Diablo III (2012) (PC) (Blizzard Entertainment)
0My first impression of (the full version of) Diablo III is that it's a slickly produced and easily controlled action RPG, as one might have expected. Given just how underwhelming Diablo II's first Act was, Blizzard's decision to once again start their game in a rather generic, slightly run-down medieval European setting might be somewhat questionable. At the same time, following tradition is clearly one of the series' hallmarks, and both previous installments have started out in very familiar-looking environments and introduced the really exotic stuff later on. My go-to character class in "Diablo clones" (which is an ironic but surprisingly apt way of characterizing this game) is the Barbarian since I like to deal a lot of damage through powerful attacks, but in order to mix things up a bit - without at the same time having to resort to the ARPG genre's often unsatisfying long-range combat - I decided to pick a Monk instead for my (first?) D3 playthrough. I really like the fast, stylish attack pattern of this aggressive theologian, but it remains to be see how the skill tree works out for me. One of the few and most obvious advantages of D3's already pretty disastrous "always online" mode is how easy it is to open up the game to random players whenever one feels like getting some additional support or just be clicking on stuff together with other people.