Mainly out of sheer boredom. All I can say is meh.
Repetitive, over-the-top, and not really very rewarding as a game. The monsters get bigger and prettier as you go, but that's about it.
Mainly out of sheer boredom. All I can say is meh.
Repetitive, over-the-top, and not really very rewarding as a game. The monsters get bigger and prettier as you go, but that's about it.
"I have always known about man. From the evidence, I believe his wisdom must walk hand and hand with his idiocy. His emotions must rule his brain. He must be a warlike creature who gives battle to everything around him, even himself." - Dr. Zaius
That's what I've been hearing, too. But for the game's launch difficulties, I probably would have spent the $60 on this game. Saved by a glitch.
I am much more interested in Grim Dawn:
http://www.grimdawn.com/about.php
The feature list is impressive:
- Combine any of five distinct skill classes each with multiple skill trees in which to specialize. Advance your class mastery up to 75 levels to unlock dozens of powerful skills and synergistic modifiers. New classes will be periodically released through downloadable content.
- Destructible environments give evidence of your massive battles while collapsing stonework and flying shards of furniture can be used tactically to cause further injury to your foes.
- Dynamic Weather brings the world to life with region-specific climates and a variety of weather effects. A sunny day can cloud over with mild rainshowers that builds into a booming thunderstorm. Variable wind gusts blow grass and affect objects like windmills and window shutters.
- Gameplay systems designed to expand for 200 levels of character progression, equipment, and enemies to fight makes for ridiculous amounts of replay value.
- Connect with old friends or make new allies in glorious multiplayer. Specially balanced multiplayer encounters will put your teamwork to the ultimate challenge.
- Collect blueprints that allow you to combine salvaged components into unique crafted items and then, later, use those basic crafted items with higher-tiered recipes to complete items of unprecedented badassness.
- Camera rotation enhances the three-dimensionality of the world and gameplay while levels are still designed so that players are not forced to rotate the camera.
- Refined loot system drops less junk items and ensures more consistent rewards from hero and boss monsters.
- Satisfying enemy damage and death effects with an option to enable blood and gore.
- New quest and conversation system will allow players to choose quest paths and rewards, interact with NPCs in more interesting ways, and an intuitive quest creation wizard will make life a lot easier for modders.
- An NPC faction system lets the player improve their relations with different NPC groups to earn rewards as their favor increases such as merchant discounts, new items, and additional quest lines. However, aiding one faction could turn a rival faction into your enemy. Choose which side you will support!
- The ability to spend money to reclaim skill and attribute points alleviates the fear and frustration of having to make early, uninformed decisions that could permanently nerf a character.
- More features are in the works and will be announced as Grim Dawn nears release.
Burke's Joystick: Because Edmund Burke would have been a gamer!
So I finally downloaded the Diablo 3 starter edition....Well, like I wrote above, I am grateful for all the launch problems because they saved me $60! Granted, it is not fair to judge an entire game by a short demo, but I still have to say that I found the gameplay of D3 to be quite inferior to that of Torchlight 1. Here's why:
1) The Rigid Classes: One of the things I loved about Torchlight was the fact that you could take each of the game's three classes in any direction you wanted. For example, I played the Destroyer class - your basic melee tank - in my campaign. Despite this class being initially suited to swords and pole-arms, I was free to use any equipment I saw fit, from an Alchemist's (magic class) enchanted staffs, to a Vanquisher's (ranged class) firearms. And even though my skill trees (three of them) largely consisted of skills suited to melee combat, there were just enough generic class skills to make me formidable in all the different modes of combat. This is why during the course of the campaign I found my character going from swords, to staffs, to firearms, and back to melee weapons. This kept combat fresh and interesting as I was constantly learning to use different weapons.
Compare this to D3 where you are prevented from using weapons outside of your class. I was shocked to see how my Demon Hunter was completely unable to equip any weapons outside of its ranged category, such as swords and magic staffs. How boring! (BTW: does this change the further you get in the game?)
