Diablo 3 - A Report - Part 2 & 3

[bukKkk]

Honeytitts is back! This time, she is in search of the cemetery that is supposed to hold the crypt that is supposed to hold the grave that is supposed to hold the crown that is supposed to hold the key to reviving the Skeleton King, so I can kill the Skeleton King. I found this out before writing part two, and it wasn't easy, because every piece of dialogue in this game makes want me want to cuddle my old Diablo 1 and 2 boxes under a soft blanket and sob like a teenage girl that is the last in her class to grow boobs. I wonder what this has to do with the fallen star I am originally in search off, or why I can't just take Leoric's crown for myself and leave him dead, but I guess it beats tea time with Leah and Cain.

You can read the first part here!

Part II: Tomb Raider

Remember how part one of this review contained almost exclusively zombies? It's the same with skeletons now. So I clear this graveyard of a variety of skeletons and then enter a crypt. There is several crypts, and you don't know which is the right one, so how many crypts you have to grind through comes down to luck. Conveniently, the game resets the entire area when you restart it, which means I must have cleared about nine crypts or so in total. This makes you two things, bored and rich. Bored because they are very repetitive, and rich because every monster, every sarcophagus, every loose stone slab, and every chest is stuffed with so much useless weapons and armor that your inventory is always full. Other cultures used to bury their dead with two coins on the eyes, but in this mythology, it seems like you pay the ferryman five broadswords and a platemail to ship you over to the afterlife. It's okay though, because you will drown in this stuff, which goes nicely with the fact that there are still no town portals.

About seven crypts and five trips to sell the entire armory of Moria in, I got so bored that I decided to just run through the damn things. Monsters will not follow you once you are out of sight. I always wondered what they do in these dungeons all day, now at least I know its better than playing tag. Rounding a corner behind a suspiciously loitering group of skeletons, I finally discover something new. A large empty room features an urn in the middle. If someone was actually creative enough to stick burial objects in an urn, this might be it. Upon interacting with the urn, the game lets me know that I am supposed to survive the waves of spawning skeletons until the countdown runs out. Without even trying to weave this into the narrative, it starts manifesting skeletons from the mist that escapes this infernal ash-tray. After re-misting the first group of skeletons, seeing that they neither do nor take a lot of damage, I have the greatest idea ever: New monster kill combo record! I kite the skeletons clockwise through the room, dodging the manifesting new waves. More and more skeletons line up as the little progress bar empties out. This is going to be soo epic! Three... two... one... and all the skeletons instantly vanish to mist again. Holy blue-balls, blizzard, that was the biggest anti-climax a video game made me suffer since I bought The Old Republic. The urn drops two shitty pieces of equipment I can't pick up because my inventory is full again and leaves me to explore more crypt.

Conveniently, at the end of every wrong crypt, there is a monolith that teleports me back to the entrance. When it comes into sight, Honeytitts will announce that this must be the wrong crypt. She never wonders about the monolith..es?, even though this is awfully considerate of whoever hid the crown and stuffed all the surrounding crypts with the animate remains and ghosts of medieval arms dealers. It's not all bad though, there's also a couple of fun mechanics. You can use your environment to kill monsters, for example by dropping chandeliers on them. You will notice this after you ran in there in your best barbarian fashion and ground everything into a snortable state, and then realize which monsters in what moment you were supposed to drop the chandelier on. Okay, forget my point.

Let's skip the boring stuff and get to the right crypt. You will be pretty sure it is the right crypt when a wall suddenly starts crumbling in front of you to introduce a dude that looks like somebody stuck 30 large black dildos into whatever the equivalent to Godzilla is for the Gingerbread Man. This is the first boss fight that actually feels like a boss fight, because when this guy swings his massive arms at you, you're supposed to run out of the way to avoid the damage. I would have liked if this was hard and done a few, rewarding times. It's easy though, and he has a lot of hitpoints. After the fight, as you descend down the hole in the wall behind him, a guy that you're not supposed to like because he probably turns evil at some point appears in your Pokedéx, telling you what that was. The thing, by the name of Unburied, is what you get when you have mass graves instead of proper burials. I'm pretty sure that later on the game will let you know how this can happen IN A CRYPT or why they throw large black spikes into a mass grave. In the next room you get a fun enemy design. Tomb Guardians are sorcerer type skeletons that fire slow, dodgeable projectiles at you, teleport around wildly, and sound like you throw a bus full of heavy smokers into a meat grinder when they die. They are the first really interesting encounter in this game, so I love them. Defeating a few of those, I finally find the crown. Of course, I don't get to take it home before it regurgitates the Ghosts of chancellor Eamon, that let's me know he will never allow me to revive Leoric, while Honeytitts already pounds on him. Then, he does.

