When Diablo III was released in 2012, it quickly went from one of my most anticipated games that I wanted to play to my biggest disappointment for that year. The core characteristics that made Diablo fun were mostly gone; the loot system became a sideshow and the auction house took centre stage. Why adventure through dungeons looking for amazing gear when you could press the escape button and search the online auction house for equipment that is far more superior to anything you’d be able to find along your travels. It broke the game and stopped it from being enjoyable. Blizzard listened to the complaints from the community and a number of big changes have been implemented to coincide with the release of the first expansion for Diablo III, Reaper of Souls.
Taking place after the events of Diablo III, Act 5 sees the Angel of Death, Malthael stealing the Black Soulstone that currently houses Diablo, his brothers and the other Lesser Evils, to use its power for harm against the world. As usual your hero will be tasked with the impossible; by journeying across multiple locations to stop the big bad while you click, click, click, and click. As you make your way through the new Act you’ll realise that they have added a stack of side content. These events were in the original game but they’ve really packed in a lot more of them this time. They’re great because they give you a break from just running around the map squashing monsters and allow you to engage in another task – squashing more monsters, but at the same time helping to flesh out the story and world they’ve put together.
Previously once you had completed the main story in Diablo III, you really only had the choice of taking your character and starting again… but on a different difficulty. With Reaper of Souls, a brand new addition to the expansion is called Adventure mode. This unlocks the entire Diablo III map and allows you to travel to any of its waypoints in order to complete any bounty and earn rewards for the task. If you’re the type of person that wants to just replay through the story and ramp up the newly modified difficulty levels, then you can still do that. With the difficulty now being scaled based on your characters level, you can jump into any area of the game and have it feel satisfyingly challenging.
Not only have characters themselves have had some tweaks made in their skills and passives, but the attributes and the way they are presented to the player have been modified, including changes to the core stats; now being damage, toughness and healing. A new hero has been added into the mix called the Crusader, who plays similar to the Paladin from Diablo II – a mid-ranged hero that relies on melee and shields to dispose of the enemies.
But the most noticeable change is the reworking of the item drop system, now labelled “Loot 2.0”. A lot of the gear you’ll find is mostly attributed towards the primary stats of your character, which means you aren’t swamped with a load of stuff you can’t use. And with Blizzard making the other big revamp in the gear system, which is removing the online auction house, you’ll find yourself discovering a lot more of the rare classed items to equip onto your hero. The only complaint I have throughout the dozens of hours I put into the game over the last few weeks is there isn’t an easy way to compare gear that your follows have, so it makes it a little tricky to change out their item slots.
Diablo III was a bit of a miss, but Blizzard has spent time refining and streamlining just about every aspect of the game. Along with a very fulfilling new Act, updated loot system, and the addition of Adventure mode, Blizzard continues to show that when it comes to delivering content to their games they are still one of the best. Reaper of Souls is fantastic and is a must have for Diablo fans.
