Diablo 3 Game Review: 11 Years Later

This is my review and personal thoughts on my time playing Diablo 3 in 2023, over 11 years since launch and 1000 hours of game time.

Credit: Blizzard Entertainment

Diablo 3 launched with huge sales, but was not received well by most of the player base. Sounds familiar to Diablo IV doesn't it? Fans of Diablo 2 hated that the game got away from the dark, gritty, and slow paced action of D2. 

Casual players hated how grindy it was initially, especially with the bad itemization and difficulty of enemies compared to builds that relied heavily on mana generation spells that hardly did any damage. After a while Blizzard released an expansion, Reaper of Souls, which completely changed how the game plays and re-worked its itemization. This really saved the game and made it from a boring dumpster fire into a fun playable game. 

Since then Blizzard also released the Necromancer pack, further improving the game. Now the game is in a very good state that is fun to play for a week every few months. It's unfortunate that new content and patches won't be coming ever again, but I've had a blast playing this game in 2023 with the new seasons. 

Overall here's the general review I have of the game...

Look and Sound: A-

The game looks and sounds really good, even though it's a bit brighter and more "cartoony" compared to Diablo 2. When I compare it to other games, even 11 years later, the graphics and sounds of the game still hold up. The effects can be a bit much but can also be adjusted. 

Character Customization: B-

When it comes to character creation, you're stuck with a very specific looking hero (male or female) for each class. This is why I rank customization lower but D3 makes up for it with cosmetics. The cosmetics system in this game are pretty good for an 11 year old ARPG and are on par with WoW's. The game unlocks every item's cosmetic look when acquired and you can pay a small sum of gold whenever you want to change the look of all your weapons and armor. You also have the choice of a few different colors dyes so you can mix and match how you look.

Progression: B

Progression is an interesting topic and I rated it middle of the field because this game is very easy to progress in. The base game progression takes a few hours to level (or minutes to power level) and from there it's very easy to acquire gear and paragon ranks to become very powerful on day 1. However, it's nice to have a clear path towards progression, unlike D4 which is a complete mess when it comes to player progress. Additionally, the seasonal progression is laid out for you so you have the exact path to progressing your seasonal journey every 3 months. The game rewards you with gear and cosmetics as you achieve each rank of the seasonal journey and it forces you to play just about every piece of content the game offers. I hope other games learn from this if they plan to achieve a decent seasonal model.

Gameplay: B+

At this stage in the game there's very few bugs, very little lag, and the game works near flawlessly. The gameplay is very smooth and every class has about 5-6 viable builds that all look and feel different. Overall the gameplay is just a fun run and destroy ARPG, but also has the ability to push harder content (enemies with more health that deal more damage). The downside is the game can be too easy in the early end game and there's nothing mechanics wise in the game that make it interesting, other than gear up, mash buttons, and everything on screen dies.

User Interface: A

The UI is very good. The character screen, inventory screen, skills screen, skill bar, health and mana globes, buffs/debuffs icons, etc.. are all very excellent. It's a very clean UI that's easy to understand and use. This is the best UI that I've experienced out of all Diablo games.

Endgame: C

There's no real end game in Diablo 3 other than greater rift pushing. You essentially run rifts to get keystones to run greater rifts. The goal is to get the perfect gear and higher paragon level so you can keep pushing GRifts up until 150. It is cool that there's leaderboards though, and the start of every season has a race to specific achievements, which can be fun. I also applaud Blizzard for adding a few new end game pieces of content in the last couple years with echoing nightmares, visions of enmity, and Rites of Sanctuary. They should all stay in the core game after this last season is over.

Monetization: A

Monetization is something I give credit for. This was truly Blizzard before Activision took over. You buy the game and expansion and you get access to everything. New seasonal content has been completely free every few months for years now. There's no battlepass, cash shop, or loot boxes. This is truly the last Blizzard game I can think of that had no monetization beyond buying the game.

Overall Grade: B+

Diablo 3 is one of my favorite ARPG's of all time but I tried to be less biased in this review as I understand the ease of leveling and gearing, along with the lack of a real end game, has turned off a lot of hardcore ARPG players. If you're looking for a fun week of hack and slash gameplay every few months then this is a great game. If you go in with higher expectations than that, then you'll be very disappointed. However, it's currently way better than Diablo 4.