Lord of Tedium

I've remarked before on Diablo III's uninteresting environments:

... all of these design themes and elements work fine, but they seem lifted from Diablo II as a template, rather than originally designed from its inspiration.

... and its piss-poor storytelling:

And the fact that the plot is totally fucking stupid is still impossible to ignore. Even when skipping cinematics and story scenes, the game's dumb characters are irritatingly aggressive at showing off how silly the story is.

Still, the core loot-driven progression formula got a lot better post-launch; and I figured that this would be a compelling system for me and my dedicated co-op partner, coming off of Borderlands 2.

But I don't know what they changed since 2014 -- or if they even changed anything, maybe it's me? This game is boring, now. Normal and Hard mode, at least, are basically indistinguishable from a clicker game.

Sometimes new loot has a bunch of exciting green numbers on it, but it never changes the way that I play the game. Upgrading gear just feels rote and routine. I guess this was always true of Diablo III: even the difference between slower and faster weapons is practically meaningless for your character's abilities.

And the abilities themselves are, well they're interestingly varied, but it still doesn't really matter what I do. The thrill of unlocking a new ability tends to be dulled by the realization that the old ones - even the ones I started the game with - feel like they completely overpower all the enemies that the game can throw at me.

It feels like the current game's sense of difficulty is premised on swarms of enemies, rather than on particularly difficult tactics (like runners or teleporters or arcane-enchanted laser assholes). So I use an ability that does area-of-effect damage, and they all explode at once. It's all over in a moment.

Maybe we'll see if the "Expert" difficulty changes anything. I hope it doesn't just throw even more underpowered enemies at us.

It'd be a bit of a shame if we get completely bored of Diablo III before even making it to the new Act V.

Progress: Somewhere in the fucking desert