 300str, 1.09 350str, 1.10, 410 str, and so forth)

# Unlike Diablo 2, Items lower than ilvl63 wont provide a means of upgrading your character, other than the Stone of Jordon which gives you a max of 30% Elite Damage.

# One of the easiest boss mechanics you could ask for, Changing the modes wont change the way the boss fights only the damage and health increases.

# No In dept Skill Tree or Skill Talent Points, Passives, or Skill Auras for Items that would provide a means of a Different Build.

#Magic Find is not a stat you could rely on at (Paragon 100) with 300% MF including shrine buffs i had to BUY all my stuff in the end http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/lordgenocide-1558/

# No more Cow levels, its been replaced by a cartoon series called My Little Pony's "

# And lastly this game is 100% Anti-Grief mode, other than the abused glitches on Hardcore Mode, your expectations to walk into a game and hostile a whole room of people will not happen.… Expand

i bought that game on pre-sale, played it about 3/4 weeks and never open ir again. Why? Diablo 3 spotted the Diablo brand. Shame on you Blizzard, i was your fan. Why make the system too simplistic? Diablo 3 spell system is designed for a kid.

The auction system has complete destroyed the entire game. The campaign are so quickly and repetitive.

This game does not feel like a Diablo game at all. There's no end game, drop rates are so low, no diversity, no PVP, nothing to play besides farming one act mindlessly, patches progress are just way too slow. It does not feel like Blizzard is putting their resources into this game.

The game is a soulless version of what it was supposed to be. This is not Diablo 3, this is a sham. Maybe it was never supposed to happen? Maybe it was dead all along and that is okay, what was given was glorious in its day and it will always have that place in history. Let Diablo die one final time, lay it to rest and say goodbye.

DEAR BLIZZARD: GET RID OF (your greed) THE AUCTION HOUSE & FIX THE DROP RATES. This game is like one of those claw machines you keep pumping quarters in. Only the quarters are my completely unrewarding hours of gameplay and my initial 60$ f*cking dollars. As if being level 60 isn't enough; you have Neph Valor (5) and a grind system to paragon "100". Blizzard: "Keep getting more magic find, guys! You'll get good drops eventually. In the meantime-- go buy gold from the AH to build yourself a Hellfire Ring." If I wiped out even HALF the amount of mobs that I do in this game in D2, I would have legendary gear for 6 different characters by now. The 'designs' for the blacksmith that drop aren't even a different, distinct color; so I don't even feel remotely rewarded for finding THOSE. Especially when I look at how much it costs to MAKE the damn thing. Oh, and then there's top-tier gems and the hellfire ring. WHERE THE HELL am I going to make enough (in-game) cash to afford ANY of that with the cost of repairs? So what do we do? Turn to your fu*king AH to sell But guess what? Nobody wants to BUY what I've found, because it's bull****. Even the legendary items, (that I find MAYBE once every 15 hours). Blizzard's greed is showing, and it's ruined this beautiful game. This perpetual "carrot on a stick" you feed the public is disgusting. I feel sorry for the developers. Anyone that has spent (real) cash in the AH should feel ashamed of themselves.… Expand

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Biggest game disappointment in my life. The most fun I had playing this game was chatting with people while playing, the game is so bad it has more value of a chat room than a game. After 6 hours I wasn't having fun anymore, tried to give it a chance to 12 hours before giving out. The only thing I was impressed with was the seamless exit and retry from the auction house to the game. Too many negatives to list off, so I'll just hit the low points, the games graphics, style and control are archaic they belong in the past 10 years ago so lets start with that. The auction house ruins the joy of finding loot. O yes and the fact I per-ordered my $60 game and couldn't play for the first week. Ok I can't waste anymore of my life on Diablo 3 this review is over!!!… Expand

Ridiculously terrible and sad game. Biggest disappointment of a decade. The only good thing about this game is nice art in game. The bad is no randomly generated maps, server down time, ping problems, end game is pay to win this list an go on and on. Also, dumbed down game play due to being ported for consoles doesn't do any good to the game either. Even though most people did already I suggest that you do not waste your money on this game.… Expand

This rating is not based in DRM. Is based in gameplay.... the worst gameplay ever. A point and kill game. I dont know why people can say it has "good graphics". Come on, pixeled characters?, fuzzy grass? shadow trees? Nothing has good resolution or detail or style (and yes, Im playing it in the Highest detail with 3GB in VRAM) Repetitive as hell, you have seen everything in the first 30 minutes. Since then, just point and kill. A Well deserved 0 for this "game".… Expand

Don't waste 60 bucks on this game, it is not worth it. Aside from DRM, the auction house and all that jazz the game just sucks. A lot of the story feels disjointed and out of place, as if they had all kinds of content and needed a way to mush it all together.

After growing up playing Diablo II, and loving it, there simply aren't words for my disappointment playing Diablo III. Everything that could go wrong, did. Diablo II, although its graphics dated, was gruesome and dark. Diablo III looks like a World of Warcraft graphical clone. The in-game shop and auction house, requirement to be connected to the internet, and just general "feel" of the game left MUCH to be desired. Also, my account was banned for someone in China hacking it for in game gold. Good riddance...… Expand

The game is just plain boring. There is no skill tree, no stats. All classes uses the same stats dps) from itens. Story line sucks, i mean, Leah, really????

Diablo 1: One of the first attempts ever given to create an RPG, global, complete success both financially, story-wise, consumer wise and software wise. Created with insanely limited technology under a short amount of time by a few people, minimal budget, looked amazing at the time, LAN compatible.
---
Diablo 3: Been made for over 10 years, repeatedly delayed launch, massive release failure, consumer disapproval through the roof, controversy at ever corner, made by several departments of one of the largest software companies in the world, literally no software limitations, huge budget roughly 100 mil, veteran game-designing company with experienced producers and talented people, everything made custom be it engine or graphics, looks like performs like backtracking and repetivity through entire game, soon year since release with no additional content, DRM singleplayer, Pay-2-Win with real money auction house, no LAN.. I could keep on going but at the end of it all, I can only wonder just how far that flag-pole was that Jay took up his rear to dismiss all of these faults and to on quote say: "will not jeopardize the progress of the game" as he leaves his position as lead designer. FTL, Blizzard.… Expand

This isnt a game, its a cashcow. Pretty disgusting because Diablo II was great. Go to hell ActiBlizz
Nasty DRM politic, casualized gameplay, everything else is bad, Im very dissapointed.

on 12 yeras them make same game :S how can people accept that? I dont buy "next" diablo beacuse them sell bad games for full price better buy torchlight 2

never seen such a Bad Game..... What you are doing is just running and killing without any sence..... inferno is so booring untill 60 is quite funny but then if u reached 60 it is anoying

First of all i would like to state that i have played this game for 1000 hours. I think you should question my score of 1/10 after 1000 hours of play and would say that why did you play it for 1000 hours then? Well let me explain I never used RMAH while most of my friends used RMAH and spent a great deal of money to really enjoy the game i chose the the other way played to save gold and loot good items. Never found a good item with the chance of 1/1000000 of course that gave me the ambition and i played more and nothing good...Damn WTF! Cons: -Always online RDM and if you live in 3rd world you *ucked up -No skill tree, leveling is not that much important if you have the money The game is limited to play with 1, 2, 3, 4 which than clearly being verified that this game is made for console! Very little chance to find an item usefeul which is designed on purpose that you have have to use AH&RMAH Simplfied crippled game mechanics short game play, bad plot Meaningless mindless absurd quests! bad graphics bad music (imo) PVP is a joke in the end game you end up with only 3 short maps of Act3 which is called Alkaizer run.

To sum up if the title is Diablo 3 i will give it 1/10 this game is sacrificed to console industry. And i hate the system of RMAH i will never buy a game consisting pay to win system… Expand

Dull and repetitive, even the carbon copy storyline fails to give anything new. With each level it's only really the graphics that change. I won't even start on the always on-line requirement. AVOID.

So I'm forced to be always online just to play the SINGLE player game? Seriously? No thanks. Don't buy this game, because if you do, you're supporting game companies controlling where and when you play the game that YOU purchased. Don't buy this game.