[bukKkk]

The crown in my possession, a button appears in my HUD that says "Town Portal". Yeah, town portals are not actual scrolls in your inventory anymore, but a mechanic that is free to use whenever you acquired too many crappy axes. At least I got it now. I take the crown back through my freshly opened portal and head for the town's blacksmith, who much to my surprise also has the last name Eamon. Was I supposed to to talk to this dude before? Did I? No matter, I offer the crown to his professional opinion, which states that it is in dire need of repair. How do you repair a crown, you ask? Simply put it on a really large anvil, smack it with a large hammer a few times and wait until it glows. He then proudly hands the crown back to Honeytitts, who's solution for the rest of the problems on the way is also smacking things with a large hammer. This unlocks Eamon as the "Artisan Blacksmith", which means he can disassemble magic items into crafting material, and then craft weapons and armor with other magic qualities from that. He can also level up, by buying single steps of upgrading him with gold. You know, kind of like a facebook game. When he levels up, his outlet gets a bit bigger and a bit fancier, and he has a wider variety of items he can craft for you, all of which are still shit. What's cool about it though, is that you can directly access the different category tabs depending on whether you click on the anvil, the pile of swords or the armor rack around him.


Part III: Templar, Interrupted

The crown in my backpack, I head back to Tristram Citadel, where the gameplay finally steps up a notch again. It leads you through a few rooms with huge wooden doors and blockages, all of which you blast away with the power of your barbarian rage, defeating a much more well-balanced set of enemies in between. When I say more well-balanced, I don't mean challenging. Even with the Tomb Guardians firing from a distance, monsters charging and flanking me from all sides, and skeleton archers having 5-chord solos on their bowstrings, Honeytitts still blasts through everything without breaking a sweat. Whenever she does get a scratch, she can collect some of the insta-heal health bubbles monsters drop now, or take one of a million health potions that gets dropped in between racks of grey quality armor. But since I found two javelin with life-steal, I seldom need any of it, and because all my attacks are cleave or area-of-effect, I doesn't really matter a lot if I hammer a single opponent or a group-hug patrol. Still, the difficulty level went up from "retarded easy" to "opposite of hard". Additionally, I have so much fun blowing through the environment that I let Honeytitts smash every destructible piece of decoration she can find. You will notice that the most durable objects in the Diablo universe are wooden chairs. This might be a design flaw, a bug, or I could run into a chair-golem later on.

Venturing deeper down towards Leoric's second final resting place, I find the very last thing I would have expected: Humans. Some sect of cultists has actually opened up their headquarters right next to the thickest population of zombies, skeletons, ghosts, and demons possible. You'd think they must be a pretty fucked up bunch. They are. What I stumble into is some sort of arcane cycle-jerk, where a dozen of these cultists channel energy into a guy in his underwear in the middle. One of the perverts launches himself at me, urging his fellow cultists to "maintain the incantation". Okay, haven't heard that one before. With me still snickering, Honeytitts puts this guy out of his embarrassing misery and starts pounding on his "incanting" peers. Slaughter enough of them and the guy in the middle breaks free, instantly starting to beat on his defenseless violators. After, he refuses to introduce himself and instead urges me to help him find his pants. Considering what he probably just went through, and I honestly still have no idea what exactly that was, I decide to help him out.

His pants are just down the corridor, past a couple of skeletons and a couple of more perverts. Once my rescuee is dressed and regained what he mistakes as his dignity, he gets much too friendly much too quick. His name is Kormac or something, from the Templar Order, and he is also on a quest to re-kill Leroic. Wait a second, how come I had to do all this shit to get the crown and what not, and all this guy had to do was get roofied by a couple of nerds? Anyway, he suggests that we bond together, and much to my surprise, Honeytitts decides he can be trusted. He also let's me know that to get to Leoric, we have to fight a guy named Jondar. The short way to Jondar takes us to some stairs that are blocked with rubble and wooden spikes. Karmack builds himself up and announces that "black magic bars our way! But the will of a Templar is stronger!" and hacks his way through it, weapon swinging. While I still search my brain for a witty retort, he already charges for Jondar, demanding an explanation for how he could betray the Order. Jondar collapses almost instantly, begging Kromark for forgiveness. Carmeck however refuses, and tea-bags the guy to death. Then, he comes up with a new condition to join me, which is free run of the graves of his Templar Order. I have so many questions at this point, the first twenty being "WHAT THE FUCK?!", but Honeytitts just says "Agreed."

So now I have a follower. That means this guy will help me in fights, like I needed any help, with a set of unique abilities he will use whenever he feels it's appropriate. At this level, I have the option between damage and healing. I can also equip Cramag with on and off-hand gear and give him trinkets. I make him my heal bitch and we press forward together. Neither Templars, nor cultists are ever mentioned again.

That's it for part two. Read about how it all ends and what the final conclusions are in part three, some time later. If possible, I will check out some other classes and the online mode before that goes up, which means it will probably take a while longer than part two. But after all, I want to let you guys know what you're in for.

[Nomad.]

Me wants

[aut.taker]

Nice job there bukkk

[lilamiez]

Kormac, his name is Kormarck.

[Raistelin]

Do you guys think the rumor about this games April release is true? What class will you roll as first? I'm thinking of making a Barbarian or a Demon Hunter

[Nomad.]

I'm rolling an Amazon or an Assasin.
Oh wait.



I just hope the game doesn't suck, at least I want the story to be good and well narrated like it was in the previous games.