This game is pretty addicting when it comes to numbers, loot and theory/build crafting. However, that's completely overshadowed by bad game design and excessive microtransactions.
Early game, you have more leeway with testing out builds. Resetting skills and attributes are free and powerful satanic and mythic gear is easy to come by. These Items are easily upgradable and not too much of a commitment if you do spend upgrade materials on them due to how cheap and easy they are to obtain, and it's at this point where the game heavily encourages you to test everything out and see what fits and what doesn't. This all changes when you reach the endgame.
By the endgame you'll need lots of upgrade materials to maximize your damage output. These upgrades can also brick/destroy your extremely rare and endgame gear. Once this happens, the only way to fix your gear is to use another item specifically made to fix the gear you just broke by trying to upgrade it, all of which are rare and expensive.
The loot in this game is rare, and can be "fixed" with a stat called Magic Find, which is fine but there is such a thing as "too rare" to the point where even after a couple of hundred hours, you still wont get an angelic item with high magic find and it is heavily encouraged to just buy everything near the beginning of the season if you're playing online instead of outright grinding angelics and heroics.
Frame optimization isn't the greatest for this game. The builds in this game can get crazy, but the game cant handle most of them and you will certainly feel the frame drops especially on multiplayer.
Gold in season 9 was extremely inconsistent, with vendors being expensive and gold drops being scarce. The most reliable way to earn gold was to sell via market place or selling gear, and if you're going singleplayer and you don't have equipment specifically made for dropping gold, then good luck.
The worst outlier of this game is the microtransactions. EVERYTHING needs to be bought. You need more inventory space? Fork up 4 dollars. Need some stash space? Another 4 dollars. Want a tab solely dedicated to materials and socketables? 5 dollars each. Wanna test out a build with a different Incarnation tree? 2 dollars. There's another tab in the stash tab called "Unique" which you have to pay 13 DOLLARS JUST TO USE. Classes also cost money, which, tbf, I WOULD give some benefit of the doubt to the extra classes being monetized, but those can range up to 10$ without any additional content, which is MORE THAN THE GAME ITSELF. Some classes also feel more broken than others, which then get nerfed the following season.
TLDR: Game design is mediocre. Limited freedom to build/theory craft in endgame. You're best off looking up Youtube guides to avoid making expensive mistakes. Super duper rare items that you'll never get even after 100 hours. Excessive microtransactions, frame drops, broken classes that you pay for tend to get nerfed the next season, easy to brick/destroy rare gear, game is heavily auction house dependent.
This game does NOT respect your time AT ALL.