Repetitive, boring, no imagination, terrible dialog, horrible technical issues early on, pay to win ingrained in its DNA. This game was made for another time. AVOID AT ALL COST.

This is propably the worst game Blizzard has ever released. It was clearly rushed into release. The game has no end content what so ever. This game is an insult to the previous games on the franchise. There is no world pvp, the actual "pvp" is called brawling now which is a complete joke. Diablo 3 is no longer the Grim world as it should be, now its all colorful. The itemization is horrible, and the game is run by bots controlling the economy. RMAH is also a complete failure. they decided to get rid of skilltrees/stats which really are the essence of the games on the genre. The chatrooms and social side of the game is non-existant Players no longer can make their own games. The story is like from a cheap hollywood movie. Diablo is a girl, cool stuff. You can no longer swap between acts. Party size decreased from 8 to 4. If you think this game is a worthy successor for Diablo 2, I can guarentee you its not, DO NOT BUY THIS GAME.… Expand

Let's start with the positive points of the game: it looks great.
But that's about the only thing it has going for it. I am very disappointed at so many other things, but perhaps my expectations were too high. I'll just name a few examples:
- The game has been made so dumbed down. Take stats: the primary stats for each class are so important, that stat priority becomes a no-brainer.
- The story is predictable and too linear.
- Even for a hack and slash style game, D3 is too simple and repetitive… Expand

I must be one of the few gamers reviewing this game who didnt much like or play Diabolo 2. D2 was BORING. It was repetitive. The sound effects were annoying. The graphics sucked. The story was stupid, and combat was either too easy or too hard. Not only that, the skill trees were confusing, the classes were irritating and there was no kind 'role playing' in the game at all. The thing that Diabolo 2 did well was LOOT. That cube thing! Gems! legendary items. While I didn't much like the game in total, I loved the loot! loot was the one thing Diabolo 2 did well. Diabolo 2 was the KING of loot games. The loot was so good, that even someone who disliked eveything else, actually stuck around to play a bit, just to see what I could find. Whether you could use it or not, every hour it seemed you could find something interesting to look at, stick in the cube and mess around with. Loot in D2 was the best. So what happened Blizzard? Now we have Diabolo 3. All the things that were bad in the last game seem to be better. Yet the thing that was most important. The thing that was fun. the one area in which Diabolo as a franchise outshone every other game in existence has been NERFED!!!!!!!!!! You must be facking kidding! What is this game? Its some kind of conveyor belt of pretty spell effects and boring loot that we are supposed to play? No cube? No sockets? No set pieces? No legendaries? No NOTHING in the one area where Diabolo was worth playing???? Do i get it right that this game was designed to be boring so that we would pay cash to buy things that we used to have fun finding. that doesn't make any sense. Buying items gives ZERO sense of satisfaction. If you buy an item you only feel like you wasted real money on some data, that we get for free in every other possible game we play under the sun? This is not game design. THIS IS ZERO FUN. Zero fun equals zero score guys. Who ever is responsible for this needs to go and find a job doing else, because they clearly don't understand games. Hey developers please don't be so cynical, so mean spirited, so corporate, so compromised, so petty, so nasty, so explotative, so cruel! Stop measuring success on unit sales and annual turnover. With the kind of budget power Blizzard has, you could have made a game so much better than Torchlight 2. You got outgunned by a team with 10% of your budget, but 5000% more integrity! what a pack of utter, spineless losers this team is, their boss's member deep up their collective rear end. Hang your heads in shame! If you can't make the game you want to make quit and find a place where you can. If your boss has bad values, quit and stop helping him exploit you to exploit his customers! Show some spine and integrity! Your whole team should compose a letter of denunciation and leave en-masse. Maybe then we can forgive you for this joyless auction house with bloom effects tacked on. 1/10 for those things that were improved. 3 very quiet claps for that… Expand

Extremely repetitive and more importantly BORING! Good graphics but that is it. They designed the game around an auction house instead of designing it around the player. Check out their website they have finally admitted how bad the auction house has been for the game. If you want to use the auction house all the time might as well get into stocks.

Played this game a lot at launch, took a break, and recently picked it up again. Around launch time, things revolved too much around the real money auction house. They still do. Even though the developers continue to make changes to itemization, and while setting the monster power level increases XP gain and magic find chance, finding legendary items is still super rare and requires tons of grinding. The auction house is the carrot on a stick tempting you to bypass that grind by paying real money or tons of gold for end game items. End game items are pretty lackluster thanks to the changes in character development. The damage your skills do is now purely based on your weapon DPS which is tied to your character's chief attribute point. So if you're a barb all you'll care about is strength and vitality, a demon hunter or monk dex and vit, wizard int and vit, etc. So when you see a new item, if it doesn't have those bonuses to those attributes, it's essentially useless with a few rare exceptions. You also no longer have control over how to distribute your attribute points narrowing the list of viable builds for each class. Additionally, you unlock skills in order as you level up. "Runes" can be selected for each skill which augment or totally change how it works. Skills can also be swapped out at will once unlocked. This helps maintain some variety in play, but the number of skills are pretty scant compared to Diablo II. PvP was recently implemented, but most people seem to be doing PvE runs for legendaries or unique sets. Very few people are playing compared to Diablo II, a game nearly 15 years old at this point which should tell you something about how long times fans have been receiving it. Unless you're new to action RPGs or have never played a Diablo game, it's hard to recommend Diablo III.… Expand

Nice, metacritic crashed when trying to submit my review for this. In short online-only was always about the RLAH, game should be LAN, item grinding sucks, bliz pissed on this IP. D2 had two games types, bliz is just lazy. I was let down.

TL;DR A quick cash-in on some nostalgia and the genre defining previous game, nothing but a sign of the state Blizzard has slumped to.

If you want an Korean Grindfest MMO with a paid auction house, then you might enjoy this. Welcome to "Grind through the game 3 times on easy until you get to Inferno: The Game". Always Online, dumbed-down classes and gear system, lackluster story, gameplay and art design that hits a brick wall after Act 1, ridiculous gear gap between Hell and Inferno that will force you into the AH, Always Online also basically denying you your game if you have internet problems or LOL BLIZZARD SERVERS on your damn SINGLE PLAYER GAME. The fact that Hardcore mode can be influenced by the state of your internet/Blizzard's servers is almost downright sickening. The couple good things I will mention at least are the graphics, art design in Act 1, enemies that do feel like relentless hordes on occasion, animations, and the gear design is alright but definitely borrowed from WoW.

I can't argue though if you enjoy the MMO style grindfest that Diablo has now become. Overall, this was simply an Acti-Blizz cash cow that they had to milk, at the expense of all the hype and fans.… Expand

Fundamental flaws on the game system. Absolutely zero customization on your character thanks to the primary stats.
1000 armor 999999 dex item on barbarian? ****
1000 armor 500 vit item on barbarian? OMG BEST ITEM EVAR.

Oh. And bad connection disconnects you from your own game.

DRM blows. Why do I need to be online to play in single player? Numerous balance issues and problems with maintenance making it difficult to even logon play. The graphics are cartoon-like. Game play is mind numbing repetitive. This is not Diablo! The Real Money Auction House... oh come on I just paid for the game. Blizzard really messed this up. Yet another great series ruined.

Look! Hidden footprints! Terrible writing, terrible gameplay (my wizard has to run (kiting) all the time, it's a joke), terribly small and repetitive, but worst of all is the DRM scheme. Go Error 37 yourself Blizzard- your reputation is now destroyed- you'll be gone inside of 5 years.

The best example yet why marketers should not have a voice in Game Design. Company policy is fine with Customers paying for their mistakes. Also, the game is unreasonably expensive.

