Diablo III

After playing through Diablo 1 and then playing Diablo 2 due to the release of the Warlock, my hype for playing through the story of the Diablo games again has led me to playing through Diablo 3 for the first time since before Diablo 4 came out.  I played D3 upon release first on the PC and then again later over the years on the PS4, PS5 and the Switch.  Now I'm playing it on the Switch 2, granted it's still the Switch 1 version of the game.  Between the different platforms I must have played over 1000 hours in the game.  Coming back to it does feel like returning to an old familiar place from my past.  When the game initially came out, the criticisms I would read over the years that people had with its launch, I didn't share.  I liked how it was back then and found stuff like Deckard Cain's story impactful and didn't mind the change in the art direction.  Granted the updates that have been added over the years have been a welcomed change for me that's only made me like the game even more.  Playing it again now, I feel a little differently, especially after playing Diablo 4 with its improvements.  

I still enjoy the game and I actually feel that I'm enjoying the general story more now, especially after playing the first two Diablo games where the storytelling wasn't as much there, especially in the first game.  One thing with the story that I feel couldn't have improved upon in its delivery was Deckard Cain's death.  I feel his death should have been in  an end act cutscene.  Like it's great they had his burial there but both could have been there and it would have done him more justice.  To have it where he died during one of the gameplay story breaks took away from the scene and made the emotions following it kind of fall flat to me. 

There are some things that only exist in D3 that I'm glad only do because I didn't like them much when I played before but after seeing them not in D4, it makes them feel more endearing when playing D3.  Examples of this are like when the character comments when critical striking or the skill set up where you just select your build's skill anyway you want.  Granted you kind of have this with D4 but I like how it still resembles a skill tree and sounds like it will even more once the update with the Lord of Hatred expansion is rolled out.  Of course you have a similar setup in Diablo Immortal to which is another thing that shows what I've noticed in that Diablo Immortal has really become a replacement for D3.  All but my favorite class are in Diablo Immortal and the art and skill setup are pretty much the same.  I saw a lot of questions about why Immortal got a Warlock and D3 didn't and to me it's just because Immortal is the replacement for D3.  Granted I'm not happy it's this way but I understand.  It would be cool if the Warlock was in D3 as well but it probably made sense for them to choose one game or the other and so the choice makes sense especially since Blizzard probably makes more money off of Immortal with the microtransactions, whereas none is made off of D3 from that.

Overall, it was nice to revisit Diablo 3 and play the Witch Doctor again.  I know from the discourse I've seen online, the Witch Doctor is not a popular class which makes sense considering it was essentially a class that at least upon the early iterations of the game served as a replacement of one of the most popular classes in Diablo 2.  This is what made me choose the Witch Doctor when I first played the game when it first launched on PC.  Yes the Witch Doctor is a little different from the Necromancer but I liked that, don't get me wrong the Necromancer is still my favorite class in the series but I really like how they did the Witch Doctor because they're similar enough to scratch that itch of playing a summoner but not too similar to be derivative and stand on their own as their own class.  I would very much love if a Witch Doctor came to Diablo 4, or Immortal or even 2 at this point since it seems like Blizzard is now more open to adding more content to Diablo 2.  The only drawback of adding them to another game in the series is it will give less of a reason to revisit Diablo 3 as I personally don't feel the other classes stand out enough to be different from what I can play in the other games.  But if that day comes then I'll just flip a coin to decide between rolling a new Witch Doctor or Necromancer.