This is one of those games that I originally played on the PS3 and then bought again on the PS4 because I enjoyed it so much. Unfortunately though this time instead of playing it right away, it sat in my backlog for the longest possible time. I purchased this game so long ago that I don’t even remember when I bought it. Anyway, now that I actually finished it for a second time and did everything there is to do within the game, it’s time for a review.
Diablo III: Reaper of Souls has not only the fifth and final act of this game in it, but it also has the complete first four acts of Diablo III. Let’s start with Diablo III first then. Diablo III is about your character, a barbarian, a witch doctor, a wizard, a monk, a demon hunter, my personal favorite, a crusader, and now a necromancer, if you have the DLC, finding their way to Sanctuary. Your character is in Sanctuary because of the falling star that has fell from the heavens and into the cathedral. There you’ll meet up with Leah and Deckard Cain to basically find the falling star. Turns out the falling star is Tyrael, the Aspect of Justice, and he has fallen from the heavens in order to stop Diablo and the lords of hell. This is up to you to do and there will be different twists and turns throughout the game until your final battle with Diablo himself. That’s not it though, with the introduction of Reaper of Souls, there are more problems to solve. After the events of Diablo III, Tyrael has taken possession of the Black Soul Stone but needs your characters help once more to protect it from corruption. To do that you’ll have to face death and defeat death himself, Malthael. Will your character survive and save the world of Diablo once more? All will be answered and more by the end of the expansion.
I have to say that I will always love this game. That is the first time that I play it and experience it. When I first played it on the PS3, I thought it was just amazing, and I thought the same thing of my first playthrough with the PS4 version. What really kills this game for me though is the amount of times that you actually have to play it. The repetitive nature of this game becomes boring and chore like if you’re playing alone, but can be fun if you want to just get away from it all and hang out with a friend to play. This time around I had a mixture of both. While I did get some alone time to play, I spent most of my time playing with my buddy mmaddmaxx12. He started off as a noob in this game to being overly impressed on how easy it was for me to play to becoming 10x time Diablo player I’ll ever be. He streams this game often, and you can watch him stream here because he’s awesome. Make sure to give him a follow and just watch him kick some ass. Anyway, having to play each character to level 70, along with playing on Hardcore mode, and then playing the bounties really took its toll on me this time around and by the end of the game I was just happy that I was finished and can easily say that I will never touch this game again.
The playabilty of this game is simple depending on the character that you choose. I found that playing the demon hunter is the easiest characters of them all because she’s a ranged character where the other characters were basically a mix of ranged and up close and in your face. Each character has a skill set that you have to learn in order to play and sometimes that can get a little frustrating depending on the character. Once you learn the ins and outs of your character you should be good to go. Each act will give you different quests to complete and all of this went off without a problem and by the end of the game you’ll have adventure mode where you can travel through the world of Diablo and take on bounties. I have to say that everything for this game just worked perfectly and there were no bugs or glitches throughout my 7 months of playing.
The graphics for this game are quite simple since it is a dungeon crawler game. Nothing is up close and everything is in a very far away third person view as you move from area to area. The one thing that shines throughout this game are the cut scenes. These are just so beautifully crafted and it really adds to the game. Each and every cut scene is carefully crafted and it’s moments like those that add to the game and make it a work of art.
There are a total of 44 trophies for this game including a platinum trophy and extra 10 trophies if you buy the DLC and play as the necromancer. The trophies are pretty simple to get and just require time. A lot of time to actually play. This gets a little tedious as it’s not easy to level up every single character to 70 and then level up a hardcore character to 70 and beat the whole game with the character. Gone is the trophy that requires you to get 5,000,000 gold from the PS3 version and it’s replaced with completing 500 bounties. Sounds better than getting 5,000,000 gold right? Wrong. This will take up most of your time as on each level of difficulty you only have 25 bounties to complete. Once you’re finished you can start again or move up in difficulty. I decided to move up in difficulty and was actually able to get to torment level 11 before starting again. Needles to say this is a trophy list that can be done if you have the time to do it.
Now to the online portion of this game. When I first played on the PS3, I played with a bunch of randoms and this kind of ruined the experience for me. This wasn’t fun and I didn’t enjoy playing with someone who wasn’t on the same page that I was. Cut to the PS4 version of this game where I played basically the whole game with my buddy, and we had an absolute blast as we played. We streamed most of our play time and it was just great since we were both of the same page and went in with a plan of what we were going to accomplish for the playtime that we had. There were some connection issues and we did get disconnected a little bit, but it wasn’t enough to actually be annoyed about. Here’s the thing though, if you’re going to play solo, it gets boring and if you play with randoms it can get tedious and annoying. My suggestion would be to play with a buddy who has this game and it turns into a completely different game and raises the enjoyment level.
Overall I give this game a 4 out of 5.
What’s Great:
+ Solid story line that is interesting the first time around, both the original game and the expansion pack.
+ There’s a lot to do in this game and it basically takes forever to fully complete so there are no complaints that the game is too short.
+ Typical dungeon crawler graphics with some pretty amazing cut scene graphics.
+ The best way to play is with a buddy through co-op it makes the game 10x more fun than playing alone.
What’s Not So Great:
– After the first playthrough of this game, the actual value of this game starts to decline as you do the same things over and over again but with different characters and different modes.
I liked how this game was basically open ended after the DLC expansion and I really can’t wait for a Diablo IV. I had a great time playing this game on the PS3 and on the PS4. Yes it was tedious and I can officially say that I’m done with this game now, but if and when Diablo IV is ever announced it would be a day one purchase for me. This is just a really awesome game that I’m glad finally made its way over to consoles and it’s a game worth getting. I would say that if you enjoy dungeon crawlers with a deep and rich story and you don’t mind going back to play 100 + times, then this is the game for you.
1 Broke Gamer Girl 