Diablo 3 Reaper Of Souls Ultimate Evil Edition: What I Think

What's going on guys, it's Jbeast and I'm back with another game review! This time, I'll be discussing Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls on consoles and also whether it's better than the PC version. So without further ado, let's get to the review!

Reviewed On Xbox 360

What I think...

Of The Campaign

To be honest, Diablo 3's campaign is not exactly what I would call "good". I found it really tedious to play and totally rushed through it to get to the end, because I just didn't enjoy it all that much. 

Blizzard did attempt to put a rich and detailed story into Diablo 3, but it just falls really flat in pretty much every single way I can imagine. There is some effort put in to help you "bond" with the characters, but I just didn't find myself caring all that much overall. The game also includes books that you can pick up off the ground and read in the character menu or listen to in audio form, and background lore is provided whenever you encounter a new enemy or boss, so you always know a little bit about what you're slaughtering in the game. This is greatly appreciated, but I found myself skipping over the lore surrounding the enemies and characters because I didn't feel like reading all of them (I'm lazy, I know). 

The story basically boils down to "hell bad, heaven good" as Smosh Games put it in their honest trailer. In case you haven't seen it before, go check it out! There were also hardly any twists or turns in the plot, and the premise is basically the same for all five acts- someone tells you about some demon or whatever that's killing people and causing lots of destruction, and then you cut through thousands of their minions until you reach them, at which point you just kill them and then you win! Bottom line, the story is pretty lackluster and uninteresting and you most likely won't give a crap what happens.

As for the actual gameplay, if I don't even know very well what the purpose of what I'm doing is, I'm not gonna want to do it very much. The missions feel boring and repetitive, and it doesn't help that I don't know the significance of the task I've undertaken. By the end of Act 4 and 5, I was just rushing through the game to be done and get on to Adventure Mode, the real meat and potatoes of Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls. By the way, Act 5 that comes with the expansion and is marketed as the main reason to buy it is still really boring and unfortunately more of the same.

What I think...

Of The Gameplay

When you start your D3 adventure, it prompts you to create a character. There are six classes to choose from in RoS: Barbarian, Crusader, Demon Hunter, Wizard, Witch Doctor and Monk. Each has different abilities that will change how you will play the game. 

Diablo 3's gameplay is super simple. You just mash the buttons on your controller until all the enemies are dead. It probably sounds totally stupid, but you won't be saying that when you pick up the game and play. If you want an even greater challenge in the game, then when you're building your character you can enable hardcore mode, where when you die you are gone permanently and lose all current progress. Character development was already quite good in Diablo 3, but RoS adds a whole new level of customization through passive skills that provide a unique benefit such as increasing the number of sentry guns you can deploy or your maximum resources. A new class has also been added in RoS called the Crusader, which is a holy warrior that uses their shield and magical weapons to slay the minions of hell. I personally have got a Demon Hunter class to around level 50, but I prefer the Crusader for it's extreme damage at close range and toughness because of it's shield blocking. On the PC, a system called Paragon Leveling was added in patch 1.0.4, but on consoles it was first seen in RoS Ultimate Evil Edition. Basically, once you reach level 70 (the level cap has been raised in RoS from 60 to 70), you then gain paragon levels. For every paragon level that you gain, you can put a point into any attribute, such as increasing your intelligence or attack speed. In fact, the #1 diablo 3 player in the world, Nokieka, has reached paragon level 1002 in Hardcore mode! Yes, you heard that right. IN HARDCORE. 

There are also other items that enemies drop like gems, which can be inserted into a weapon or piece of armor that has open slots if you have unlocked the appraiser in the campaign. There are five different types of gems: diamonds, rubies, emeralds, amethysts, and topazes. Each gives you a different bonus that are varied and useful in different items depending on what you need. The appraiser can also combine weaker gems into stronger gems which have a much more substantial effect. 

The enemies that you'll fight in the campaign are quite varied, from classic demons to massive bulls to even evil trees! Sometimes there will also be enemies with a blue or yellow hue around them, which signifies that they are special enemies. These enemies are not only more powerful, but they also have a random assortment of abilities, such as teleporting, deploying poison traps, or forming stone walls around you to inhibit movement.

Of course, there's also the loot. The stuff that makes the game worth playing. When you kill enemies or open chests, pieces of loot will come out, like armor, weapons, or sometimes gems. They can also be built and repaired by the artisan in town.

What I think...

Of Adventure Mode

In my opinion, Adventure Mode is where Diablo 3 RoS really shines. You go back to any of the five acts and play certain bounties there for XP and loot rewards. All bounties will award a certain number of blood shards after completion that are used to buy mystery items from merchants, and some will give you nephalem keystone fragments, which can be combined into a nephalem keystone when you have five and will open a nephalem rift. Nephalem rifts are areas that can have up to ten levels and random combinations of monsters that wouldn't normally be found anywhere else in the campaign, and they also contain more loot than normal. 

This mode adds replayability to the game that wouldn't normally be there, although it can get a bit repetitive at times. I just play battlefield until I'm ready to go back. I still haven't opened a nephalem rift yet, but I'm getting there! 

Final Score

Diablo 3 is a relatively good-looking game graphically that is fun for a while after you start playing, especially with friends. Because of the local co-op, offline mode and better controls, the console version is far superior to the PC version, while also being $10 cheaper. The game has a fair bit of replayability with the six different classes, and Adventure Mode definitely reinforces that. 

Pros: Same Screen Co-Op, Lots of Replay Value, Loot, Loot, and more Loot

Cons: Sometimes feels repetitive, Boring Story

Thanks for reading, and I'll see you guys later!