I was finally able to play Diablo III for an hour or two. So far I’m not very impressed. To begin with, it is not complete. Blizzard is known for launching games “when it’s done”. This time around, they launched without Player-vs-Player (PvP). A small, probably minor part, but still a part. One can only wonder what else is not complete.

Possibly the downloader. It was buggy! Or at least the Mac version. Every time the network connection is interrupted, it exits without a warning and doesn’t even retry. Given the slow network speeds here, I would leave it downloading before I sleep. Then when I wake up expecting it to be done, I see that it has exited after downloading just a gigabyte or two. It took me several days! And guess what’s next? A painfully slow installation process. But hey, let’s just say it’s my machine and network.

After the installation, I played with the Demon Hunter. The witch doctor just looks absolutely primitive while the others are about the same as in the previous Diablo games. I chose the female version. Guess what? It’s Bayonetta, high stiletto heels and all! What’s up with that?!? I can just imagine those stilettos sinking into the medieval sod. And are high heels ever comfortable? Who needs monsters killing you when your shoes are doing it for you?

Then there’s the gameplay. There is no more stat or skill point allocation. Skills are “unlocked” at certain level. Stats are auto-assigned. Where’s the character building aspect of that? It’s like a vastly simplified gameplay version of Diablo II. It’s almost like it’s designed for console play. Indeed maybe that’s what Blizzard has in mind. Too bad RPG fans had to suffer. I still hope it will be fun and compelling so I’m giving it an honest go. Besides, I already paid for it.