The graphics are outdated. The first thing I did after about 30 seconds in the game was go into my graphics settings I was shocked to find that they were already set at the highest possible level. Sure didn't look like it. I normally don't place too much emphasis on graphics (having just finished Final Fantasy IX for the fourth time last week), but the game has no redeeming qualities to save it. The voice acting is over-the-top and detracts from the already poor and non-engaging story the immersion of D2 is replaced by arcade-style flashy emptiness in D3. I returned to this game after I was initially disgusted six months ago the changes aren't noticeable, except for creeping inflation in the Auction House. The game is always online, meaning people with low-quality internet will suffer gamebreaking lag and frequent disconnects, each one erasing up to 10 minutes of progress. Since you can change your skills and abilities at any time with no cost or repercussions, you don't really feel like you're building a character, and since the story is so poor, fast-paced and uninteresting, you don't feel like you're making a difference or that the game world has history and meaning besides being a playground for you your sole purpose, then, is basically to accumulate gear. Don't even get me started on Blizzard's monetization strategy with their Real Money Auction House. About the only good things I can say about this game is that the interfaces and art style are unified, sleek, and polished, and that the game feels very "smooth" (when you're not downloading or otherwise suffering low internet speeds). Blizzard over-hyped, under-delivered, shamelessly monetized, and generally let everyone down. This is unforgivable. I will never again buy a Blizzard title just because it is a Blizzard title I'll do my due diligence and read reviews, watch gameplay videos, etc. The fact that all the mainstream websites and gaming mags liked it just signals corruption, buyoffs, and shady dealings in the industry.… Expand

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Poor storyline. Some quests are very similar to ones from D1. The whole game is built around the gear for the character and auction house. I was bored after an hour of playing. Not recommended.… Expand

The visuals are excellent but they can't carry the game. It really should have been held for another year, the lack of content is inexcusable in a rogue-like game. The story falls apart in act 4, the narrative is disjointed, characters poorly constructed, controls and combat overly simplistic, and progression is painfully uneven. Loot drops are excessively random even in full parties with very high MF and max valor stacks. The amount of grinding to progress the story is excessive. Which leads to the assumption that loot tables were adjusted to encourage the use of the real money auction house. Either it's poor game design or something nefarious the effect is the same. The story is too short and poorly explained. Acts 2 and 3 deserved far more exposition than they received and all act 4 needed was Fonzie on a surfboard. The game needed more story content, having a more robust story or better gameplay would have carried it through. Gameplay is too simple and the skills are.....lacking. Reducing a character to 6 skills and the interaction of the skills with enemies and the environments is very limiting. With the new way that health functioned there was great promise for complex combos and action elements that could have evolved the game. Instead they served to make it derivative almost like a flash game with Diablo branding. The ultimate problem with D3 is not it's always on connection nor it's changes to health or even the RMAH that it's design cues come from micro-transaction games. These are games of last resort disposable and only played when we don't have a computer, Game Boy, Vita, console, computer or emulator handy. Diablo 3 teaches us that play medium is important if D3 had debuted on a tablet would have been a fine game and the design changes would have made sense in the context of the devices limitations. Instead it left me with a short hollow and disappointing experience, Diablo 3 has the distinction of being only the second game I have ever regretted purchasing. If you are a fan of Diablo, if you are a fan of Dark Fantasy, if you are a fan of games don't buy Diablo 3.… Expand

Diablo is a girl and Cain gets killed by a Power Rangers villain who uses butterfly magic. Boring items based around the same 3 stats. No build diversity at all. Auction house sucking the life out of the game as predicted. Terrible voice acting and dumb quests that you can't skip. Can't skip between acts. Only one act is viable for farming. Why would you even farm at all you into S&M or something? Even the games lead dev and head CM know the game is bad. They quit rather than try to fix it! LOL If you like torturing yourself and get off on watching the Diablo franchise fall dead at the feet of the corporations then buy this game.… Expand

One of the best auction house simulators currently available.
Though the whole thing is tied to a game, so only 4/10, without the game this simulator would have gotten 10/10 from me.
The games outdated graphics, idiot-proof gameplay and no depth at all combined with a very very bad and short story sadly drag the simulation down.
I wish that there was an auction-house-simulator as good as this without an unnecesary game atached to it.… Expand

Changed my mind. I was one of the suckers defending this game, and the game itself is not so bad, except for one thing. Through "coincidence" I happened to stop the slider for one of their videos at around 10-13 seconds, and saw some guys sticking out their tongues at the camera and giving devil horns. Then a group of people standing behind the camera with trophies in their hands like laughing and glaring at the camera. If these guys want to play like this then they can go "screw" themselves. I hope these guys choke on their success. I'm boycotting their products, until this issue gets solved. The last thing we need is a group of bullies and jerks disrespecting their fans. Bye Blizzard. Have a nice fall. "Pricks." I would personally like to punch each one of these guys in the face now.… Expand

Serious review, from a fanboy and from a regular person going back to it. I had waited forever for this game, and I loved it so much on the first play-through. The second play-through holes started to form in the story, game play got boring and repetitive. All of a sudden you had to use certain spells from the large list if you wanted to get anywhere, and the grind (especially in acts 3-4) made me want to bash my head against the keyboard.

The graphics are fantastic though if you can work past the garbage. Overall this game was highly disappointing, and after this I will never buy another Diablo.… Expand

With the announcement that the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 version of Diablo III will offer offline and LAN play, PC users are left with out the features they have asked for since launch. It's disrespectful to the customer.

Unfortunately Diablo 3 fails in every aspect except cinematics. you have to use auction house because after hours and hours of playing you cant even find anything good unless u re very lucky.wheres the thrill of item hunting like diablo 2? always crap items with useless stats.the game forces you to use auction house and after sometime it becomes gold grinding lets say something about gameplay, there is nothing you can manage or control in inferno mode.everthings choatic ,hit and run elite packs and then be one shotted for crap items.
itemization and stats are really pain in a.. and about talents very shallow and you have to use certain builds for most effective results.… Expand

So they decided to release the console version finaly, well now we know that beta testing is over so you can enjoy it on console (with off line mode and local co-op) Without Error 37 and other things. This game was made for console and that is just like spiting on consumer face. Even before Diablo 3 release (with all those ui changes)people where speaking about but i never wanted to believe, god damn greedy bastards.… Expand

after lvl 60 its just mindless grinding or pay to win ]] after lvl 60 its just mindless grinding or pay to win ]] after lvl 60 its just mindless grinding or pay to win ]] after lvl 60 its just mindless grinding or pay to win ]] after lvl 60 its just mindless grinding or pay to win ]] after lvl 60 its just mindless grinding or pay to win ]] after lvl 60 its just mindless grinding or pay to win ]]


after lvl 60 its just mindless grinding or pay to win ]]


after lvl 60 its just mindless grinding or pay to win … Expand

Biggest disappointment in PC gaming world. Blizzard took the near-masterpiece of Diablo 2 and dumbed it down for the WoW generation that needs instant gratification in everything. The story is god awful, worse than the trash Hollywood puts out every day. The items system is terrible everyone wants the same main stat/ vit crit crit dmg on every item and there is no choice. The actual amount of content is ABYSMALLY small (about 6-8 hours of gameplay) which is then replayed over and over in higher difficulties. Most classes run the same 2-3 builds because everything else sucks. Maps have almost 0 randomization, putting a huge dent in the replayability value that Diablo 2 and any good ARPG is known for. Game STILL doesn't have a full PvP system as of this writing, outside of gimmicky "brawling". Blizzard tried to dumb the game down and make money, but the players showed them that Diablo 3 is nothing but a polished turd, even after all of the patches to improve the game. For fans of good ARPGs like Diablo 2 I would highly recommend Path of Exile it reminds me of playing Diablo 2 for the first time.… Expand

The problem with this game is that Blizzard didn't prepare enough for it. Lots of lag problems, bugs that don't allow you to play, always online DRM, laggy servers, bugs making items characters disappear forever, achievements getting bugged. Also the gameplay is not exempt from it too. Because they made some really dumb decisions on this game. Like for example Legendary Items are horrible when compared to Magic Items from Inferno. Lots of dumb design choices too, though some were really improvements to the game, it feels ilke they cut shortcuts on lots of aspects on the game. No Runewords useless common socketed items, action house destroying the game balance and progression, useless hirelings, etc It's just not a Diablo Sequel, and coupled with the horrible problems caused by their design choices leave me with the decision to never purchase another game from Blizzard again… Expand

The Visuals and Combat Mechanics of the game are AAA quality, but that is where Blizzards stamp ends. I just really dislike the skill system. Because your spell damage relies on your weapons DPS, your weapon essentially defines you character, making spell choices secondary. There is something seriously wrong with designing a Diablo game this way. The Item system is even worse. This game comes up several yards short to ever deserving a Diablo name. Until Blizzard fixes the cores problems (Items, Skills, Customization of Characters, stat points/skill points) This game is going to super nova and create a massive black hole within Blizzard. All the hype and anticipation built around this game was undeserving. Ultimately I am very disappointed with the influence of the RMAH and the failed design principles of the game. Blizzard needs to take half of that 12 Million copies sold money, and throw it at the old Blizz North team, and beg for them to fix this fail stain on the franchise.… Expand

All I can say is that I own the game since it hit the shelves and I still play it from time to time (thanks to that 1-year deal I made, having trust in blizzard, which I will obviously not have in the future).

