Rating: 9.5/10
Verdict: Despite the necessarily and decent tweaks, the leveling system still leaves a little to be desired. Outside of that though? With Loot 2.0, Act 5, the Crusader and other little additions, Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls is a drastic improvement on all fronts and has asserted itself as one of the best games in the Action RPG genre. Yes, I went there.
When Diablo 3 came out a couple years ago, it was the return of one of the most beloved franchises of all time. Players waited twelve years for the sequel to Diablo 2, though to be fair it seems like people just kept playing Diablo 2 up until the third came out anyway. But something stragic happened -- a lot of players didn't enjoy it that much. A lot of hyperbole was thrown out, as Diablo fans proclaimed it as the worst game ever, and the Battle.net forums were hard to read as people bitched and complained constantly, though I still read them anyway because I'm a boss and forums were my thing.
Diablo 3 was streamlined in a lot of ways, and lost some of the elements in Diablo 2 that fans enjoyed. I'm not a Diablo fanboy, I don't have those memories with Diablo 2 that a lot of gamers have, but even I can admit that it left a little to be desired. Not that it was a bad game, and I defended it at the time, but I will concede that it does some things better but some things worse. In retrospect I probably thought higher of it than I should have at the time, but that was because I put over a hundred hours into it with my brother and did enjoy my time.
Looking back at it now though, I'd still say Diablo 3 wasn't the disaster that a lot of fans declared it as... but Reaper of Souls stomps all over it. Seriously, the changes made with this expansion and the pre-expansion update are monumental.Very few games can make me put a hundred hours in and then rope me back in for what could be a hundred more at some point.
I am going to get on with the actual review now, but just know that I probably won't remember to tackle every single little detail of the expansion, but I am going to hit on the major points at the very least. This is mostly a full review, though I am well aware that items and whatnot may pop up that I have never seen before, but I felt confident that I could give it a final score regardless.
The first thing I have to talk about is Loot 2.0. Though it was released as a pre-expansion update that anybody can acquire, it is a massive upgrade. I don't think anybody could deny that a big selling point of Diablo and most ARPGs is the copious amounts of loot you will find during your adventure. With Diablo 3, legendary drops were few and far between so you'd have to replay Acts over and over again just to try to find a good weapon so you can proceed. Or you'd just get a bunch of crap you couldn't even use because while getting a lot of loot is great, getting quality loot is the most important thing.
With Loot 2.0, they dropped the "quantity over quality" mantra and reversed it. You may get less loot, allegedly, but you still get tons. Yet what you get is often better. Play it on the Normal difficulty and you'll find legendary items. I got more legendary items in the first few hours this time around than I did in my entire initial playthrough. I didn't even realize just how much the Auction House was holding everything back until it was gone -- now the loot flows freely.
On top of that, items can have different types of characteristics now. My brother has an item that summons a little guy that collects equipment for them and at a certain point has the chance of creating/dropping a legendary item. There's more variety to the loot, and you'll find better stuff more often.
They also changed how potions work. Gone are the multiple types, and now you only have one. Why any game has more than one type of health potion is beyond me, because it's often just confusing and unnecessary. You can also get different items for crafting.
Loot 2.0 is a victory on all fronts and it drastically alters how fun the game is. There is no more slogging without reward... there is only reward.
I expect three things from an ARPG: an in-depth leveling system (such as Path of Exile of Sacred 2), massive amounts of enemies to murder, and tons of loot to satisfy my greed. I already talked about Loot 2.0, there were always lots of enemies to murder, and now I'll talk about how you level up.
The leveling system in Diablo 3 was a significant point of contention with me, and probably a lot of others as well. I am all for change. I praised a game like Killzone: Shadow Fall for bucking the trend and going their own route with how level progression was handled, but sometimes -- and this is the case with Diablo 3 -- traveling your own path is detrimental to the experience as a whole.
You couldn't upgrade your stats at all, which even Diablo 2 had twelve years before it and most games of this ilk include as well. All you could do is shift around the runes and skills that the game gave you each level. While creating a great build is appealing in some aspects, just allow me to put points into my base attributes and give me a skill tree so I can unlock whatever skills I want. Or give me a system like Path of Exile. Allow me control over my character. I'm less forgiving of this in the ARPG than I am in other RPGs, because to me, the stories in these games are never great or memorable.
They can't fix this problem without a complete overhaul of the game, but they've done just about as much as they can to try.
