BlizzCon has a new demo of Diablo 3, complete with the newly announced Monk class – which, I believe GamesCom didn’t get. Take that Kichigai!

The character selection screen has the familiar campfire with the heroes standing around it. The male/female options are a nice addition (especially if you like big, barbarian women), but at this time, there’s no female monk (I wanted to see if they would be bald or have some sort of Joan of Arc hairstyle)

I played through twice, once with the monk and once with the wizard.

The game is still simple as hell to play, you can get pretty far just left or right click spamming your attacks on things. Our demo was set up with a close range melee attack on the left click, and a long range/AE attack on the right. Buffs and other spells/moves were hotkeyed to 1,2 and 3.

The demo starts in a desert, with your first quest being to navigate your way through it. A desert sounds pretty boring for a demo meant to show off the game, but it’s filled with impressive visuals like sand effects and dust clouds blowing all over the place.

Be prepared to get attacked by a lot of stuff in Diablo 3. I was constantly attacked by swarms of demons, as well as the usual desert fodder – scorpions, snakes etc. Fortunately, hp/mana recovers fast and both classes had tools for dealing with crowds.

The monk’s Seven-Sided Strike was particularly cool. If you’ve played Street Fighter 4, it looks like Gen’s Ultra. The monk flashes forward and strikes the targets from all sides. Stuff dies before you’ve finished clicking the button. Awesome.

Along the way there were a bunch of optional side quests to do, from rescuing a girl tied to a stake and about to be sacrificed by cultists, to hunting down some guy and bringing his head back as proof.

One thing to note is that the Wizard felt a bit slow in this build. The magic missile attack was really sluggish, and a few enemies would just walk out of its path, making it miss completely. When I asked about this, I was told the game allows you to customize characters according to your playstyle. For example, if you want a faster wizard, you can use runes to make your magic missile faster, or have more of them, or do more damage. It’s up to you.

The interface has been simplified. Taking a cue from WoW, mousing over an item you just picked up will also bring up your currently equipped item side by side so you can compare the two.

When I got out of the desert, I found myself in some ruinous dungeon, complete with bottomless pits. It felt like a classic Diablo dungeon crawl, with cramped environments and lots of monsters. The music and atmosphere was really good too.

Overall, the game keeps the same winning formula from the first two games – but it just does everything better. Lots of nice, small improvements have been made. For example, the user interface is simpler and cleaner and graphics look better (mobs exploding under the monk’s exploding palm attack just look amazing).

Which leads me to my last point, Diablo 3 has a huge ‘wow factor’. I lost track of the amount of times I said ‘Oh my god!’. From swarms of mobs descending on you, to watching a guy’s head pop off when you beat him enough times, to the gigantic sand tornado that rolled in and one shot me.

Honestly, there was nothing I didn’t like.