Review: Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Ultimate Evil Edition

Diablo III has seen a number of milestones since it’s initial release almost two and a half years ago. Back then, it was called out for being significantly different to previous games in the series (as a result of an attempt by Blizzard to make the new title more accessible to new players), before receiving some significant patching that — some Diablo fans say — has resulted in an entirely different game. This occurred with the release of the “Reaper of Souls” expansion earlier this year, which was heralded as a true return to form for the series. You can read our reviews of Diablo III and “Reaper of Souls” for more information if you don’t know much about the games, as there is a lot of detail that I don’t want to retread.

We didn’t review the console releases, though, until now.  The release of the original Diablo III on Xbox 360 and PS3 occurred around 2 years ago — and were simply console ports of the core experience. Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Ultimate Evil Edition (referred to as Diablo III: RoS from here on out) is exactly what the name implies – the ultimate version of the game. Soon to be released for Xbox One and PS4, it contains all of the content and patches that have been released over the intervening years — minus the contentious Auction House, of course, which allowed players to sell their high level loot, and was criticised for having an adverse effect on what many would claim to be the core of the game: loot chasing.

Running smoothly at 1080p and 60fps on both Xbox One and PS4 — we waited for the Xbox One patch to go live before running this review — Diablo III: RoS looks every bit as charming as it does on a high-end PC, but I guess that’s not saying much for a 2-year-old game. It’s very functional, but I did find there were a lot of compression artifacts in cutscenes (I played on Xbox One). The story, difficulty, modes, and everything in between are all exactly the same as what has come before, but the million-dollar question remains: how does a keyboard-and-mouse driven RPG play out on console?

Extremely well, it turns out. There have clearly been a number of changes made to allow for the switch to console. The GUI has been reconfigured for big-screen TVs and couch co-op — not to mention the novel new way to manage multiple skills — and let me tell you, couch co-op is a reason in itself to go out and buy this game. More than that, the action has been sped up, and there are some interesting new inclusions that I’m guessing were added in order to appeal to a more arcade-focused console crowd.

For example, given that players now directly control their character instead of pointing and clicking; movement is assigned to the left stick, skills to the face and shoulder buttons, and a new dodge move is mapped to the right stick. Quick equip buttons are assigned to the d-pad, and allow players to quickly equip new loot on the fly, although I still found it more satisfying to equip items in the inventory screen.

More than that, there are some new multipliers that have been added — based on the number of enemies caught in traps, the number of items destroyed, or the number of enemies defeated within a certain time frame — it’s essentially a kill multiplier. I did find that this drove urgency within smaller-scale battles, and overall added to my enjoyment of the game.

Story-wise, the game is packed to the brim with content. There are five acts in the Diablo III: RoS core game experience, each act taking up to 5 hours to complete, depending on how much you explore. On first completing all five acts, an Adventure Mode unlocks, and allows players to tackle Bounty Quests outside of the story – this is very useful for levelling new character builds without having to play through the main storyline, or simply for some quick loot grabs. There’s also a hardcore mode, with some tasty permadeath, if that’s your thing, Nephalem Rifts for some loot-chasing boss fights, and a fairly in-depth skill levelling system, even if it is still missing a complex character-levelling system — not a major loss on my part. All told, there is a great deal of adventuring to be had, either alone, with a friend on the couch, or a friend over the intertubes…

Did I mention it was blisteringly fun? Watching your chosen character develop from an under-powered weed to a highly polished, super powerful behemoth is highly enjoyable, and finding out about that new item you’ve just collected is just as much (if not more) fun than ever – and there’s so much loot to find that players will find it impossible to hoard.

What it all boils down to is this: if you’ve not yet played Diablo III in any of its prior versions, now is the perfect time to grab it. And even if you have played it, Diablo 3 :RoS is such a good game, and so well implemented on current-gen consoles that it can’t hurt to get back in there and destroy some demons.

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