I will give this game the 4 points just because the artwork and sound really are AAA, nothing to complain about here. The game looks fabulous, although it has some performance issues and there were some nasty bugs, everything is fine from a technical and design viewpoint.

What the game lacks and what many players will confirm is:

A reason to keep playing it.

I have read most of the reviews (positive and negative) on here (and on other places). While the game has *some* positive aspects, almost all the negative critic you can read HERE are true to some degree, so I won't repeat them.

Don't read the battle.net forums. There are many trolls that are willing (for whatever reason) to defend the game and blizzard as if their life would depend on it, while the majority of people just want to say how scammed they feel when they got what they desired after the long(short?) development phase blizzard must have went through when they decided to make the game we all want.. and then decided again and then they re-decided to ..then they decided players should not make decisions... etc.

If you're curious, look up the reactions of the "fans" when jay wilson pronounced he'll leave the party.

Bottom line:

There are other games that really are what they should be, what Diablo (Diablorina?) once was.… Expand

This game failed to improve on Diablo 2. The game has way too many changes from its predecessor. In addition, D3 lacks an end game as the Auction house renders the item hunt short lived. Also, the content (Acts only 4) are quite short and after you complete the game on normal (only option at first) that is all the content and sanctuary completed. So basically Diablo 3 is rinse and repeat in terms of content. Other issues include a very poor non competitive dueling system played on only 1 small map/arena. In conclusion this is a game that failed in terms of content and providing suitable end game options e.g. pvp/ custom games/map editor not existing.… Expand

Diablo 3. This game is nothing more than a case study showing how putrid some commercialized AAA sequels have become within the game industry. The sequel to Diablo II you see here today is a game made without respect to the franchise on which it was based. I can`t believe how stupid Blizzard was in forgetting all the hard learned lessons of Diablo 2. That game had almost a decade to be brewed to perfection, then they tossed out the batch tore up the recipe and decided that making D3 from scratch was the best way to move forward. Boy what a mistake that was.

What makes Diablo 3 so bad? It is worse than its predecessor in almost every category. Leveling is thoughtless and one-dimensional, skills are drip-fed to you pre-determined and there no way to spec stats. The class-specific resource pools which replaced mana largely failed to alter gameplay and probably diluted it further. The 6 skill limit feels very artificial and constrictive, especially when you are given skills with 60 sec cooldowns. The 4 player limit per game is laughably behind the times (Diablo 1 anyone?) and completely fails to make Diablo 3 a game with serious online presence. It's fine and dandy they thought 4 players was the max action the screen could handle, but where are the 20+ player trade games? Where are the pvp arena's we were promised? Where are these communal points of interest where people can show off gear, trade, duel and chat as any proper online rpg should have? Where are the endless dungeons? There was a total lack of vision in the online and multiplayer department, Diablo 3 had so much potential! I could go on...the linear itemization system of D3 is far outclassed by the multi-dimensional item library of its Diablo 2. No +skills, set items, mana stat, procs on hit, runewords, socketing quests or horadric cube - D3's items are a desert where only main stat, DPS and vitality exist.

Don't get me wrong. The gameplay is tight and fun while the pastel graphics grow on you eventually. Hopping in and out of games with friends is brisk, but falls short in not allowing you to swap between acts or browse and join games according to your needs. But the flaws outweigh the good stuff by a large margin. And you know what Blizzard did with Diablo 3's inherent design flaws? They doubled it. The last act is just terrible and was obviously made in a huge rush. Then they created the RMAH which destroyed the game before it even had a chance to prove itself. Creating a real money economy and establishing pay-to-win incentives as the only way to beat the games core design (cough; inferno) was a terrible mistake. Letting people buy character power with money was the ultimate cause of D3's downfall - it destroyed trading and turned D3 into an online market simulator. If Blizzard wanted to sell items that bad, they should have sold cosmetic items like wings, dyes, pets, trophies, wings or whatever just like they do in WoW. Then the story - a complete steaming pile of fresh doodoo that trampled upon the awesomeness that was Diablo 2. Chris Metzen single handedly destroyed all premise of the dark and cool which D1 and D2 embodied. For the whole game your "hero" plays second fiddle as you follow a teenage girls brazen whims while the world around you is coming to an end. As an additional slap to the face of fans they turned Diablo himself from a devil who thunders "not even death can save you from me" into a incessantly annoying b!tch who teases you with amateur punch-lines. All the other bosses act the same. Oh and to top it all off the cow level was removed and replaced with a fairyland containing rainbows and skipping unicorns. All this in the world of Diablo - it's embarrassing. This all feels like a real-life horror story. A dark, amazing game franchise cherished by millions has been horridly warped into a teenage chasing, unicorn jumping travesty of its former self. Make no mistake, D3 is a modern failure among AAA games. Nobody would have thought it would come from a company like Blizzard, but it did. Jay Wilson leaving the project offer only a modicum of hope - this game needs 3 expansions and at least 5 years of development before it has any chance of healing its flaws. Blizzard didn't sell 10 million copies of Diablo 3, they sold 10 million copies of the sequel to Diablo 2. I have never seen a franchise so decimated by poor development and handicapped decision-making. RIP Diablo, you will be sorely missed.… Expand

Huge fan of Diablo and Diablo 2. Spent HOURS and HOURS on Battle.net playing DII..

Played about 60 hours of Diablo III and it has collected dust ever since. Gameplay is good, graphics are great - always online killed it for me. They basically ruined a great franchise - and made us wait 10+ years for a piece of junk like this

Diablo II set a benchmark and showed us exactly what good games that are still awesome more than a decade afterwards look like. Diablo III isn't even in the same league and will not last 5 years let alone a decade. Diablo II had it all - some improvements were needed - but that was it. Blizzard simply catered to their sheep fans - any criticism of the game - including constructive - is instantly drowned out with insults and dismissals from fanboi's on the forums - and when some complain that they cannot access the game - these fans tell them that "Blizzard do not have an obligation to allow you access to the game read the terms". (The community is part of the package of a game like this - hence why it is in the review)

Because of this - Diablo III became a game where:

Looting is pointless - Everything can be easily purchased in the Auction house and the in game drops are pathetic - if anything you are purely looting for gold. But you may be thinking looting for gold and then buying everything you want is OK? Nope because you can also buy these items with real money.... removing any looting element from the game.

Gear is the only thing that separates different players - Characters all have the same skills. The skill "tree" does not require choice - you simply unlock different skills at certain levels. The only thing you can do is change the effect of the skills you have - but everyone has these effects so it is again pointless.

Difficulty modes - The first three modes range from very easy to easy. Then you go into Inferno - this does provide a challenge - however you will have several encounters with groups of elites that move faster than you, can attack ranged, kill you in one maybe two hits, spawn clones and take little damage. The normal mobs and hordes difficulty on inferno however is good - a challenge but you get a fair chance.

No gameplay incentive - In Diablo II - there were runes, epic gear and secret super bosses - not to mention the very fun group gameplay. In Diablo III there is no Incentive - other than just playing so once you have completed it you see no more point in playing the game - Unless you simply wanna see what all the different classes are like in all difficulty modes....