2) Auto-leveling Up: In Torchlight, when you level up, you are free to assign your new skill points, and unlock new skills, in any order or fashion you see fit. This fits with the game's open classes in that you can buff skills that might be outside of your class' normal skill set. So, for example, when I started carrying around a firearm, I could choose to add skill points to the stat that boosts ranged damage.
I was really disappointed in D3 to see my character level up and have the new skill points auto-assigned for me. Likewise, not having control over which skills I could choose to unlock was equally disappointing (occasionally I would get to choose one new skill from a selection of two, but that is nowhere like having three full skill trees to choose from like in T1).
3) Strange Graphics: Torchlight had bright, colorful and crisp graphics. D3, on the other hand, is...murky? Blurry? Gauzy? I have never encountered such a bizarre artistic direction. It felt like I was trying to play the game while looking through cheesecloth. And it really took a toll on my eyes as I got a bad headache shortly after playing the game. Even the text was strangely blurred.
I also found the actual character graphics to be strangely dated. I thought maybe the game had defaulted to low graphics when I installed the demo, but according to the settings they were set to "high". I would never have known it. It really looked 'low' to me. I would say this was a limitation of the beta, but a bunch of Youtube vids I saw seems to confirm that this is just the way the game looks. Does this change further in the game? In other words, is it just typical of the early levels? If it isn't...what a visually bland and dated game.
4) Useless loot: There will always be tons of useless loot in games like this, but I think D3 is quite inferior to T1 in how it handles it. Or doesn't handle it, as the case may be with D3, as I found myself mostly throwing all the useless stuff on the floor as there wasn't much point to carrying it all around - nor could you if you wanted because of limited storage. T1 solved this problem in a wonderfully simple way: your pet! Besides being a combat buddy, your pet has his own storage that you can use to store all the useless gear you plan on selling. In fact, you don't even have to wait to return to a town to sell it because with a click of a button, you can send you pet off to sell it for you while you keep exploring and fighting (and I understand that in T2 you can even tell your pet to buy stuff while in town and bring it back to you). Nothing goes to waste. Contrast that to the piles of loot I had to leave on the floor of D3's levels.
I also think the loot in T1 was far more interesting than that in D3. In Torchlight, most magical loot seemed to be a bit different from other similar loot, even if it only came down to a buff in a single category (e.g., +1 strength buff, or +1 poison damage versus a +1 ice damage). So even though you might not need it, it still was interesting to see how the game mixed and matched these random stats. D3's loot just seemed to be tons of identical non-magical gear, with most magical gear only differing in DPS for the most part. I didn't find myself saying "well, this is interesting" as much as I did in T1. Boring. Again, might be a limitation of the demo, but still.
5) Always Online DRM: Okay, this has never really been a problem for me, but given the choice between a game that has it and doesn't, well...I think the choice is clear.Having said that, though, I can see how Blizzard is trying to make D3 into a SP/MMO hybrid. Over the long term, that could be interesting.
So, overall, I am really disappointed in D3. I thought it was going to blow me away, but I found it boring and unimaginative compared to a game 1/3 its cost. In fact, the demo is already off my HDD. Now I am off to try the Torchlight 2 demo.
Burke's Joystick: Because Edmund Burke would have been a gamer!
Just a heads up:
GameFly - formerly Direct2Drive - has Torchlight 2 for 75% off (that's $7!). If you are looking for a great ARPG, or just were disgusted with Diablo 3 as I was, I highly recommend this game.
http://www.gamefly.com/Download-Torchlight-II/5004159/
Burke's Joystick: Because Edmund Burke would have been a gamer!
I can't get past the art style. Not that I was crazy about Diablo III"s art style or anything, but at least it didn't look like Looney Toons.
"I have always known about man. From the evidence, I believe his wisdom must walk hand and hand with his idiocy. His emotions must rule his brain. He must be a warlike creature who gives battle to everything around him, even himself." - Dr. Zaius
It does look like Looney Toons.Originally Posted by Dr Zaius
Burke's Joystick: Because Edmund Burke would have been a gamer!
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks