A Review
There seems to be two kinds of gamers: People who are utterly angry and/or disappointed - and people who are fanboys. The one group rates the game 0 or 1 while the other group gives it a 10 and calls it the best game ever released.
Both groups of gamers are wrong.
The game is neither abysmal bad and deserves a 0 rating, but it's also not that great that it deserves a 10.0.
If Diablo III would have been released with NO PERSON EVER having heard of the dungeon crawler genre, without Dungeon Siege, any former Diablo or the Baldur's Gate series - it would probably get raving reviews as an epiphany and revolution in gaming.
The problem: While D III is (IMO) really a solid and "good" game, it does not bring anything much new to the table what gamers didn't have already in years (often decades) ago. Did it really need 10 years for "Another Dungeon Siege"? Or..did it really need 10 years to develop a game, which, somehow, looks like an addon-mod for WoW?
In this regards i think that D III disappoints, although "basically" not really a bad game per se.
It is really difficult to rate this in a fair way, because for a fair rating one must be without bias and rate a game for its entertainment value, for its money's worth and also how innovative and unique it is as compared to other, similar games.
The problem here is the extreme expectations of gamers after 10 years of waiting and half dozen or so "rather similar" games already out for ages. This is the reason it's difficult to give a 10.0 rating and to legitimate the price - seeing that some people reporting they finished the game in a mere hours.
If i spend $60 or $80 even (in Europe) on a game, i would expect an extremely immersive game which can be good for months and months of gameplay. But the game is so slimmed down and streamlined there is not much immersion or flexibility, let alone complexity - or a path (as repetitive as it might be), for example compared to WoW.
In WoW (or other, similar games), you could spend months, years in building and learning your character and, well, we all know, there is never an end in sight because there will always be a new goal, new talent trees, etc. But Diablo is not such a game which would take you months of immersion in the game since you can IN FACT - play it in a few hours.
There is also no nerd-tweaking and fiddling with RPG stats - instead, it's all "tuned" for quick playing and hacking and slashing - but for doing this i would not need Diablo III, i could just use any random old (!) game, eg. playing Baldur's Gate on a console.
As i might have mentioned, as someone giving an opinion it's a little like schizophrenia because i simply can't give a very bad rating, neither a very good one.
With all the expectations gamers had etc...i think (from my very own point of view) i would rate it a 6.0 or 6.5 - the "schizophrenic" aspect here is that the game WOULD likely get an excellent 9.5 or 10.0 rating if there would NOT have been those expectations and if it would be the first game of its kind. Furthermore, if the game would only cost half of what it actually does. For $25 or $30 it would be a blast and people might overlook things they might not like - but doing this is impossible with a game where people waited 10 years. From this point of view, yes, it's a disappointment but STILL a "good" game.
For me, personally..it's simply too "streamlined" and simplified to deserve the name RPG. There is no such thing as an RPG if there is no tweaking of character attributes or playing with stats and talents. This is what makes an RPG.
There is very limited choices - classes/characters will all look the same, the same talents etc. with some minor "tweaks", eg. what runes you use on your spells. But far not enough to allow a player to "identify" with their toon to assume a role. Simple: It's a HACK & SLASH game, one of many.