The beginning hour went to getting my Rogue through most of the prologue. The first 20 minutes were for the opening cinematics, and character creation. The rest of the time was all about getting through the story. After that, it was just playing the game and fighting through the hordes of demons and undead. Like it should be for any Diablo game.

Overall, the Diablo series knows it formula. You go, find things, kill demons, explore the portions of Sanctuary that you’re in. There are plenty of legendary pieces of gear. This effects make a big difference in your gameplay style. You also have the defined classes that improve over time.

There were plenty of options available throughout. This first beta has 3 classes available: Rogue, Sorcerer, and Barbarian. These classes have plenty of options and those have skills that can be leveled up with points. Almost all the skills have 3 upgrades. However, you can only have 2 of the 3 upgrades. You choose 1 of the additional 2 upgrades. They do all come together to make the skill more effective. It puts good emphasis on an aspect of what the skill can do. This really does help to customize the whole of your build to your playstyle. This does refine it a lot better than what Diablo 3 has.

The classes have a very distinct feel. My time as a Rogue was very different from the time I heard about as a Barbarian. The basics of gameplay are the same but what you need to do is something very different. The Rogue has much more emphasis on moving in and striking before backing off. The Barbarian just gets in and swings away. You only move when there’s something that has a lingering effect.

This game puts a lot of emphasis on mobility. It could have been the majority of my time in the Beta was a Rogue, but there was a lot of need to keep moving throughout any boss fight. The world itself was a pleasure to explore. There is now the option to transverse areas. These are shortcuts or give you access to needed areas.

Undoubtedly, there will be quests and story missions that award some skill points. It could just be one or two like in Diablo 2. Those few quests were always worth doing and usually a lot fun to go through. Diablo 3 didn’t have that, but it did have more hidden levels and a few wonderfully hidden secrets. There are now World Bosses that appear in places at particular times. These take work from a group of players to take down. There are great rewards for doing this too.

One of the better things here is that while we’re working with skill points, it’s easier to respec your points. It’s not quite the just changing a few things outside of combat in Diablo 3. It’s better than the non-refundable point system we had in Diablo 2. It does have a gold cost, but having it available is a good thing. It makes it very easy to respec before going into a boss fight when you know your build is just a little off.

The second beta, the Open Beta, will have all 5 classes available. This does give you more of a  chance to explore everything that it has to offer. Adding in the Necromancer and Druid classes gives a lot more variety into what you can play through.

Let’s talk about the problems of the Beta. There are some things that could be unique to the Beta.  There were very long load times to get in. The first log-in was the worst being the first day of the beta and having a 30+ minute queue to get in. The connection issues hit us here and there. At the end, it wasn’t until I couldn’t load into another area I realized the time and the Beta being over. One of us couldn’t get in after a particular point. Either it was a kind of lock-out or just a problem. They were on Wi-Fi, not a hardline connection like I had. The oddest bug that we dealt with had to do with the menus. One of us had menus that just did not show up. Many of the prompts telling you what buttons to press would just be blank. They couldn’t see their hotkeys (therefore their cooldown). They couldn’t see anything with the stores, literally I had to look at my menus and share where to click to change through the tabs. This would have been a major for the later priority quests for the upgrades or extraction. 

What I’d like to see:

Under future wants is the Paladin class returning as DLC. We’ve got a great set-up for it to make a return. It can be fairly mobile and just having something with buffs for the party is always welcome. It could already be in the game, and only running a few classes didn’t let me see them. For weapons, Rogues could use Katars. Those were iconic to the Assassin, which is now part of the Rogue. The Claws and Katars are just visually impressive. Even just as Legendaries weapons it would be welcome.

Final thoughts:

We’re talking about a solid game. It’s different from the other games with the changes. They’ve brought back some great classes from the franchise. This is a massive game. It’s a large area to explore with so much to explore. There was a lot of area to explore and I couldn’t get to all of it. With the World Bosses and the extensive story and side quests, there is a lot more to do throughout the game.