So I was a huge Diablo 2 fan, played the hell out of it for many years, have obviously been excited for D3 since it was announced.
There were many things about it that made me nervous, I didn't like the art direction, the lack of permanent choices kinda bugged, me whatever, I was gonna get it regardless.
So my first playthrough on normal I was all, "This is awesome!" all the areas are new, the combat is great, and everything is hunky dory.
Well I'm now level 55 half way through hell difficulty and bored out of my mind, I barely even played tonight and really have no desire to play new characters either.
The game is absolutely and completely shallow in every sense of the word. Not that Diablo 2 was the most deep game ever, but it at least had a little.
I can forgive a ton of D3's flaws but one I simply cannot
Item hunting simply isn't fun and doesn't feel rewarding
Diablo games have always at their core been about the item hunt, you can do a lot wrong but if you make the item hunt interesting and fun it will keep people hooked.
The itemization is terrrrrrrible and the items are borrrrring. With every mob or boss in D2 I killed or every chest I opened there was a titilation that the super item I'd been searching for would pop, or maybe something awesome I didn't even know about.... there is no such thrill in D3. The legendary items are terrible, there's no desire to find them, you'd rather the vendor spawn some good blues.
The second problem is how boring the items are. There are no colorful or exotic unique modifiers, everything is the same old 5-6 affixes you've seen a million times before.
That brings it back to the main point of shallowness. Everything in the game is shallow, it's like Blizzard has grown scared of complexity. I mean look what they've done to WoW over the past few years. The pejorative term you hear a lot is "dumbed down", I prefer shallow myself.
Anyway, that's my review of D3, the combat is fun, seeing the world the first time is fun, the game is highly polished and visually impressive, but the game lacks depth and has a very poor item system and as such I don't see it having nearly the same legs as Diablo 2 did unless they drastically overhaul it with patches or expansions.