Diablo 3:Reaper of Souls has finally been released for current and last gen consoles. This iteration of the least favored addition to the Diablo series is something of a godsend for the series. As some of you may know, when Diablo 3 first came out in 2012, it was almost universally panned as the worst Diablo game in the series for its simplified gameplay, terrible story, and general disregard for what made its predecessors so compelling. But, like any Diablo fan, I picked up D3 on PC and got burned to the point that I couldn’t bring myself to play the game for a year.
Then, Diablo 3 came to consoles, and I decided to give it a shot and I was pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable the experience was, terrible story notwithstanding. At the time, I declared that the console version of Diablo 3 was the best version, and I still stand by that assessment of the original Diablo 3. Since then, however, the PC version received multiple updates and has righted almost every wrong it committed upon its initial release. And with the release of Reaper of Souls, Diablo 3 has transformed into an entirely different game.
With that being said, let’s take a look at Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls Ultimate Evil Edition.
The story of the original Diablo 3 made me angry, but I played through the game multiple times hoping that maybe this time I would appreciate the story for what it was. And you know what? I didn’t. I still hate the story of Diablo 3. Experiencing the story of Diablo 3 is basically the video game equivalent of drinking spoiled milk.
That being said, the story for Reaper of Souls is wonderful. Granted, it didn’t take much to be better than the story of the original game, but I think I might have beaten that horse quite enough. The story revolves around the noticeably absent Archangel of Wisdom that Tyrael, the former Archangel of Justice, took over for. It seems that he had gone crazy and hid himself away from the world, never to be heard from again. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. As Tyrael and the newly reformed Horadrim attempted to seal away the Black Soulstone that held the soul of the prime evil, Diablo, they were attacked by none other than Malthael, the former Archangel of Wisdom and new Archangel of Death. He steals the stone and this is where the adventure begins.
The game play for RoS is largely unchanged compared to that of vanilla Diablo 3. The main difference you’ll see is the addition of “Adventure Mode”, as well as the removal of the new game plus modes: Nightmare, Hell, and Inferno. In place of the new game plus modes is the ability to change the games difficulty at any time. Before you begin playing, you can set the game to one of ten different levels of increasing difficulty. The higher the difficulty setting, the more rewards you’ll reap: extra experience, extra gold, better loot, etc. On Master difficulty and above, Legendary drops are much more frequent compared to the lesser difficulties. Speaking of loot, gone are the days of abysmal loot drops after difficult battles. You are now fairly rewarded for your troubles. I will admit that there are still times when the drops are awful, but more often than not I would fight another elite creature that would drop something that overshadowed the terrible drops that came before it.
Reaper of Souls not only adds a new act to the existing four acts of the vanilla Diablo 3, but a new character class is also introduced. The Crusader is a shield toting melee class that appears to be made specifically for tanking. The Crusader’s primary stat is strength, the same as the Barbarian’s. Long time players of the Diablo franchise will see certain similarities between the Crusader and the Paladin from Diablo 2. The main difference between the two lies in how the Crusader channels holy attacks. Much like the other melee classes, the Crusader feels overpowered in the beginning, but as the difficulty ramps up, it becomes a bit more challenging to control the battles. I’m sure this is something you’ll learn after spending more time with the character and learning how to use the Crusader’s skills more effectively.
Since this is the latest edition of Diablo 3, it comes with all of the updates that were added to the PC version, leaving the two relatively similar. Updates for the PC version will continually come out first on PC, from there they will eventually make their way down to the consoles.
The music of Diablo 3 was largely negligible. I don’t even remember much of the music from the original game at all. Reaper of Souls, however, has an amazing soundtrack. Multiple times in the heat of battle I actually stopped and thought to myself “this music is pretty epic!” It fits the new environments very well and makes you feel like what you’re doing actually matters.
And then there’s ACT V, the new and final act of the game, which is by far the best part of the whole game. The act itself is about 3 or 4 hours long, but the story and environments completely blow the other 4 acts out of the water. The developers behind Diablo 3 anticipated this and added “Adventure Mode” to increase the replayability of all five acts. Adventure Mode is unlocked after beating the game on any difficulty and allows you to travel to any of the acts and collect bounties on randomly generated enemies. Each time you start up a game in Adventure Mode, you’ll be treated to different bounties to collect. All you need to do is warp to the target area, track down your bounty, and complete the objective. Thanks to Adventure Mode, there’s really no need to put your copy of Reaper of Souls on a shelf.
For those worried about hitting the level cap early but still enjoy the daily grind of leveling up, Reaper of Souls added “paragon” levels. It’s like leveling up, but you get to apply stats to specific aspects of your character manually. So for the players who miss the stat building of Diablo 2, you finally get to do it with paragon levels. Although you won’t have access to paragon levels until you hit level 70, the level cap.
I may not have recommended playing D3 on PC two years ago, and I may have deterred others from the original console release because of the story. But now, I think Diablo 3 is a worthy addition to anyone’s gaming library. Just be sure you get Reaper of Souls and not the original game.
