A true hack and slash experience, Diablo III: Reaper of Souls is the new version of Diablo III for consoles, complete with the expansion pack the PC version of the game received way back in March of this year (2014).
In Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, you find yourself a wanderer, on the way to the town of New Tristram, on the tail of a falling star. When you arrive you find the town shares a similar plague as in the previous town called Tristram as well as the previous Diablo games. The undead have risen, demons run amok, and an old man named Deckard Cain wants you to ‘Stay awhile and listen’—well after you save him from a pit of burning hell and a few skeletons.
The story progresses with a stranger with a mystical and magical, shattered sword, a demon summoning cult led by a witch, and oh yes, a lord of hell or two… or three.
Your job as the hero of Diablo III: Reaper of Souls is to hunt down all of these evils and see that world isn’t destroyed by the Lord of Terror, Diablo himself. But just when you think it’s safe to go back into the blood pool, and Diablo is defeated a new threat rears its ugly angelic head! Malthael, the former angel of wisdom brings a whole new chapter to the game. Now he is the Angel of Death, and he has a plan—and it’s your job to hunt him down and use your amazing powers as a Nephalim, the child of an angel and demon, to vanquish the threat and save all of humanity as we know it.
Diablo III: Reaper of Souls features two modes of awesome gameplay. One is the story mode, which is amazing in itself. Those who played the first version of Diablo III will remember the four different basic difficulties—Normal, Nightmare, Hell and Inferno. These required you to play through the entire story, just to reach the next tier of doom. Now everything has changed for the better. In this version of the game, you can now set the difficulty to your liking pretty much right of the bat. You can play all the way up to Torment (and six levels above that!).
Each difficulty mode increase rewards the player with more experience, more gold , treasure and a greater challenge. But don’t expect it to be a walk in the demon park.
There’s also Hardcore Mode. In this crazy endeavor you can NOT die. Not even once! Or your character is deleted and all of your work is for naught. This comes complete with the difficulties mentioned before and is not for the faint of heart.
The next wonderful mode is called Adventure Mode, whom many seem to prefer. Here you get to go on quests for bounties which reward you with treasure, experience, and some say a more rewarding experience of the Diablo 3 game. You can choose any of the V acts to play from, even starting from Lv01 and the monster difficulty scales down OR up to your level. Then of course there are the Nephalim Rifts which provide you a run through of hacky-slashy only fun. Kill as many demons as you like—then return to town and ‘reap’ your rewards. Don’t expect to find any storyline here though. It’s all about the benja—err gold coins.
If challenges are your thing, this is game has endless ones. Sadly you can’t see which ones your friends have completed like in the PC version of the game (Unless they come out with an update of course). But none-the-less, some of these range from crazy and silly things like punching Diablo without a weapon equipped, and defeating all of the bosses wearing pink dyed armor, to defeating the lords of Hell on Hardcore mode and risking hours and hours of gameplay down the drain! You do get a spiffy banner to show off to your friends—and many of the banner components, designs and such are ONLY unlocked when you complete various challenges. Fun times, but perhaps not fun enough for the stress they can cause.
Diablo III: Reaper of Souls is a pretty darn fun game. If you had the original version of Diablo 3 you may be wondering if you should pick up this one? Do you want to spend money on a game that you’ve already played, and possibly unlocked all the challenges in? The answer of course, is YES. Pick it up, play up to four players with your friends in local co-op or online! Enjoy the six classes to choose from, including the new strength based, sword and board class, The Crusader! And challenge yourself for endless hours of fun. One can spend weeks of binge playing this game and STILL have things to do, challenges to unlock, difficulties to conquer and demons to slay!
All in all, Diablo III: Reaper of Souls is an amazing game with hours of gameplay. It gets a 9/10. Get out there and save the world, Nephalims!
REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Microsoft Xbox One code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.
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