[dplax]

I'll have to agree with LoA and Johnny.

I've played up until Act II in Nightmare and tbh, apart from the graphics and the crafting system, everything else got worse since Diablo II. And even the graphics are not that good with today's standards...

The skill system is way too simple and loses a lot of D2 complexity. You no longer get to distribute stat points. It's as if the game has been dumbed down. It has also lost the feel of the world that D1 and D2 built up and feels very much like you're just being led through the game.

You get quest objectives which don't make any sense... How should you know you have to go to point X after point Y? Half the fun in the previous games was not knowing what was to come. And now you know of half the bosses that you will fight hours in advance (or you can just look through the achievements and spoil yourself the whole story...). The betrayal in Act II was so very predictable that the bad writing just hurt...

There is no challenge at all in normal. The only challenge in Nightmare so far have been mortar bosses, and those only until you figure out that the mortar attacks have a minimum distance so you can cancel them out by moving close in. I don't mind being able to kill things, but this is ridiculously easy. There are some serious difficulty curve issues.

The Witch Doctor also seems way too powerful. You just sit back and shoot away at enemies while you hide behind a seemingly unending supply of summoned minions that very rarely can the monsters kill. Speaking of followers and minions...they're stupid. They'll walk through any pool of poison, wall of flame, etc, committing suicide very effectively. While I'd understand zombie dogs being this stupid, wouldn't a templar be intelligent enough to walk the extra two steps around the slimy pool of poison once the battle is done?

//act I end boss spoilers//
The only challenge so far comes from lag killing you. I know how to do the Butcher, I know how to dodge his claw pulling me in, how to let him hit the wall etc...but I'll just die as he draws me into a fiery lagdeath.
//end of spoilers//

Not sure whether it's just the EU servers or not, but lag in what is in name a single player game is horrible. I see why they did it, but they most definitely do not have the right infrastructure up even two weeks after launch.

Not to be all negative, the crafting system is actually quite good and would stand very well on its own Thing is you can get better items for cheaper in the auction house, which competes with the crafting system. Why would you want to spend all that money on upgrading the blacksmith to lvl 10 when for the same amount of gp you can buy your gear in the auction house...

All in all I don't regret buying the game. I'm down to under 1€/h and as a cost that's not all that bad. Certainly cheaper than going to the cinema...

Then again I don't see myself playing the game any more in a year's time, whereas I feel I might still dust off D2 or even D1 out of nostalgia. Titan Quest, which came out six years ago still sees regular playtime too and will probably do so for much longer than D3.