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| i like snow |
I played the stress test beta for most of its duration. I played the first little bit on all of the classes, and played through most of it on the Embermage, as well as almost as much with a friend on the Outlander class. I think I got a pretty decent take on the game, though maybe not. The game is not promoting a closed unhackable multiplayer experience, so my intention is by no means to bother with the game multiplayerwise.
In simplest terms the game is Diablo 2 run through a Warcraft or maybe a Dota2 filter; it's hard to really describe the visual style outside of these terms. It is attractive and cartoony, with nice animations and good visual variety. It isn't really stunning by any means though, the game looks somewhere between big title and indie release. The spell effects are visually strong and the art carries nicely, but it isn't quite as top tier as some of the stuff I've played recently.
Outside of the visual style, it's Diablo 2. I mean it's faster paced, with more skill variety and better itemization, but it's Diablo 2 repackaged and refined. It moved quicker and in most fashions it is a smoother game, but it really does feel mostly like the same game. I'm not sure this upsets me - Most of Diablo 2's flaws were either in basic problems with the genre that have been ironed out since then, graphical weakness or just odd programming errors. They've fixed most of those and then brewed up some new ones.
On the plus side, inventory tetris is completely gone. The game actually gives you space for each "type" of thing, as well as space on your pet as well. Your pet can shapeshift, sell things for you and even purchase potions. I noticed the pet doesn't remember the shopping list if you close the window, which strikes me as odd. I feel like it would be better if you could tell the pet 'I wish to keep this many potions on me' and then it would buy potions to fill you up to them.
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| fucking pirates |
I really like the pet thing too, it feels somewhere between hunter pet (from wow) and druid wolf minions in d2x. They're also thankfully relaxed about the pet dying, which is the worst part of any pet game. Sure it's a little silly that your pet can never die, but who cares? You can die and that's all that matters.
The game also has much nicer visual variety. I loved D2's willingness to go to different places and explore a world built up around the first game's lore, but the game was still a bit too tightly wound around the 'grey stone walls, everything covered in blood, demons made of hobos stitched together' sort of thing. TL2, at least from what the beta has shown, features lots of different locales and styles.
On the downside - And this might be the beta talking - the game does introduce new issues to the genre. The biggest one, and one that painfully departs from D2 (or at least, is worse than D2), is its flat out harder both to parse how much elemental damage you're taking, what kind of resistance you need and how much resistance you need. The resist system didn't make any sense to me at the time, it felt unresponsive. One of the worst moments came in the last dungeon in the beta: An enemy was nailing me to near death with "shadow" bolts. From off screen. How do I tell what element it is doing? The only way I could figure out was highlighting over its name bar. In D2, whatever hits you registers on your character with an elemental animation, but TL2 didn't seem to really bother. Even worse I just ... Have no idea if the enemy was just too powerful, my resists were too low or my gear not good enough.
A bad issue of this is the game does not allow map resets easily. In D2, if you fought too tough a boss, you'd just reset the map and start the area again. I'm not really sure why TL2 wouldn't allow you to do this - You can just go online and join another player's game, but it's an unnecessary step of hassle in a genre where the ability to just grind up more gear to fix your flaws is clearly part of the design. Sure, you can turn down the difficulty, but who wants to do that?
The other problem with this is, well, you clearly need a bunch of resistance from very early on in the game, at least on Veteran difficulty. Items are not easy to read, and it's hard to tell if items are at a higher item level (ie have a bigger pool of stats). I'm not saying items are tough to figure out, it's just they're sorted poorly and you have to struggle to add up which ones are relevant, and which aren't. The most irritating element are the enchants, which don't really list as being an enchant. Since you're supposed to be able to remove and add enchants, it's really difficult to tell what exactly IS the enchant. I don't much care for this, since it makes comparing items for upgrade harder or just outright impossible.
Overall, though, the game is a visually pleasing and streamlined modern version of D2, with many of the years old annoyances gone at last. Enemies arrive on the battlefield in a variety of ways too, with skeletons pulling themselves off swords they were impaled on, enemies bursting from huts or jumping down from fortress walls. It feels good and dynamic.
I didn't really feel the class balance was quite there, but the beta is supposed to go through a revision period when it comes to skills, so maybe they'll get that closer to "good" soon. I'm looking forward to buying retail, though I'm not sure if I'll pick it up when it releases or just get it a little cheaper at the winter sale. $15 (in a four pack) isn't too bad a deal, though. I mean it looks nice, it's polished, it's clean and it's fun. $15 for a good quality release is quite a deal, even if it's graphically a bit behind the curve, but who cares anyway.
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| I mean besides this will run fine on my notebook |
