(This review
requires readers to have an understanding of Diablo III to fully appreciate it)
Diablo
II was a game that I missed by a long shot.
When I finally got around to playing it, most of my friends had moved
on. However, I will not deny the joy I
had playing the game. Always wondering
what loot is going to drop next and, of course, how to spend those precious,
precious skill points. My time with
Diablo II was short lived as I soon moved on to other games. However, the urge
to keep playing and the drive to keep collecting loot kept creeping back in my
mind.
It
should go without saying then, once Diablo III was announced I was incredibly
excited! This time I would be ready when
all my bros were, so we would be playing together, hunting loot together, and
just having a good time. Then, Diablo
III was out and we all hopped in ready to get that loot! Unfortunately, we were wrong, so wrong. The mechanics behind Diablo III’s loot system
were so different from Diablo II’s it was unbelievable. Everything revolved around magic find and
using the Auction House system; which by the way involved real money
transactions as well as gold transactions.
Oh how the game got boring quick. I never even hit maximum level! I tried with several different characters but
it didn’t matter. It turns out it wasn’t
the characters that were boring, it was the loot system.
Since
everything revolved around having magic find on the gear being worn, it meant
that offense, defense, or healing was being given up in order to find better
gear. That being said, the new gear had
to be a huge upgrade to justify losing the magic find; unless it had magic find
on it as well, which seemed really rare.
To add insult to injury, if grinding this out wasn’t of interest, one
could simply hit the auction house and spend $20 bucks or so and be geared up
and ready for the hardest difficulty (Inferno at the time). The game felt as close to broke as possible
and I don’t believe I’m the only one who felt this way. My friends abandoned the game pretty quickly
as well; they even hit max level and it still didn’t matter.
Blizzard
knew they messed up, even apologizing at Blizzcon 2014, saying publicly that
they ruined the game. They also promised
to fix their game and make it what we all wanted, a bigger, better, Diablo
II. I can happily say that they
delivered on this promise and brought to the table a game worthy of being
Diablo II’s successor. The only problem
with it was we had to wait for the expansion, Reaper of Souls, before the game
became what we all wanted.
The fact that I am playing Reaper of
Souls as I write this review should help to describe how I feel about this
game. It is a blast to play, whether you
find legendary items or not, the game does a great job of always making you
feel like you are progressing. To start
off, let us talk about the changes that were made from Diablo III to Reaper of
Souls. The best, I repeat, the best
change to Reaper of Souls (referred to as RoS from now on) is the removal of
the auction house. This takes brings the
game back to the best part of Diablo, FINDING (not buying!) gear! The most exciting part of Diablo III is
seeing the orange-yellow (or green if a set piece) light that reaches to the
sky when a legendary item drops.
Figure 1: Legendary Glow
This
brings us to another great change, Loot 2.0.
With the Loot 2.0 update the magic find system has been completely
overhauled. There is still magic find in
the game. Although, it isn’t nearly as important as it used to be. This is primarily due to the drop system
being completely redefined, which in turn, made the legendary items drop at a
steadier rate than before. Magic find
still has value, though players can now focus more on increasing their
characters effectiveness and play on higher difficulties without sacrificing
their ability to find better gear; which is what this game is all about! Another change is the legendary items
themselves, a lot of new items have been added to the game that can drastically
change how you play the game. These were
the two big changes to make Diablo III actually fun to play, which was a
must. Now we can move on to the new
content brought about by RoS.
To begin with, the classes have all
been overhauled. Commonly used and
rarely used abilities were almost completely redone.
This was probably to force players to try different builds and make the
gameplay feel fresh. While I initially
found myself discouraged to use my Barbarian after this change, I gave it a
shot and started messing with the skills and passive skills I had active on him
and before long I was enjoying my playtime with him. Throughout the majority of my Diablo playtime
I have played as a Demon Hunter. I
didn’t have a hard time finding a new build that suited my play style on that
character, though that could be due to my experience with it being a lot
greater. As I mentioned in the previous
paragraph the gear that is worn will affect the builds of all players. This is a great way to keep the game fresh
because just when someone might be getting bored with their character, they
could find one piece of gear that will have them respec which can lead to
drastic play-style changes. In my personal experience, since I started RoS, I
have changed my Demon Hunter’s build at least 10 times since starting the
expansion and expect to continue to change it.