Online only - This was a stupid thing to do, caused huge problems (still does) and does the developer no favours. Hint: Do not put online only access on a game that should have had single player.

Current fans of the game complain about the those who loved the Diablo series being unhappy. THE GAME WAS A SEQUEL TO DIABLO II !!! - and so Diablo II fans were expecting something at least similar to to the game Diablo III was supposed to be continuing.

The game has some good points - its soundtrack is very good as are the graphics. Fighting hordes in Hell and inferno modes can be entertaining and some of the skill effects are good. However even the story and Lore - another core component of Diablo - is poor. The game doesn't have that dark edge to it that Diablo II had.

If you are looking for a game similar to Diablo II there are (ironically) much better alternatives out there at less than half the price. If however you are looking for a game that is less advanced and more graphically focused - then you may enjoy this game but watch out for the bugs and not being able to access the game on some occasions...… Expand

Unfortunately, I was unable to fully enjoy Diablo III due to the server side errors. Poor administration aside, the gameplay was incredibly dumbed down -- to WoW levels. No longer can you customize your character's attributes! It's all about GEAR now. Any two members of the same class and level are now 100% identical. Sure, they can change their talents, but you can do that at any time. The only separating faction is gear. Blizzard clearly did this to support their real-money auction house. The always-on connection is also very upsetting if you're looking for a single player game. Overall, I'd stay away. It's much closer to WoW than to Diablo II.… Expand

I'm writing this review just now, I bought it with high expectations the same day it has been released and I was and I am still disappointed. Lot of features missing (PvP ofc), game is too short, no interactions with npc, no interactions in cooperative mode, repetitive, too much repetitive (and after hours and hours of farming, not even good items). Really happy Wilson left Diablo3, he failed everything. Just saying, I bought TorchLight2 for play with friends and yes, it's chaotic, in cooperative mode you do not understand what's going on on the screen but it's still more enjoyable than Diablo3.… Expand

Real Money Action House ruined Diablo 3. That simple! Blizzard's greed for money transformed a supposed to be fun, challenging grind game, to a mega nerd / rich kid pay2win game. Not to mention the absence of the promised PVP ...

so the game director is fired... (jay gayson) good news. i laughin so hard to the position they are in. this game born with a malfunction. it is almost dead by now.

where to begin? everything, every decision, every **** step they have made is a mistake about that game. jay "**** diablo killer" wilson got fired and you cant answer his post twice. your answer gets deleted immediately by mods. i mean what the **** it has been said million **** times whats wrong with the game. even now even after rob **** promo said "please make some **** constructive critism" they keep ignore playerbase. drown in your own **** dickheads… Expand

It has had a terrible launch, no PvP, broken balance, fairly short campaign, mediocre storyline (some enemies have ridiculous combination of powers, like super speed, invisibility, teleportation and high damage attacks and there's completely useless skills in later difficulties), and I'm not even taking into account the *always online* requirement DRM, and modding not being allowed for it. One of the things that kept diablo 2 alive is being outright banned? To hell with this franchise. Its obvious Blizzard cares more about WoW. I'm going to find a better hack n slash game. Path of Exile is coming out soon.… Expand

Hum, where to begin. Well, I guess the only real thing that ia appealing in this game is the graphics, which are excellent. But with that said, it is all down hill.

1. The always being connected on line things really sucks given the fact that the servers are often down for hours at a time which seem to be a common occurrence. I say "which seems to be" because I stopped playing a few weeks after it launched but still follow the forums. In any case, I don't like this trend anyways, especially when it effect the single player component which is central to diablo games as a whole. In fact this requirement is just plain silly when it comes to single player type games.

2. The pay to really play things is just horrible, especially when this game was not billed to be that sort of thing. I can never remember this being advertised. I'll tell you this much, if I had known it was going to be this, I wouldn't had bought it. The fact is I was deceived, and because of it, I won't be buying anymore of their games.

3. The newly announced pvp is going to get no love from blizzard. They, through their forums has stated such. They say it is more or less just a add on and don't really intend to do anything substantial with it. This of course leaves the game with no replay value whatsoever.

4. No build variety, enough said.

5. You can't find good loot unless you spend years grinding for it. This of course plays right into their hand, forcing you to buy from their action house because we all don't have years upon years to do this.

6. The game is not streamlined enough to even allow for proper grinding anyways, which is to say, you must play through the story over and over again, instead of just being able to jump from warp to warp point. This however is kind of a mute point considering you can't find good loot anyways.

With that said, I think I will wrap it up here. I do have one parting thought would like to share, and that is this game still has a lot of potential. That is if they would stop being so money grubbing and just created the game the way they should have from the start. Right now though it lacks so much, and in retrospect, because it does, I feel as if I have been totally ripped off. I paid 60 bucks and got nothing in return, which is what you are going to get if you buy this game. Buyer beware until the fix this game, and I really mean that.… Expand

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Nothing but a mediocre game. Blizzard really screwed us all with this game. The first two were awesome, but this is NOT Diablo. First of all, no single player. You need an internet connection to play, meaning when Blizzard put the servers down for maintenance, you can't play. The story of the game is poor and the horrific mood doesn't exist at all. The Butcher of Act I made me laugh rather than having me thinking "Holy **** I'm as good as dead". BAD GAME, DON'T BUY IT!… Expand

Diablo III: Designed to be playable by 80-year-olds, as well as 8-year-olds, while holding the attention span of 13-year-olds with ADD.

In Blizzard's attempt to mass-market the game, they've ruined the Diablo series. It's oversimplified and there is no competitive element. Blizzard North designed Diablo I and II to be great game. Blizzard designed Diablo III to sell a lot of copies. A good game sells a lot of copies because it's a good game. The only thing that sold Diablo III was the franchise name, the success of Blizzard North.… Expand

Blizzard spent a decade on this game (not the team that made D1&D2--those guys left ActivisionBlizzard and made Torchlight 1&2) but you'd never know. It seems more like they spent a year or less making a free-to-play that costs $60 and has an in game cash shop. Here are the problems: 1) You must ALWAYS be connected to the Internet, even to play single player. 2) You DO NOT GET ANY skill points or attribute points - stats and skills auto level/unlock when you hit a certain levels...which means all your stats and skills are determined by your gear, which, if you want something good, you need to spend real life $ at the cash shop...which is always available because you have to always be online to play. 3) The story is crap and predictable. 4) Graphics aren't a huge issue for me but D3 graphics are silly and nothing like what the dark, Gothic fantasy series should look like. 5) No replayability. Every level 20 monk will be the same, except for what skills and attributes are modified by the gear that they're using. Gear is the only way to increase your stats. No attribute points to distribute when you gain a level, remember? 6) The game is 8 hours long. Really? After all those years in development? 7) And finally, on perhaps a lesser note, the music. Not written by the original guy. And it shows.… Expand

This game is repetitive, not rewarding, and just centered around the RMAH. Also all the characters look the same and if you want to be any good you are forced to use certain equip and certain skills, another thing that contributes to destroy the fun.

Diablo one was the best game of them all, The unlimited magic system, the skill trees in 2 were a great improvement, but the levels were boring, Now comes 3 made by Jay **** you Wilson, Hardly 200 people play this game anymore. So i guess **** you Jay, you failed. No one cares about this and it's called the worst in the set, i'd rather play the first game than this one, Everything has been dumbed down.… Expand

Very very disappointing; many steps back from the original games D1 and D2. PvP promised, not delivered probably due to the financial gains calculated by the company who made this game. People have been writing on the forums of this game (offering solutions to the already existing problems) for months, collect them all and you get a 12-volume encyclopedia; the designers did NOTHING. Really unbelievable and unexpected from a company of this caliber. I used to buy their products (even now disgusts me to mention the company's name) without thinking twice in the past, now I do not think I will ever buy anything from them. It is just sad. Even the worst of worst games get improvements in their next releases. After all these months I am still surprised how could they make this game they call Diablo III.… Expand

In a nutshell its waste of money. Oversimplified development system, screwed up "map builder" (which is actually not "builder" but just "placer" random event and mobs on predefined maps), extremely repetitive gameplay. Looks like a total joke for me.

