Started on normal because I'm lazy n shit. Will probably up to Veteran at some point because I haven't really had much problem yet.
Ok, so it's kind of impossible to talk about this game without comparing it to D3. So, I'm gonna do that.
Initial impressions:
I'm done with the first major quest or whatever; saved the Water Guardian blah blah blah. Story is dumb but whatever.
First of all, I need to make a major distinction. This game is more FUN than D3 so far, but it's not BETTER than D3.
Better than D3:
-Itemization. From lofty heights. LOFTY. There is no contest. The loot is so much better, even at lower piddly levels. There's fun little low level shit set items; I've got 3 pieces of a set right now. The game gets it SO right. D3, look at what they did here, get over trying to control the economy and just embrace it. I saw one item that leveled up the more shit you killed with it; just cool stuff like this that D3 boringly ignores.
-Pets vs. followers. Again, shits on D3 from LOFTY HEIGHTS. I don't want to hear about your dumb fucking backstory... unless you're the scoundrel, and even then hearing you shout your prescripted battle cries gets old the 100th time and positively ear-raping the 1000th. My bird Herpaderp just lets out a screech and starts fucking shit up. Much better. Did I mention pets are actually USEFUL as opposed to followers? You can send their asses to town to sell shit and restock potions n whatnot. You can even have them pick shit up if you want. No contest here.
-Skills. This is just a personal preference thing, but I like dumping points into skills to improve them and picking a tree to focus on as opposed to the rune system. What if you fuck up and spend your points wrong? Well, you're fucked until...
-Modding. Somebody makes a mod for it. Because you CAN.
-Sidequests. More and more varied. Game feels way less linear so far.
Wash:
-Story. Equally dumb on both sides so far.
D3 does it better:
-Combat. More responsive and visceral. Just better.
-Aesthetics. This shit is important. Call me shallow or whatever, but I fucking hate the cartoony TL graphics. Slorebucket, my female Embermage, looks like some sort of cross between a dumb shaman and a hot topic reject. Some of the dungeons are not too offensive, but overall TL2 is raping my eyeballs.
-Enemies. Variety, animations, AI, etc.
Overall, in the beginning it feels like TL2 does a lot of of the little things better but D3 gets the bigger picture better. I'm only level 12 or so, obviously that's subject to change. I was minorly annoyed because I hadn't set up a Runic account, so when I initially logged in and tried to do so, their site was getting hammered by everyone else trying to do the same thing I assume. I was on the verge of being pissed off... until I remembered that if this was D3, I wouldn't have been able to play at all, but because there's an offline mode in TL2 I was fine, just wouldn't be able to play with anyone initially which is ok. So, another thing they got right.
tl;dr: game is awesome, buy it and play it bitches.
