by nub on Mon May 21, 2012 8:15 am
I ended up buying it because a group of my friends all got it and begged me to buy it so I could play it with them. I must say it's been a LOT of fun playing it with them. While I still believe $60 is still steep, I don't regret getting it. The only thing that disappointed me was the dumbing down of character progression. You no longer get attribute points to spend on Vitality, Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, or Stamina. In fact, stamina is totally gone (not complaining). You CAN modify attributes with armor that has stats which increase them, but that's the only way.
You also don't have skill trees any more. You have your different skill categories, and you unlock skills automatically as you level. You can literally swap skills on the fly, but you have to let them cool down when you do this. You also unlock "runes" which act as augments for skills. It gives them new effects basically. For instance, the Barbarian gets the Whirlwind ability where he constantly spins around doing damage (at the cost of fury). You can get a rune which makes whirlwind spawn dust devils which travel in random directions, damaging any enemy they hit. Every skill has 5 or 6 runes (can't remember) which are unlocked at certain levels. The new system works REALLY well, but it just doesn't allow you to really get down and customize your character's build like in Diablo 2. A lot of serious RPG fans could find this unappealing, but in the end it really doesn't hurt the game much.
If you've been on metacritic, don't pay any attention to the negative user reviews. 98% of them are by rambling butt-hurt cry babies. Some are even copy-pastes of each other.