Diablo 3: Time to put the Hammer down, or pick it up rather

My relationship with Diablo 3 or Diablo in general has been a bit of a fleeting affair I did do a review of it mid 2012 not too long after it came out, having tried to play Diablo 2 and not liking it, this installment wasn’t much different and I concluded with it being a good game, the action RPG genre was just not for me. Though unfortunately I was left without the proper closure as I didn’t actually finish the damn thing as I got sick of it. A time later due to much hype about the coming Reaper of Souls expansion, I thought to myself that something needed to be done about this as I had to finish it at least once before the expansion came out (not that I was going to get the expansion anyway). As I pondered playing it again.

Two heroes to the rescue! *tromp, tromp, tromp* I like my glowing hammer in this shot

 I thought to myself that it may have been the fact that I was using a Monk and although they were pretty cool, the fact that they did  not use their weapons with most of their attacks was kind of disheartening especially when they weren’t fist weapons. I tried Mage first as I really wanted to see what Mage was like in an action RPG, but after about an hour of slinging spells around it just didn’t have the same effect a proper melee character. As I’d found the most fun playing medieval fantasy games recently being a basic warrior type character I decided to go Barbarian as it seemed to fit the hack’n’slash genre the best.

I'm not sure whether this was a hack or a slash, looks like a slash but I was using an axe so you never know.

 I started off well as I always like starting from the start, and man do you start off bare, literally. The Barbarian is basically only wearing boots and undies at the start and is carrying a tiny axe but you soon get more armor and get beefier. I liked the Warrior abilities such as Hammer of the Ancients, Cleave, Rend, Revenge and Whirlwind and I learned to use them at the right times and combinations. One of my favourites was Call of the Ancients which summons 3 ancient warrior who kick a lot of ass, man if you ever needed an “I win” button this was it, click it and all of a sudden there’s five of you kickin’ ass all over the place. It didn’t take me long to get used to the Warrior, I swapped between a one-handed weapon and shield and a two-handed weapon on several occasions making sure I adjusted my passive skills accordingly. I used the Templar most of the time as he had good healing and defense skills I liked the idea of two juggernauts smashing up the demons, I did use the Scoundrel and Enchantress at times but by far the best thing was to hear the banter between them especially when the scoundrel was involved, the Scoundrel was also pretty good when fighting with you as he had a few funny comments.

Ah gold old straightforward Templar, call me boring but there's something I liked about him.

Loot was a bit better in recent patches but it was still a bit of a pain to sort through all the crap and outfit myself as well as my followers, I found most of the time I was glad to see portal save points as I could go back to home base and offload all the junk. I realised that my Blacksmith and Jeweller level was still the same from when I stopped playing with my Monk so It was good to see the recipes that I could get though a lot of the time once I had something made I got something else in the game that was better, but that’s just loot I guess. So I slammed and hammered and whirled my way through most of the game with the blinding intent of just finishing the damn thing though I couldn’t help but appreciate the graphics and artwork, especially the cinematic which were some of the best I had ever seen, well I spose it is Blizzard making them, seriously is a good looking game though. There was some pretty grotesque bits in the Tower of Sin walking past those flay demons, felt pretty good to kill that spider bitch afterwards.

Tyrael's Sacrifice, probably my favourite cinematic from the game.

I was majorely hyped when I got up to Act III again at Bastion’s Keep and was going to see for the first time the invasion of heaven or whatever it was called. I kicked the shit out of all the demons as well as Azmodan himself and finally got to Act IV where you go to heaven and assist the angels there. I liked the moment when Tyrael faces up to Imperius again but he’s still an arrogant bastard after all that you and Tyrael have done . I did most of Act IV with my friend Lachlan as I thought I’d need some help defeating Diablo though it turns out he was so powerful and I was playing on the normal game mode that we just kicked the crap out of everything. He mentioned that certain bosses were really hard usually and that I probably didn’t like the game cause I was bored cause it was so easy but I didn’t agree. So we got up to Diablo and kicked his ass then the game was over. 

IM'A FIRIN MAH LAZORR! (Lachlan was a great help)

 Frankly I was glad I got that out of the way, the Reaper of Souls expansion is out now with a new Crusader and a new story twist to follow in Act V, frankly I couldn’t be bothered and won’t be paying any money for it though the new trailers and features do look pretty impressive especially the Nemesis Monsters

My view of Diablo III stands as before, it’s a good game and I had a bit more fun this time but it’s just not my type of game though I’m glad I got through it eventually.

JD

"Uh Tyrael? I think we got a problem"

Now Bul’Kathos!