An always online, yet somehow depressingly solitary misadventure of an ARPG with weak incentives for any gamer save the most casual of players.
Without going into too much detail, I will just list what I feel are the two largest problems with the game:

- A primitive, dated, and pitiful MMO style chat window and random public game finder designed as a substitute for nameable lobbies and a completely customizable public game search engine (both features available upon release in the game's predecessor over a decade ago).

- Drop rates tuned for play in conjunction with an auction house. Put another way: the AH/droprate combo denies players the satisfaction of finding their own gear and thus lowers the incentive to play-to-improve while raising the incentive to pay-to-improve. It's more fun, fair, and addictive to find items (even lower level items of legendary/set/unique quality) at a higher rate than it is to supplement your gaming experience and sense of character development with somebody else's via an Auction House. The "they find an item you want, you find an item they want and the AH is the mediator" argument is valid only because of the volume of players D III currently has. If the game experienced a sharp decrease in players, the AH would experience a sharp drop in items posted, and players would be left with a game where it is near impossible to gear their characters to the standard they expect or deserve for their time investment.

Unless they scrap the AH, overhaul the entire loot system, and re-tune legendary/set droprates to more rewarding levels, then any future updates or expansions will amount to nothing more than polish on a turd.… Expand

This game is one of the perfect examples of proof that "professional" reviews often get paid for high reviews. The consumers who actually buy the game have spoken. Broken balance, horrible story, pay2win, lack of hyped features such as PvP, online DRM causing constant offline servers, terrible lag...I really could go on but you have thousands of ratings that are list them all.

I will not write that this Game is all Bad, it gave me 80-100 hours of fun, then i was 60 and the next 150h i never found something thats either worth something (more then 4 mill) or that i could wear myself in the endgame (except of 1 ring that wasnt that good as i thought)

The AuctionHouse and the very bad drops (too random) are the reason this Game is bad, i always tried to see the good aspects in Diablo3 (my friends quit much earlier then me) but after 300 hours i realized it just make no sense to play this Game after getting 60...the Paragon level give you nothing, the Hellfire Ring is always crappy...the drops are 99,999999% trash...and the Auction House kills everything D3 should be...dont play this game its waste of time… Expand

I bought this game and was faithful to it for the first 3 months but finally gave up. The developers just plain failed at launch to know what made Diablo 1 and 2 so good, almost as if they never played these games themselves and just tried to mimic it by watching some youtube videos of gameplay. I came back to the game 6 months later and it was definitely better, but still just not that enjoyable and to be honest, they just missed the boat. The game is not worth your money, skip it.… Expand

I couldn't spend more than just a few hours in this game. I found the storyline ok though - not the best, but not the worst. But the gameplay is boring - if you change the characters for small spaceships, you'll have a decent old school space shooter, but for a so-called adventure rpg? I feel regret of having purchased it.

This has been by far the most disappointing game ever. 1- It did not cure cancer.
2- Does nothing to help against the hunger problem.
3- I have no idea how is the game supposed to help against global warming.

All in all, a bunch of broken promises.

Absolute thrash of a game. Unfortunately Activision or Actiblizzard as some like to call them decided to create a 3rd installment of an epic hack and slash series - probably just to kill it, but milk as much money from suckers as possible before the death. How to kill an epic series like that? Make a short, boring game with no real pvp, patch it often but change almost nothing with them and worst of all - make it a pay2win with drop rate control working solely in order to bring more profit from auction house. Those crap-artists from actiblizzard used the credit of previous games of the series to advertise their own thrash product. The caught the sucker fish on the hook...… Expand

As a long time fan of the diablo franchise I expected a LOT more from this game. It is, by and far, a complete bastardization of everything a diablo game should have been. Couple that with the fact that the dev team can't seem to dig their heads out of their behinds and fix the problems in an orderly manner, and that they have promised features which they have now entirely scrapped and have no plans of including. Well, you get the feeling that this was a blatant cash grab on the part of blizzard and they flat out lied to their customer base. That doesn't even take into account the horrible "always connected" drm which has lead to nothing but problems, the blatant lack of testing their product on implicitly supported hardware before launch, the terrible bugs caused by awful coding practices, the completely broken loot system in a loot driven game, a laughable implementation of character customization, the almost completely static "random maps", and to top it all off - the entire game is based around the premise of bleeding the player base for even more money through "micro-transactions" which result in anything but a micro amount. This game is a kick in the teeth to anyone with any rpg gaming background. Avoid it like the plague...… Expand

It would be hard to give this game more than 2/10 back in May 2012, when it was released. The developers worked out most of the bugs and connection problems, unfortunately not all of them.
The game itself is pretty good, but there are so many problems connected to it that it becomes a rather nerve wracking experience rather than an enjoyable game.
First of all, you need to be connected to battle.net at all times. A single disconnection caused by overloaded servers during the weekend can lead to losing your hardcore character without any chance to see it again. Another problem is the horrible economy in this game, which is mostly dominated by automatic bots selling gold. And if these huge issues weren't enough, we can take a look at the loot design. The drop rates for good items are so incredibly low that you shouldn't be surprised if you don't find any top-end item even after 500 hours played. After all, if everyone could get the top items eventually, no one would be using the auction house and Blizzard wouldn't make profit. The game currently doesn't even have PvP, which was promised to players shortly after release and it's heavily overdue.
The actual gameplay is enjoyable for a limited amount of time. If you're into grinding games, you might enjoy D3. For me, this game is not worth its price. I've been waiting patiently for developers to repent themselves after the release fiasco, but to no avail. It's a half-finished game for full price with continuous development slower than I thought is possible.… Expand

Obligatory 0 for online-only DRM. An unforgivable offence. There might be something worth playing under the DRM, but I'd have to pirate it to find out.

This game just isn't good. I was hoping for the best, but I got the worst. They took casual to a whole new level. It took a good 3 hours to die my first time, whereas the previous Diablo games would truly challenge you killing you within 10 minutes if you're not good at it.

First of all: game is empty. There is nothing except iterative game passing. The first one will let you .. well, just play the game on a difficulty level different from normal. After that prepare for a long, very, very, damn VERY long grinding while you reach max level. This game is not: frightening, atmospheric, interesting, re-playable, fascinating or even memorable. If you are looking for a real diablo spirit, play the first one. Plot? Quests? hi-level content? Pvp? Sorry, guys, you'll have to pay it when next DLC arrive. What can I say? No. Just that simple. Rest in peace, Blizzard the masterpiece-maker. Now it's all about money and trash and soap. in short: yo dawg i heard you like grind so we put a grind in your grind so you can grind while you grind.… Expand

Terrible game, their are many good asepcts of diablo 3, but ultimately it becomes boring. The skill and character customization was amazing, it encouraged lot's of experimentation, and allowed players to tailor each skill to their preferences. however, the good things end there. I don't even know where to start; boring, short story that they force you to repeat 4 times, lack of character customization, and overall grindfest made this game a failure… Expand

As a long-time Blizzard fan I am dismayed, disappointed and ultimately shocked that Blizzard could betray its entire long-standing Diablo fanbase. The game is an absolute disgrace and anyone who says otherwise is desperate and is living in denial.

After completing the game with one character you will feel let-down and not bothered to ever touch this game again. Disgrace.

