Zenoth said:
snip from review cons:
Hirelings
Loot variety
Town portal
Quests
Crafting
Agree mostly with your review and I just had some additional remarks to make on some of your cons.
Hirelings: I played a wizard through normal and moved on to NM at level 31. I wanted to see how I would do solo in NM, so I figured the Templar would be a great choice as a meat shield. Boy did it suck realizing how nearly useless he is in that regard. So far I've managed just fine as a wizard solo, but it is not fun having to run away all the time because you'll get smashed in 2-3 hits and there's only so much dps and crowd control you can dish out. A quick champion or elite mob pack is especially deadly.
Loot variety: yeah, the item mods were unfortunately (along with the skill system) one of the last systems of the game to be finalized. And it shows. Even if you were to find a legendary, it would have the same type of stats you get on non legendary items. However, in the context of the rest of the game, such as the skill system they have, it may not have really mattered if item mods were more interesting. We'll just have to see how much replayability we get towards end game.
Town portal: I'm not sure what you mean by "it closes as soon as you use it". When you go to town via the tp, there's a portal open in town waiting for you to walk back through to return to the casting spot. Perhaps you meant "you immediately are forced back to town upon casting". But yeah, the reason for that and for the cast time is to eliminate cheesy escape tactics that the D2 tp allowed.
Quests: well, you don't lose a lot of progress, because you do the same when returning to NM/etc...choose the last quest you were on. But yes, it also annoys me how integrated the story quests are to the game. That has its own pros and cons, but the lack of freedom bothers me.
Crafting: you do have to put effort into making those items though. You either go back to town and sell your blues for gold that can be used for lots of stuff, or break them into mats with some % chance at getting mats for rare/etc crafts. Blizz was quoted that it's supposed to be an inefficient way to turn unwanted drops into another chance at something useful, which it is. It's kind of a gambling replacement. Though the ability to guarantee a rare might be a little much, idk.