The level cap was upped from 60 to 70, and with it came more skills and runes, along with another slot for passive skills. You still just mix and match your skills and runes until you';re the best ass-kicker that you can be, but with Paragon Levels at least you have some control once you reach 70. I know Paragon Levels existed before, but they've been revamped a bit to the point that there are no limits to how many there are. In a nice touch, you don't just level up your base attributes... there are four different categories with multiple statistics in each. This actually gives you a great amount of control, ultimately, but you still have to max level and deal with having all your skills and runes forced down your throat when the game wants you to. As a system, it is a little sub-par, but they made strides to fix it and I commend them for that.
Before I touch on the meat and potatoes of the expansion like the new Act, character class and the different modes, there are a few little aspects of the game I want to talk about -- the Mystic, the difficulty and the wave-based events.
The Mystic is a neat little addition to the game. She offers two different services, which are enchanting your items and Transmogrification. She allows you to re-roll certain magical properties of existing items, allowing you to ultimately gear your, er, gear more to your liking, while Transmogrification allows you to change how you look. It's a small thing, but I know cosmetics are important to some people because let's face it... looking like a badass is part of the appeal.
The enemies now level up with you, and the difficulty sliders just affect how hard the enemies are beyond that. I think this is a better system all around, so props again to Blizzard for that.
Events are a blast in this game because they drop a lot of stuff and you get a lot of experience. They've added events called "Cursed Chests" and "Cursed Shrines" which are essentially wave-based events where you try to kill all the waves in the time allotted. It can get chaotic and the benefits are worth it.
Now onto Act 5 and the other completely new features added within the Reaper of Souls expansion.
Act 5 is a blast. The basic story is that Death appears and you have to go kill Death. Like I said above, I actually don't think plot is that important in this sub-genre of the role-playing game, but it does a good enough job. I mean, you have to go bring death to Death. That sells itself.
There are a lot of events, lots of enemies to kill and loot to collect... but I really love the music especially. As I write this I'm listening to it, and I never listened to the initial Diablo 3 soundtrack because the music didn't overly stick out. However, the music seems to be perfectly placed in Act 5. When you're walking around in a dank, gloomy area, the music is appropriate and does a good job of making you feel that dread. Or when enemies appear, the music will get big and loud, making you actually want to fight. The music adds a lot to the atmosphere and mood of everything going on.
I never understood the complaints about how some of the other Acts looked, because I enjoyed traveling to different areas. I don't need every place I visit to be dark, full of decay, rotting trees, skeletons, zombies and other stereotypically evil beings. I know a lot of people did, but they can rest assured that Act 5 is dark. It is Diablo as they remember it.
After you complete Act 5, a whole new method to loot up is presented to you in the form of the Adventure Mode. While playing this particular mode, you do bounties, which are randomized missions that give you different objectives. You might have to kill a big nasty, or kill 100 enemies on a single map. There is variety, and when you win you obviously get equipment, but along with that you get blood shards -- which are used to buy specialty items -- and Rift Key Fragments.
Rift Key Fragments are where it's at, because they allow you to open Nephalem Rifts. The Rifts are where Adventure Mode shines, because you go in, fill up a bar by killing enemies and than a big boss appears. When the boss appears it is awe-inspiring, full of lots of colours flashing on screen. They actually feel like a big event. You kill them and get a ton of loot. I'm not sure if farming on a higher difficulty in the story mode is more beneficial than Rifts or not, but Rifts give a lot of cool stuff.
Adventure Mode offers a lot of replay value for those who don't just want to do the story.
The Crusader is the new character, and he specializes in defensive tactics while having a good array of offensive moves as well. I don't know if I'd use him if I were playing by myself, but as a support character he is pretty awesome. He has "Laws" that permanently offer him and his companions boosts in things like damage, he has a healing spell, a skill that allows him to revive if he dies (awesome!) but he can use skills like Bombardment that drop death on enemies. You could run him as basically a buffer, which I did for a bit, or you could transform him into a more deadly force. I play as a mixture.
Because of him, there are specialized crusader shields and a new weapon type -- flails. I've always been more of a giant sword type of guy, but it's cool that they added a new weapon type for him. All-in-all I think the Crusader was a worthwhile addition to the roster.
I love Reaper of Souls. I could just be high on the game since I've been playing it currently, but it brought me back into Diablo 3 in a big, bad way. With that said, because of the leveling system not being up to snuff, I give this game a "light" 9.5. What I mean by this is, I think the game deserves better than a 9, but I operate on a .5 system so I'll up it to a 9.5. It's basically everything I could want from the genre, except for that one nagging issue (which would have made me drop the rating more had they not tweaked it a bit), so if you were turned off by the initial release, you should give Reaper of Souls a go because Blizzard changed a hell of a lot.
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