My First Night With Diablo III
It’s the first of what I assume will be plenty of nights. For those who don’t know, The Diablo games are Action RPGs. Typically, you choose a class and run around fighting monsters, picking up loot, and completing quests all while trying to stop Diablo, as the title suggests.
I first encountered Diablo when my brother and his friend were playing it on the Playstation, which was preventing me from playing Medieval. Shortly afterward I fell in love with the game. We played countless hours of the PSX version. Then a couple years later when I got a decent computer I started playing the PC version. I played a lot of that too.
Some years after that my brother and I started playing Diablo II. Diablo II had more character classes, more areas and was more polished. Naturally, I loved it too. My brother once commented to me, “it seems like every Sunday we were making new characters and running through the first few acts.” He said it because we did do that every Sunday.
Finally, Diablo 3 was announced. I only saw one of the first trailers. The moment I knew the announcement wasn’t a hoax I knew I would own the game so I stopped paying attention. Someone told me that the game was online-only like SCII but other than that, I went into this game knowing nothing about it.
I was ready early. With my game installed, I was sitting there waiting for the launch. Unfortunately, when I typed in my password the game waited a few minutes then informed me with that the server was busy. It was disappointing. I assumed Blizzard knew how popular they are and would be ready for the rush of eager players. But they weren’t. So I tried until I finally was able to connect, over an hour later.
The first thing there was to do was to make a character. The classes I had to choose from were, Barbarian, Monk, Demon Hunter, Witch Doctor and Wizard. I chose Demon Hunter, but I was close to choosing Monk. This game is the first in the series that lets you pick the gender of your character (thank you, Blizzard; I truly appreciate it). Then while I waited for my friend to get on I customized my banner a bit. My companion and partner in crime picked a Monk so it worked out to provide us with a bit of variety.
Click to see my character
The introduction cinematic was everything I expected it to be. I won’t even describe it. You’ll see it if you play it and it will blow your mind. Once it was done, the first thing I noticed was that the game was beautiful. It’s Dark. Much darker than part 2 and maybe even darker than part 1 which at the time was very spooky.
It’s Diablo. If you’ve played any of the games you know how it plays. It handled like I expected it to so I got comfortable with it pretty quick. Left clicking moves you around and performs the primary attack. Right click executes your secondary attack. But this time they added abilities on your hot-keys which unlock as it goes along.
This game, however, didn’t seem to give me much control, at all, in regards to what skills I was learning. Whereas in Diablo 2 I would be deciding which skill tree to follow and setting skill points, in this game the abilities just sort of unlocked. I don’t know if that will change later or if I overlooked something but that is a bit concerning for re-playability. I also haven’t placed any stats. Normally, since I play mostly hardcore characters (when they die they die), I put a lot of points into my health. I didn’t have any points. I was never prompted and I thought it was very strange. Unless that changes, it looks like they decided to go more action and less RPG with this entry in the series.
As a Demon Hunter I had a lot of ranged attacks. I never got close to the enemy. I don’t think I ever got hit either. After a few levels I got a trap, reminiscent of the Assassin from Diablo II. So far, I’m really happy with the skills my class has.
The game starts you off in New Tristram near the ruins of Old Tristram, which any long time fans of the series will recognize. You even get to revisit the Cathedral from the first game which was really nostalgic for me. We played for a couple hours gained a few levels and killed a lot of monsters(and barrels). We had a blast. I can’t wait for more.
Stay tuned for more Diablo Diaries chronicling Theresa’s adventures with Diablo III…