For those familiar with the paragon
leveling system from Diablo III, it has been refined in which, I believe is an
upgrade to what was around before. There
are now 4 categories: Offense, Defense, Core, and Utility. Each with 4 options to choose from to put a
paragon point into. There is no limit to
how many paragon levels a player can get but most of the options have a limited
point allocation. For example, a Demon
Hunter can put 50 points into Maximum Hatred which at max points will give the
demon hunter 25 more Hatred (2 points per 1 Hatred). The two options that can receive unlimited
points are Vitality and the primary attribute for the character class; example,
Dexterity for Demon Hunter and Monk. The
paragon system provides that sense of always moving forward. Along with a refined paragon system pools of
reflection have been added to the game.
They award bonus experience equal to a certain amount of experience
needed for the next paragon level, as well as 25% increased experience per
kill. The bonus experience can be stacked;
however, dying will cancel this bonus.
The player will not lose the experience points already obtained.
Professions
received an upgrade as well. New gems
are available as well as new blacksmith plans including several legendary
plans. There is a new profession called
Enchanting which will be incredibly important for casual and hardcore players
alike. With enchanting, any item can
have a single stat on it changed out for a limited option of other stats. Dexterity can be replaced with strength,
intelligence, vitality, etc. Certain
skill boosts can be traded out as well.
It is a gambling system so expect to try multiple times for the perfect
enchantment and expect to pay a lot of gold and materials (especially for
legendary items). Transmogrification is
a nice addition to the game. Letting
players customize the appearance of their character for only the cost of gold
(so far 50,000 gold is the maximum required).
The
difficulty system has been tweaked and works, in my opinion, better than the original
system. The difficulty can be changed on
the fly now too, without the need to exit the game. Instead of Normal, Hard, Nightmare, and
Inferno, the new system has Normal, Hard, Expert, Master, and six (6); that’s
right six (6), Torment difficulties. Each difficulty increase offers more gold
per kill and experience points. When
Torment difficulty is reached, new legendary items become available and more
chances at legendary drops become available.
There is no requirement to beat the game before opening a new difficulty,
except Torment. The game must be
completed once before that option is available.
Last but certainly not least in importance
is the addition of ACT V, Adventure Mode.
Probably the meat of the expansion comes from these new additions. Everything else compliments and enhances the
game but an expansion is about new content and ACT V and Adventure Mode IS
Diablo III RoS’s new content. ACT V
revolves around Malthael (the Angel of Death) stealing the Black Soulstone and
using it for; I won’t spoil it so I will not say anymore. Needless to say, it is time for the Nephalem
to track down and stop Malthael. Act V
takes place in the new area Westmarch, which presents a gloomier tone than the
other Acts from Diablo III. Despite
being gloomier, the color palate used is still impressive; just used in a
different manner. Act V does a great job
of switching up the environment when the current one becomes stale. The enemies are varied and all have different
strengths that must be learned in order to deal with them properly. Cursed Chest events have been added to all
acts and Adventure Mode as well. These
events involve dispatching enemies under a time limit in order to earn the
rewards held within the chest. This is a
nice addition and they are always worth trying to complete. Act V does leave
the door open for future expansions so it will be interesting to see what comes
next. I was annoyed with the fact that
the amazing cinematic scenes that blizzard is known for are almost unheard of
in RoS. The only one I can recall is the
one at the beginning of Act V.
Adventure
mode is the real star of RoS, providing endless replay value. There are two things in adventure mode,
Bounties and Nephalem Rifts. Bounties
range from killing bosses or rare monsters, to clearing random dungeons or
completing quests from the act in which the bounties are in. Nephalem Rifts are opened after obtaining 5
rift keystone fragments which are awarded for completing bounties. Within the rifts players are required to kill
a set number of enemies in order to spawn the rift boss. I have been told, yet have not read myself,
that the legendary item drop rate is higher within rifts. Together bounties and rifts make up Adventure
Mode entirely. I have found myself
playing nothing but adventure mode since I beat Act V. While there are reasons to replay the
campaign, Adventure Mode is the fastest way to rake in the legendary items, and
to gear up your character the quickest.
Reaper
of Souls brings Diablo III back to what makes these games so great, find better
loot! I never feel like I am wasting
time playing the game because there is always something beneficial coming from
playing, whether it is leveling up, obtaining gold (which is more important
than ever), or actually finding legendary items. The only problem I have with Reaper of Souls
is that most of the improvements with the game SHOULD have been standard when
Diablo III first came out. RoS is my go
to PC game right now. If I am on a
computer odds are I am playing Diablo III.
Now if you will excuse me, I have a rift to complete.
Score 9.3 / 10
Experience
with Reaper of Souls: Approximately 40 hours of playing Reaper of Souls, with
most of the time spent on Adventure Mode and Torment I difficulty playing with
up to as many as 4 people. The majority
of my time playing was spent on a Demon Hunter or Barbarian.
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