I've been running barbarian builds the last two seasons, doing some cool seismic slam builds that do a ton of damage and can take a lot of hits at higher torment levels. However, today I settled for creating a monk, a class that I don't roll often.
I created a character (female monk named Mei-for obvious reasons) and got into a game. Luckily I found myself starting with another player, a demon hunter. We rolled through the first ten levels easy then he took off. It was fun but way too easy because it was on normal difficulty. I switched it to hard mode and started doing adventure mode on my own, because nobody else was playing at such low levels. This was where I found myself falling in love with the gameplay again, after not playing for months.
The super powered monsters (elites) hit me hard but as I leveled up and got better gear I was able to handle them better, to the point that I was able to destroy everything with ease. However, they could still destroy me. Especially with those pesky arcane orbs that line up around you as the elites hammer away at you. Even when you're at the max level of 70 if you don't have high resistance numbers those special effects from the monsters can make your health drop fast. I got to level 24 running bounties and rifts on my own. Then my brother came home. He power leveled me to 70 and that's all she wrote.
One could argue that I played the game wrong or that its not as enjoyable when you do things this way. But at least I did enjoy soloing the game the first 24 levels. I had the templar helping me out as I mowed things down. You were a templar Jondar!
Now that I'm at 70 the real game begins. Time to start doing bounties, rifts, greater rifts, and getting the horadric cube. The cube allows you to break down the stats on items and put them on other items, something like that. I haven't quite understood everything about the cube yet because when it came out was when I stopped playing. That was quite a few updates ago.
What makes this game so fun? I would say the simplicity of it. Although the game seems simple at first the more you get into it you can start to see how things get technical. The gameplay is addicting and the chances of better loot in drops makes you want to kill everything in sight in the hopes of getting that next great piece of gear. It's great when something drops and you can replace it, especially if it looks cool cosmetically. And lots of gear in this game looks super cool.
Also, the dark gothic look and feel to the game is awesome. There's tons of blood being sprayed, demons being slaughtered, and tons of cool bosses that need to be slayed. It's probably the most bloody game I've played other than Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress, where body parts often get blown apart and scattered, albeit in a cartoon fashion.
Blizzard is doing a great job keeping the game updated and the introduction of Season Characters promises rewards for rolling new characters. Although I was sad when they took down the Auction House in vanilla Diablo III I still enjoy the game. My friend was telling me he would still play if the Auction House was still being utilized. I thought the Auction House was a great idea but I did think that people were taking advantage, which was probably why Blizzard shut it down. Doing that forces every player to work for items themselves. Blizzard's even made it so that some specialized items like set pieces are binded to accounts so you can't give certain items away to friends or randoms. There are pros and cons to this of course but overall I think Blizzard's done an amazing job with the game.
To put things in perspective I used to be a Diablo 2 player back when I was a middle schooler. That game's pvp was amazing and I would still be down to play it today just for that aspect of the game. Diablo III is more focused on pve but it does pve so well that its light years ahead of what Diablo 2 was doing. The one thing I wish was better is pvp combat in this game.
My brother plays solo in private games but I've always enjoyed playing multiplayer games. However, I've had my moments where I've soloed a ton because I wanted to test the limits of my barbarians on their own at full power. It's a great gaming experience for single player fans as well as multiplayer fanatics like myself. I may sound like a Blizzard fanboy but that's because all their games are great. Not a single one of them (the recent ones) are bad. Not bad at all. I'm definitely going to be streaming some Diablo soon. Beware foul demons and beasts.
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