Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls

Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls feels less like the series finale of your
favorite TV show and more like an exciting one-off episode. And as far
as expansions go, that's totally fine. If you've been playing D3 again
in anticipation of all the new content, you might be left wanting. But
for those who've lost touch with Diablo 3, Reaper of Souls polishes the
gameplay to addictive kill-and-loot perfection, making this the most fun
the game's ever been.

Since you killed Diablo (yet again) at the
end of Diablo 3, Reaper of Souls pits you against a new villain:
Malthael, a fallen archangel who sees humanity as a scourge upon
creation. As the Nephalem, aka the people's champ, you've got to fight
back against Malthael's army of reapers and their raised minions in the
added Act 5, starting with the burning city of Westmarch. While hacking
and slashing your way through creepy cemeteries, overgrown swamplands,
mystic ruins, and otherworldly battlefields, you'll appreciate all the
grisly little details (like alleyways overflowing with dead bodies) and
the abnormal color palette of browns, purples, and deep blues. Act 5 may
only have a handful of new environment types, but the majority of them
feel markedly different from the Diablo 3 vistas you've no doubt played
to death at this point.

If
you're looking for an epic tale concluding the war between angels and
demons, Reaper of Souls' plot will be a bit of a let-down. By chatting
with your followers from the preceding game, you'll gain access to
nifty, Loyalty-style missions that further their subplots.
Unfortunately, these feel annoyingly unresolved, even if they do offer a
welcome bit of backstory. The overarching plot about Malthael feels
similarly serialized: you get some interesting insight into the Angel of
Death's mentality, but Act 5's ending comes off as abrupt and
inconclusive. With all the cliffhangers, it feels like no attempts were
made to hide the fact that--if everything goes according to plan--this
expansion is just one of many. Hey, at least there's a boss fight
against a bazooka-wielding fallen angel along the way.

Once you've conquered Act 5's six hours of story content, the
newfangled Adventure Mode is there to prolong your enjoyment of Diablo
3's incredibly fun core gameplay. Instead of sending you down a linear,
plot-driven path, Adventure Mode cuts out nearly every story aspect and
assigns you with Den of Evil-esque quests, encouraging you to jump
around the environments and kill monsters however you so choose. To
spice things up, you'll encounter Cursed Chests, timed mini-challenges
that provide a nice spike in difficulty apart from all the elite monster
packs. Between the reworked difficulty system (a game-changing
improvement that we discussed in our updated Diablo 3 review) and high density of enemies in Adventure Mode, there's never a dull moment.

Topping
off Adventure Mode are the Nephalem Rifts, randomized gauntlets that
crank the chaos meter all the way up (in a good way). These dungeons
provide a kind of exhilarating, unpredictable fun, where daunting
challenge (an assortment of crazy hard bosses and elite packs) mixes
with thrilling empowerment (new Pylon shrines that provide absurd
temporary buffs like max movespeed or 400 percent damage). As a whole,
Adventure Mode feels like the perfect facilitator of Diablo's addictive
brand of action: getting loot so you can kill monsters quicker so you
can get more cool loot.

And there's cool loot aplenty. The Loot
2.0 system (which affects both Diablo 3 and Reaper of Souls) is worlds
better than the previous arrangement. Every drop feels worthwhile, from
the formerly crappy grey and white weapons that now serve as basic
crafting materials to the exhilarating new Legendary items, which come
packed with some build-changing buffs. Upgrades come along at a much
better cadence; you're given just enough time to get attached to your
best items before finding even better loot, so you won't suffer from new
gear fatigue. It's astounding how much this relatively small change
enhances Diablo 3, so that playing at any level always feels rewarding
and engaging. Less game-changing--but still appreciated--is Myriam, the
new Mystic crafter who ensures you can enjoy your gear to the fullest,
letting you tweak some stats or alter its appearance to something that
fits with whatever outfit ensemble you've got going on.

Attributing
a score to Reaper of Souls is tricky. It's a game that I'd highly
recommend to anyone, but from a cost analysis perspective, it feels like
some of the expansion's standout aspects (Loot 2.0, rejiggered
difficulty, and the axing of the auction house) are already available to
those that own the base game. That said, I put around 30 hours into the
game on Blizzard's test servers, knowing full well all my progress
would be wiped--and I'm still psyched to level a Crusader all
over again when the expansion goes live. No, Reaper of Souls doesn't
deliver the finality that Diablo 2: Lords of Destruction did--but when
Diablo 3 is this fun to play, more content automatically becomes a good
thing.

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