Then there is the Cauldron of Jordan, a permanent item in your inventory that allows you to transmute any item into gold at any time, which saves you trips back to town to divest yourself of the lots of loot that you get.ĭiablo 2′s Horadric Cube gets replaced by the Nephalem Cube, which, instead of combining items, breaks them down instead into basic parts like leather scraps and iron bits. Most items come identified, except for the rarest of them all. Gone is also the need to load up on identify scrolls. There is now one permanent summoning hearth stone (WoW fans will recognize this reference!) that you can use at all times. Though initially unused to this mechanic, I give it two thumbs up after playing the Diablo beta for about six hours.īlizzard also added tweaks that streamline play.įor one, there is no more forgetting to load up on town portal scrolls. It rewards experimentation and trial-and-error.

This allows you to switch to different play styles as you need on the fly, and not having to worry about “spec-cing” wrongly when you build your character.

The catch is that although you know many skills, you can only use a certain number of skills as the hotkeys given to you are limited.įor example, by the end of Act I, I only had two hotkeys and two mouse buttons buttons to bind skills to, though my Wizard had over 12 abilities to choose from. Diablo 3 has five classes: barbarian, demon hunter, monk, witch hunter and wizard. You would think that this would make it super boring as everybody in the same class will, well, be exactly the same. Here, you automatically get skills as you level up, and they all improve as you rise with experience. Gone are the detailed skill trees, where you had to spend points to level up to get skills and improve them.

Sprawling tech tree? Check…nope, not so fast mister. In any case, Diablo is a game that inspired a whole generation of clones in the action role-playing genre, and that alone makes it worthy to check out.įast paced action and frenetic mouse clicking? Check. No matter how much you rail and complain about the cost or the extended wait, you will buy and play this game.įor example, I capitulated and ended up buying Starcraft 2 a month after it was released even after I screamed about the cost. If you’re a Blizzard fanboi, you know you will play this game. I finally got around to writing my review of the beta about a month after the Diablo III beta was released.

Diablo 3 review