After twelve long years, the wait is over. Finally we get the sequel to one of the best computer Action/RPGs of all time. And but for one small thing, it delivers exactly what it promises, which is to be better than its predacesors. Unfortunately that one thing is crippling the enjoyment of hundreds of thousands of users. Server crash. The amount of people absolutely crushed the servers even though Blizzard did a stress test just a short time ago with open beta.
Now I am not going to bother with beating that horse too much. I fully trust Blizzard to get that fixed soon. They made us aware beforehand that this might happen due to insane preorders.
But onto the gaming! I did manage to get in on day one, an accomplishment that I believe should get me an in-game badge if I am being completely honest. Anyway, I got in and created my very own Demon Hunter. The cutscenes are pretty impressive and I found the character intro and Act I clips to be very entertaining.
Game play was so much fun. It was easy and very smooth. It seemed like Baulder's Gate blended in with Diablo. One of my favorite things in this game is the ragdoll effect on the corpses once you kill them. I was knocking zombies off of cliffs and watching them spiral to their second deaths like one would in real life. A very organic look to their death animations. The environments look good and I had no trouble with this game on my laptop, which was a bit of a concern for me initially since I have a bit of an economy laptop from the $500 range purchased about 8 months ago.
The Demon Hunter is actually pretty fun. Once I got that rapid fire ability I was machine gunning the undead down left and right. The character inventory has gotten a very nice upgrade as well as the rest of the game. I managed to play for about 3 hours before I took a break and came back to find that servers were taken down for "maintenance" which of course means Blizzard was crapping their pants from all the users trying to log in constantly, which was causing so many problems.
Overall this game delivered what I had always wanted (at this stage in my game play), which was to get everything in the previous Diablo games and much more. I have no in game complaints thus far. Granted I am still in Act I and it is possible that my opinion will ultimately change once I explore the battlenet options, finish the game the first time through, and play through other characters. I give this this game a 4.2/5. I held back some points due to server issues and a little because of potential opinion change from future gameplay. Go get this game.
