Diablo, it’s the godfather of point & click loot-fests
and it’s making its way to PS4 & Xbox One in the form of Blizzard
Entertainment’s ‘Diablo 3: Reaper of
Souls – Ultimate Evil Edition’. Having been released on PC in early 2012
& last gen consoles in late 2013, ‘Diablo
3’ was okay but it had some glaring problems and fans of the previous two
instalments didn’t find the same appeal. Luckily, the ‘Reaper of Souls’ expansion fixed the majority of the major issues
found in the base game and added a wealth of new content for players to enjoy. The
‘Ultimate Evil Edition’ packs all of
that content together and then some for current gen & last gen.
There’s a fair bit of Diablo lore, much like ‘World of Warcraft’. All of which is
quiet confusing & long winded but bear with me, I won’t go through much.
All there is to really know is that there were three Prime Evils, Mephisto –
the Lord of Hatred, Baal – Lord of Destruction & Diablo – Lord of Terror.
They were obviously trying to do some pretty awful things but the player
stopped in the previous games. Through some convoluted events, the five Great
Evils (Mephisto, Baal, Diablo, Andariel and Duriel) were combined into the one
Prime Evil – Diablo who had engineered a scheme to finally defeat the High
Heavens. It’s the player’s job, along with a handful of supporting characters,
to put a stop to the Prime Evil’s plan.
From the get go players are greeted with an absolutely
astounding amount of visual polish. Environments range from forests full of
vegetation & castle crypts to the gracious High Heavens & vast desert
sands. Enemies are devilishly gruesome with all sorts of ghouls, monsters &
demons crawling out the woodwork. Models, textures and sound are refined well
past the quality of its PC counterpart. Running at 1080p and aiming for a slick
60 frames per second, the ‘Ultimate Evil
Edition’ rarely dips below its intended specs which leads me to the
conclusion that this would considered as the superior version of the Diablo 3
console experiences. Character design is a huge focus for Blizzard when it
comes to all of their games and Diablo is no exception. Players have the option
to choose from six classes:
· - The Barbarian
· - The Demon Hunter
· - The Monk
· - The Witch Doctor
· - The Wizard
· - The Crusader
These classes allow for plenty of strategy which is all
tailored to different play styles. It doesn’t matter what your play style is,
there’s a class for every type of player. Staying back & peppering enemies
from afar, the Demon Hunter. Charging in & knocking back enemies, the
Barbarian. Each class looks distinct
from one another through use of various sizes, skills and armour designs; it’s
hard to get them confused with one another although players can lose track of
themselves in some of the bright & colourful onscreen visuals. The ‘Reaper of Souls’ expansion brings the Crusader
class into the fray. A mid to close range melee tank often compared to the
Paladin class from ‘Diablo 2’. It’s
the class that fuses defence & support together through its use of healing
and stun abilities.
Gameplay involves players activating abilities which are
mapped almost every button on the Dualshock 4. Coming into the ‘Ultimate Evil Edition’ without playing
the PS3 version and only the PC at launch, I was quite sceptical as to how the
game would feel using a controller. Standard action RPGs on the PC use the
mouse for targeting & movement and the keyboard for character abilities.
Early gameplay videos and thoughts led me to believe that it might be a watered
down twin-stick-shooter version of its PC predecessor. I could not have been
proven more wrong. The controls have been tweeked specifically with a
controller in mind, making console players feel right at home. In addition to
that, Blizzard have added a dodge mechanic into the game, this is mapped to the
right analogy stick. This new feature is a wonderful addition and makes
navigation & combat much more fluid.
Balance, detail, quality & loot are the key pillars to
any successful action RPG. They are what gamers have come to expect from this
genre and ‘Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls -
Ultimate Evil Edition’ just oozes
quality. Other games such as ‘Torchlight’
(PC), ‘Divinity: Original Sin’ (PC)
and ‘Marvel Heroes’ (PC) are worthy attempts
at recreating the life-stealing addiction that previous Diablo instalments had but they didn’t quiet capture the essence
in terms of progression, publicity & that steady feed of loot that players
crave.
‘Diablo 3’, at the
time of its PC release, didn’t seem to live up to the standard set by previous
games. Having to always be connected online, a completely useless loot system,
an online auction house and of course the infamous ‘Error 37’ left a bad taste
in player’s mouths as they waited for their issues to be fixed. One by one
these issues slowly started to disappear and about two years after release, the
‘Reaper of Souls’ expansion pack was
released with a bunch of new and completely revised systems, not to mention the
addition of Act V. Everything from paragon levels and rebalanced character classes
to the new features like adventure mode, the apprentice system & Nephalem Rifts.
But the big one, the one that made the biggest splash was the revamp of the
loot drop system in the form of ‘Loot 2.0’
‘Loot 2.0’ overhauled the reward system in a big way.
Legendary items in ‘Loot 2.0’ dropped in much smaller quantities but at an increased
quality meaning players may not have multiple legendary items dropping at their
feet every five minutes (most of which wouldn’t even apply to the players
current class) but instead players would lose hours waiting for the next
jaw-dropping legendary item to appear. Better yet, ‘Loot 2.0’ uses a feature
called ‘Smart Drops’ where the item that a player picks up will have random
attributes that are generated specifically with that class in mind. And with
that, the loot addiction was back and players who had put ‘Diablo 3’ down found themselves picking it up again.
