DISCLAIMER: I didnt much care for Diablo 1, and I thought Diablo 2 looked interesting but I wasn’t really blown away. With this out of the way: take this review with a grain of salt: I’m new the universe, and this is a review done by someone who is judging the game as a stand-alone.

This out of the way, feel free to post how you agree or disagree, just dont get butt hurt because I wasn’t nerdgasming in my pants the whole way through.

So I pre-ordered the game largely because a bunch of friends told me how sick the beta was and how if I got it we could all play it together at LANs and such, and let me tell you: as fun as playing Unreal Tournament 2k is, I like adding new games to our list.

I did not enjoy Torchlight, or any other Dungeon crawler game Ive played largely because I felt the combat incredibly repetitive and the dungeons themselves rather repetitive.

Now, judging D3 stand-alone…

Gameplay:
Likes: the spells my witch doctor has are AWESOME. I love the design and how they work. I like the look of the Demon Hunter stuff, I like pretty much all the classes abilities and they all flow together in their own way that allows for a very creative play style.
Run with a Demon Hunter/Barbarian combo and it will be completely different than running a Demon Hunter/Witch Doctor combo. etc etc.

Dislikes: Combat is still kind of repetitive… you can get an array of abilities to use, and they all do different and cost different things… but its very very slow going. It feels like you need to get more abilities faster. Changing abilities is cool, but I felt like by level 15 I should have more than just 3 buttons to press. Unfortunately it also feels like even at 21 Im still going between 2 spells and nothing more. Maybe thats just me though.
The dungeons are different, but they seem unnaturally confusing and long… but I suppose thats why they call it a Dungeon Crawler… so there you go.

Story:
Likes: All of it. Its seriously very interesting, the cinematics/book page cinematics are really interesting and help me understand all thats happening in an easy to understand format. I love the characters and how they interact and I like that they made an attempt to personalize each classes interactions with the main storyline.

Dislikes: None really. The voice overs are great, which is normally something Im really picky about. I suppose if I had one complaint it would be that you seem to go in and out of the story. Like they talk to you about whats happening, tell you to go to this dungeon, and then you fight mobs for 30-45 minutes before the story picks back up.

General Things:
-Love love LOVE the Auction House. I was having some trouble killing stuff, so I went to the Auction House and fully decked my guy out in awesome gear… now I have no problems what-so-ever.

-I dont necessarily like that if I group with someone on the mission Im currently on, and then if they leave and I log for a bit, come back but click resume mission, it sometimes puts me where I was, but respawns all the mobs in the area…

-I like the Banner thing… it would be nice if they made it so my character in WoW could equip my Diablo banner as a Tabbard, or maybe carry the banner itself? flavor idea.

-cant wait to try out hard and nightmare modes with people. They sound tough as shit!

Overall Grokk score: 7/10