If you're a fan of gritty world like Diablo 1 or Diablo II with LOD expansion pack do not waste your money on this piece of junk. Blizzard really screwed the pooch with this game release they are all about money and nothing else, just like John Carmack is now. Where do I start? First of all the game is dependent on auction house because drops are such crap 90% of times they are laughable that's why most people shop in an auction house for items. With auction house comes no modding the game, always online etc which ruins the game even more. The story line is boring and bland compared to Diablo and Diablo II it is completely laughable. Next you are pretty much FORCED to buy the stupid authenticator because hackers have direct connection to Blizzard servers and steal 90% of peoples items from their characters and sell them off on AH (AKA Chinese gold farmers). The game has no PK it applies to care bears and so far it has no PVP either which it should of shipped with right from beginning, it plays like an arcade game instead of an ARPG (action role playing game) like Diablo 1 and 2 did. You will see most people run through maps and completely ignore everything just to rush to inferno difficulty and once they're there they complain about constantly dying. The chat room is completely pathetic, there are no avatars to see in chat and the chat is almost non existent too. To top it all off you will get E-mail from gold sellers every day trying to sell you their services, Blizzard will never have time to ban all of these Chinese gold sellers that just laugh in their faces. If you want a fun game (not for superb dark graphics) that has fun game play and an average story line do your self a favor and skip this piece of junk that isn't worth more than $15. Go buy Torchlight 2 or wait for Path of Exile to go into open beta I assure you, you will have far more fun with both of these games. More reasons not to buy Diablo 3: No rune words, gems are lame and too expensive to make and buy, always online required, art direction of bosses such as The Butcher or Magda is complete crap one of the characters in the game is disposed of in such a pathetic way that it wants to make me cry they are killed by BUTTERFLIES colorful pretty BUTTERFLIES!!!! NO COW LEVEL instead you get some stupid Whimsy shire crap with colorful PONIES and RAINBOWS this is not hello kitty game WTF! Last but not least of reasons not to buy Diablo 3 is Jay Wilsons words towards David Brevik: **** that loser". Save your money and time buy a great game instead, Diablo 3 isn't worth more than $15 it is fun at first but then the fun dies after pretty much first few play throughs I played Diablo 2 for many years and never got bored heck I still go back to it sometimes! Bottom line is this game is pretty damn bad as in it pretty much sucks!… Expand

The barbarian merchant in Act 3 has told every player the truth: not enough profit, too much pain!

First, Diablo series is definitely loot-hunting games. The fun of playing Diablo games comes from a loop: to hunt greater loots ---> the loots make the heroes the players control become more powerful ---> to challenge more powerful enemies ---> the more powerful enemies drops even greater loots.

Diablo2 did perfect on the loop. How much time you spend on hunting loots, how many good loots you get. Every minute you spend on this game is worth it.

And then look at Diablo3, my friends and I have respectively spent more than 200 hours on Inferno Difficulty, but get no useful loots during such a long gaming time. Then I went to some game forums, and confirmed that my friends and I were not special cases.

I know that very few players can get great loots, but that's completely based on luck, not about gaming skills/time. Even the few lucky players also can't hunt all gears on their character's body, which means, AH/RMAH is a must. And the terrible loot drop rate has raised the prices in AH to a ridiculous level that most players can't afford it by only picking up golds in the game.

So, offline gold trade/AH merchant is the efficient way to power up. Loot-hunting now is a joke.

Can Diablo3 be called a "Diablo" game if loot-hunting is useless in-game?… Expand

This game was just really bad. I couldnt feel good about getting any items because people were just buying items with real money. I ruins a game where the main reason to continue to play it is to get better and better gear so that you can make progress end game. I miss having a game where i can work hard to get gear and people cant just buy it with real money. Games: the last frontier were there were no economic barriers. Now rich people can have everything they want in games as well as in life without working for it.… Expand

This sequel is a failure of epic proportions! There is NOTHING left of what made Diablo 2 great in this game, other than the story which unfortunately also happen to be really bad. I will never understand how developers can change everything that people loved about a prequel. The rule of making sequels should be that you take what worked in the original(s) and then you improve upon it. You don't completely alter a sequel so that you can't even compare it with the original. That's what new franchises or spin-off's are for!

My gripes:

Blizzard must have had only one thing in mind when they made this game. And that thing is MONEY!
All design choices made in Diablo 3 supports this conclusion. They have removed pretty much all things that would make you consider this a game and replaced it with grinds. This is made so that you're more akin to spend money in the real-money action house. This game shouldn't be called a game when it's more like a part time job. (Or full time for some)

There is no difficulty curve in this game at all. Instead you just mow through all content with ease on the earlier difficulties (which is unbelievable boring) until you're hit by a stone wall the size of Mars when you enter the final difficulty (Inferno). From there you have 2 choices. You grind for several MONTHS, wading through piles upon piles of useless items hoping to find upgrades OR you you simply open your wallet and buy what you need. But why anyone would spend money to get items is beyond me as that would completely remove the point of playing the game in the first place.

No character development what so ever. No skill points or stat points to allocate. Instead everything comes down to items, which happen to be bland and boring. All classes require the same kind of stats and items except for 1 primary stat. So that means that everyone is pretty much looking for the same items. Most skill are useless (especially for the witch doctor) and as un-epic as they can get so everyone not only looks the same but everyone uses the same abilities too. In other words there's no variety at all.

All this makes Diablo 3 the biggest disappointment in my entire gaming "career".… Expand

When you look at a trilogy of games and think to yourself, "The first one was better than this." you have to stop and really start to think. I played Diablo 3 for about 250 hours with a single character and around 30 hours on every other character. The vast majority of that was begrudging game play. Mind you all but the last 48 hours of play was before the implementation of the RMAH ... and in the last 6 months - maybe 10 hours if i'm (extremely) generous with the estimation. I was willing to accept that this was a new era in RPGs and though some of the core elements were the same - this was going to be a glorified hack and slash when compared to it's predecessors. But wait, weren't D1 and D2 just hack and slash games by that standard? Well, yes and no - did you do a lot of hacking and slashing? yup! did you get penalized for changing up your strategy when you hit an overpowered group of mobs? nope! I mean, they talk about the skill systems versatility, but penalize you for changing skill sets per encounter ... which is very counter-intuitive for the type of game that it is. What about the areas? Well, they're really pretty - but rather than side quest tunnels and pits being a sizable sprawl of enemies they're way too succinct. Going through them seems like an interruption to the linear quest rail rather than an exploration mechanism. It might feel better if you went into a side area and actually found a unique or rare monster, and even better if you would get something good (or at least valuable in gold) - but there's obviously a major disparity between good items and useful items. The sound is great! The cinematics are beautiful! The story was filled with horrible cliched characters and poor story telling (including but not limited to plot holes, continuity problems, incorrect lore, and a heavy reliance on technology over substance). The game's engine is solid but the multiplayer is almost enough to make me want to quit playing any other game online! As a whole it is definitely not greater than the sum of it's parts ... very much the opposite unfortunately. Other games released this year have done much better in capturing the essence of Diablo's game play and story telling.… Expand

I registered here, to write this review as a warning for everyone who is using upper/high end hardware.

First of all, the game will be stuttering and run choppy in general if you don´t have the game files either on a SSD or a USB stick. Due to the coding, it doesn´t work as it should if installed on a HDD.

Second, the support of high end hardware is horrible. You will not get stable FPS no matter what setting you´ll use, new drivers generally made everything worse and it seems it isn´t in both nVidia´s nor Blizzard´s interest to make this game run well. A recent example are random game freezes which happen using the new WHQL nVidia driver 310.70.

The story isn´t worth it. The item system, compared to D2 where it was probably the #1 fun factor of this game, is horrible.
In the end you´ll find yourself doing runs after runs filling your inventory with countless rares, which 99% of the time will be worth- and useless. Even if you´ll find a legendary, there will be so many RNG rolls on that items that in the end it will most likely turn out bad, let alone that most legendaries are useless anyway. This was very different with the equivalent uniques of D2, and will bore you moreso than give any satisfaction.