The next new feature is the Apprentice Mode. This new system
makes it easier for new players to play with friends who have a higher level
character than they do. For instance, I hadn’t played Diablo 3 on PS3 so I
wasn’t able to transfer a character between consoles but my friend had. Once I
booted the Ultimate Evil Edition up and jumped into his game with my level 0
crusader and his level 70 barbarian, my gear and stats were altered to the point
that I could fight alongside my friend rather than be slaughtered by a standard
enemy. It’s an incredibly thoughtful idea that allows friends to play together
no matter what level they are. That being said, the amount of experience I was
earning was altered in a different way.
I found myself earning ridiculous amounts of experience
while playing in my friend’s game. I’m talking upwards of one or two levels
every five to ten minutes of play. This isn’t technically a ‘bad’ thing, I felt
it took away some of the achievement of earning a level by myself as I wasn’t
doing much of the slaying but at the same time it give players that extra boost
to help them it ‘end game’ content a little faster.
Paragon levels allow the players to further increase their
stats through points which are attributed to specific skill trees, of which
there are four tabs, and within those are another four tabs.
·
Core
o
Main Attribute
o
Vitality
o
Movement Speed
o
Maximum Resource
·
Offense
o
Attack Speed
o
Cooldown Reduction
o
Critical Hit Chance
o
Critical Hit Damage
·
Defense
o
Maximum
Life
o
Maximum Armour
o
Resistance to All Elements
o
Life Regeneration
·
Utility
o
Area Damage
o
Resource Cost Reduction
o
Life on Hit
o
Gold Find
Upon earning a paragon level, the player is granted a new paragon
point. These points alternate between the four tabs as to not allow the stacking
of one specific stat. Each point increases the chosen stat by a small
percentage. These increases may not seem to be much in the beginning but they
are vital for playing through tougher Nephalem Rifts. The ‘Ultimate Evil Edition’ removes the cap from paragon levels,
allowing players to infinitely progress & improve their characters.
As I mentioned previously, a slew of improvements and
features were added in the ‘Reaper of
Souls’ expansion and subsequently, the ‘Ultimate
Evil Edition’ as well. Act V sees players learning of Malthael’s plan not
long after defeating Diablo. The former Archangel of Wisdom, now the Angel of
Death, and his forces descend upon Westmarch in hopes of eradicating humanity
from existence. The player, with the assistance of Tyrael, must put a stop to Malthael’s
plan and save the world once again. This chapter houses a much darker, gothic
feel than the rest of the campaign. Players traverse city streets in deep blue
and black tones rather than the more vibrant desert & forest colour schemes.
A new feature exclusive to the ‘Ultimate Evil Edition’ is the nemesis system. When a player is
killed, the creature that killed them has a chance to morph into a ‘nemesis’. A
nemesis is a new type of boss enemy that jumps to the game of a random person
on the dead player’s friends list. A nemesis is a much harder to kill and often
spawns shadows of the heroes it’s slain. If that friend managers to kill the
nemesis, they are rewarded with experience and gold as well as a legendary gift
for their dead friend. If the player is unsuccessful in killing the nemesis, it
then jumps to another random person from that player’s friends list and so on.
The nemesis will continue to jump through player’s friends list until it has
been slain or unless it slays a certain amount of players.
With the expansion comes the addition of Adventure Mode.
Adventure Mode grants the ability for players to jump between acts and
waypoints as they please to kill endless amounts of enemies & complete
bounties. Bounties are randomized objectives such as ‘kill this boss’, ‘clear
this dungeon’, ‘complete this event’ or ‘kill this unique enemy’. Upon
finishing a bounty, the player’s rewarded with gold, experience, blood shards
and keystone fragments. Blood shards are a form of currency new to ‘Reaper of Souls’ which allow the player
to purchase items from a special merchant for a random piece of loot. Obtaining
five keystone fragments on the other hand, opens a Nephalem Rift which is a
randomized dungeon which players need to defeat 100% of the enemies in order to
summon the Rift Guardian. Rift Guardians are much tougher than other bosses and
drop a ton of loot. I believe this is where the game will get its longevity. I
know that I will definitely be coming back to delve deeper into this game mode…
That is, unless ‘Destiny’ consumes my
spare time.
‘Diablo 3’ has a
player vs player (PVP) multiplayer mode as well although it’s nothing to write
home about. It’s not exclusive to any version of ‘Diablo 3’; it was introduced through a patch in the form of a ‘free
for all’ arena. This mode is simply called ‘brawling’ because that’s literally
all it is. There is no leaderboard, no objective & no loot for performing
well. Nothing special, right? Blizzard ultimately scrapped the initial PVP
modes upon realising that they didn’t have the required depth to make them
interesting enough.
‘Diablo 3: Reaper of
Souls – Ultimate Evil Edition’ takes what Blizzard Entertainment does best,
builds upon that & tailors the experience for consoles. Boasting the
features & updates from the ‘Reaper
of Souls’ expansion as we as some new ones, the ‘Ultimate Evil Edition’ is a triumph in bringing a PC franchise to
the wider console audience.
‘Diablo 3: Reaper of
Souls – Ultimate Evil Edition’ gets 9.5 ‘Muted Microphones’ /10
+ Oozes Polish
+Translates great to a Console
+ ‘Phat’ Loot
- Easily Exploited Levelling
Remember, if you liked my review and you want to see more,
follow me on Twitter @DylanPerrett or subscribe to my YouTube channel, The
Quiet Gamer’ for some fun and sometimes inappropriate Let’s Play videos.