The skill cap is so low, especially because you´re restricted to only use 6 abilities at a time. In D2 you had access to ALL your skills anytime.
You only seem to get dumber playing this game, honestly.… Expand

I'm really shocked that this is a release from Blizzard Entertainment. It feels more like some sort of free to play cash shop game, where they design it to be mind-numbingly boring and hope that you'll buy things from the cash shop to improve your experience. Unlike the vast array of other ARPG's I've played, this game just absolutely refuses to let you find your own gear upgrades. The intent was obviously to try to herd players to the auction houses to buy items, but considering ARPG's are largely about finding items, this design really ruins the experience. In fact, there's nothing else really to this game other than an incredibly boring, frustrating and defective item system. There's no pvp, the social system is basically non-existent--so I guess we are supposed to buy items from the cash shop so we can just log in and stare at our awesome character. Blizzard removed a lot of things from the previous Diablo games, saying that these elements essentially constituted bad game design, but then they replaced these elements with ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. So there's now no reason to kill bosses in Diablo 3, (farming bosses was bad design, apparently), there are no skill trees, (skill trees are bad design, apparently), there's no pvp, (no pvp is apparently better design than imperfect pvp), not to mention various other elements that were removed from the series. There's not much of a game here after the first play through, I'd spend my money on another title.… Expand

It's a bad game and a terrible sequel to the Diablo series.

Their hardware is not up to snuff for a game that forces you to be online. Disconnecting, lag and rubber banding are rampant. The game itself is boring as all get out, it takes away both the excitement and the strategy of character layouts.

Constant restrictions being placed on the game because the Developers want everyone to play one way doesn't help.

If you're looking for a dungeon crawler, buy Torchlight 2 or Path of Exile.… Expand

Blizzard failed to deliver what they promised and to think it costed them 12 years, no just NO.
Bad Blizzard, graphics outdated and gameplay nothing special.

Diablo 3 is actually not a bad game for casual young player. But for me as dedicated player of the series this is the greatest disappointment in gaming history. This game has only very few in common with RPG genre. Battles are nice, locations are visually decent (eventhough not so doomy as its predecessors and not so random). Skill/Statpoint system is very basic with low to none customization of the character. Itemization is bad and very Auction House-dependant. Legendary items are not so legendary (not in drop rate, nor in power). Rare items beat them with ease and fall from the sky all the time. The excitement feeling from dropping "gold" as we know from previous series is completely gone. The game lacks heart and soul. I would never thought I will write negative review for Diablo 3. If this game was named differently and was not released by Blizzard, I would rate it probably 6/10. But I consider it also the biggest scam. 60$ for this is simply too much. Replayability is at zero (just for comparison, I´ve played the 9-bucks CS GO for more hours than D3 from their release). Eventhough some artistic aspects of the game are pretty decent (voice acting, environment, music) it cannot entertain common player very long. But for a casual its a decent pick.… Expand

After 250+ hours of gameplay, I feel I was exploited and used. I've become disheartened, and ultimately upset. The Auction House single-handily ruined this whole game and experience. Legendary drop rates are set and unequal, meaning that **** legendaries have a higher drop rate then top tier ones. Before you call me a tin foil conspirator, this has been proven through community statistics and bookkeeping. It is very disheartening when the developers lie to you and there is no transparency. It is also known that legendary drop rates are linked with the AH, and that certain servers drop more than others. It is outrageous to play the game for 250+ hours and only have one item on you that you found yourself. This destroyed the community, and made wallet warriors the kings of D3, I refuse to pay for items, so I here I stay, a mediocre player endlessly farming for controlled items I will never see. They made the game have **** drop rates so that you would have to pay out your pocket for better items. It has been a huge waste of time and a social experiment. I had to pay $60 to get this game, electronically might I add (I still think E-games should have the packaging and shipping costs discounted, so more around $50, or at least $55) and on top of that, if I want to have good gear I have to spend ridiculous amounts of money on the AH. THE WORST OF ALL IS.... THE GAME IS LAGGY AS **** It's the DRM along with the Dev's fault. I play on a 2009 Macbook Pro, let me outline the shocking performance from this game. V 1.00 - Whole world logs on, freaking terrible leg. V 1.01 - Nothing really changes. V 1.02 - Still pretty bad .
V 1.03 - GODS BE GOOD, the game actually works and runs like butter! 60+ FPS :D V 1.04 - GODS BE GREAT, the game still works, and they buffed legendaries :D V 1.05 - False Hope. Blizz increased drop rates which was amazing and a huge step in the right direction, yet what they didn't disclose is that they only increased rates for the **** items. Still the AH dominates. V 1.05 Continued. The worst thing to come of 1.05 was that the games performance plummeted across both PC and Mac. I watched my framerate go from 60-75 FPS, to 20-30, and it dips to 6-9 a few times a minute. WHAT THE **** HAPPENED? DID YOU SPILL PEPSI ON THE ****ING CONSOLE? It's been over a month of laggy unfixed **** and Blizz refuse to answer questions directly but tip toe around performance issues. HOW CAN A GAME THAT WORKED PERFECTLY (atleast for two V's 1.03/1.04) deteriorate to this crap. I PAID $60 for a working game, and this does not count. All my friends are affected as well, we all have frame drops now and have been recording record low performance for over a month with no incoming fix from Blizz. And don't blame my internet, in V.103/ early 1.04 I was playing on a connection that had 112 Ping and getting 60FPS. I now play on a connection with 11 Ping and receive 20-30 FPS. It is server side, not player side. If you are planning on buying this game, wait! There is still hope, maybe this AH experiment will end one day, maybe they will also drop the DRM. Maybe then some modders can come in and save the day, for now, avoid this game. :(… Expand

I'll start with the good first: the art is incredible, the graphics are great for the genre, the sound and music are good, the gratifying combat/animations/destructible environments make the initial game play fun. So, for a game to just play through the story once or twice, it would be a pretty good action game. The problem is that the game system design decisions leave Diablo 3 being an extremely shallow and unrewarding ARPG experience, with little to no longevity. In D3 they've basically eliminated all the character building elements of RPG games: there are no attribute points to assign, and there aren't any skill trees to build your character with. As you level up a character their attribute points will be automatically assigned for you, and you can change their abilities to any new combination of abilities whenever you like . So, if you are a Barbarian in D3, there is absolutely nothing differentiating you from every other Barbarian in the game. While permanent character choices in RPG games can be harsh and overly punitive to new players, in Diablo 3 the impermanence and lack of important character decisions just goes way too far. The whole concept of re-rolling new characters to try different, interesting, or unique character builds is gone. What's even worse than the non existent character building, is the way that the D3 team designed the items. The ARPG genre has traditionally found longevity via providing players with an exciting item hunt. In just about every other game in this genre, as you level a character you will find fun and powerful items of various types which add to your character's effectiveness and make the game more interesting. For example, you might find a sword that has a chance to summon zombies when it strikes enemies. These types of items are largely missing in Diablo 3, and the items that do have cool, unique effects are generally so bad that nobody would ever want to use them. Most of the items that are highly coveted in D3 are desired simply because they have higher stats of the appropriate type, and there's very little emphasis on making the items actually interesting and unique; they're just stat sticks. Also, because there's an auction house in the game, where players can sell items for real money or in-game gold, the way the game distributes items is fairly infuriating. In an attempt to prevent the item market from being overly saturated with powerful items, Diablo 3's designers made it nearly impossible for players to find great items. While powerful items should be rare in any RPG game, in Diablo 3 you feel like you have a better chance of being struck by lightning than actually ever finding nice things for you character. Players in D3 primarily get powerful items in one of two ways: they either pull out their credit card and buy it on the real money auction house, or, they sell a bunch of mediocre/decent items in the gold auction house and save up to finally one day buy something great. Even if you do manage to find something incredible via game play, the way the items work there will be a 4/5 chance your character will have no use for it at all. So, if you don't want to buy items for real cash, you're going to be spending a lot of your time staring at the gold auction house interface, selling and buying items. I'm sorry, but that just isn't my idea of fun and compelling game play. Finally, there is no player vs. player combat in Diablo 3, even though it was a feature that was supposed to be there at the game's launch. There are also no completely random maps in D3. All similar dungeon crawler games, even indie ones, have better random maps. Honestly, Diablo 3 is one of the most boring ARPG experiences I can recall being a part of. There's just not anything that's even remotely interesting about my characters, the items, the item hunt, or the game in general. I've really tried to like D3, I've owned the game since it's release on May 15th and have come back to try it after the new patches. Unfortunately though, this has to be one of the biggest disappointments in my 30 years or so of playing video games.… Expand