Quick Look: Diablo III: Reaper of Souls

Blizzard's best expansion yet. Completely fixes the game.

Nice and torn on this one. I hated the original release, not the game itself mind you, just how it didn't run for a week or so due to all the server issues. That being said, this one looks like a vast improvement.

Obviously the adventure mode is for the expansion, but does anyone know if a lot of these other changes came over to vanilla D3 or not? Might actually be worth playing if they did.

Meh... maybe. It's still always online, right?

It's a testament to the power of the Diablo franchise that they can 'fix' this game after two years and people will still be interested.

@jedted: It's their health but I said the exact same thing when I saw my brother playing last night. Totally looks like it's a memory location or something. But, no, enemies in this game just have a ridiculous amount of HP.

Almost, it's still a shame they only added one class in my opinion.

At the end of the video Jeff almost sounded like he was about to say "Thanks Jeff."

Finished this just a few hours ago, felt kinda short since its only one chapter and didn't even hit 66 by the time I killed the final guy but more awesome D3 goodness.

Found Diablo 3 so dull upon it's release, but the changes they've made sound interesting and worth checking out.

Loved the heck out of Torchlight 2 though.

PS4 version for to remote play and for some weird reason being able to play offline, here I come. PS4 and maybe Xbox One version information coming at PAX East, PS4 one will be playable there for sure.

They introduced a patch recently that vastly changed a lot of stuff for vanilla D3. The new difficulty system is there, along with Loot 2.0 where you're far more likely to find gear useful to your character, and overall balance of stats is improved. The legendary drop rate has been increased a bit, though you'll find them more often on chests and other clickable objects, and many of them now do really cool things. They also scale up to the level you are when you find them. Skills received some damage tweaking (mostly buffs across the board), and some of the functionality of the runes have been changed (overall better balanced).

@brad Harvester Of The Souls. Done.

With the flying numbers it looks even more like WoW (i know they can get removed). Its such a bummer that Blizzard lost that creepy, sinister atmosphere of D2. And a host of other things to be honest.

I don't think I have ever seen a look at the D3 expansion so lacking in basic knowledge and full of misinformation, it's a true milestone. :P

D3 had artificially ass loot in order to make people use the auction system. There was no way to wrap the game up without grinding forever, having the luck of forever, or using the auction house like mad. It was one of many stronger than we wish arguments as to why D2LoD was better.

@golddeathmonkey: Oooooookay.

Yup, I still don't like the saturday morning cartoon art design in modern Blizzard games at all.

Doing a quick look without showing off adventure mode and nephalem rifts is not doing the expansion justice at all. I do appreciate you guys doing one but would have liked more information about it. That being said I do love the expansion and I hated what D3 was when it first came out.

Diablo has it a bit less than their other games like WoW, Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm. But I don't mind the look either way. I do like how Diablo looks though.

anything under torment 1 or 2 is baby mode :P

Seems worth playing now, maybe I'll pick it up eventually. Looks like they fixed a lot of what was really bad and uneven with the initial release.

Well, at least this got me to reinstall D3. Let's see if the Loot 2.0 patch and rebalance is enough to get me to buy this.

Will this come to ps4 and xboxone?

@beachthunder: OI! Brad Shoemakah here! Goooorn!

tbh i really don't understand why people keep saying this about D3. i think it's got a really suitably gothic look about it, and fits in with the older Diablos perfectly fine. nothing cartoony about it all from what i've seen.

It looks nothing like the older Diablos. Hell, the Souls games look closer to those in style than D3 does. The exaggerated shapes and the color design (lots of pastels etc.) look definitely cartoony to me.

The voice actress for the female Crusader is Mary Elizabeth McGlynn. She does tons of stuff but as soon as I heard it I recognized it as Major Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex.

I feel like when it comes to anime or video game voice acting there's about 10-15 go to voice actors/actresses. It must be really tough to get into that business and work on any big name projects.

This. My cousin came over and showed off some stuff to me with his level 70 char and it looked great and pretty interesting. The rare mobs(purple) seem to pop up more and most explorable places have events now. There's a new artisan which is cool, rerolls your item stats. There's some pretty cool new spells and runes, lots of things seem to have been redone. Apparently the expert difficulty is a difficulty where if you start at level 1, by the time you finish the game you will be level 60-70. And yes the new play modes have been ignored. I think the crew ought to do another quick look.

link

Does anyone know if the PC version supports local co-op? Or is that function console only?

@drakir: Yes it will be packaged as Ultimate evil edition.

I'm trying to think back.... did it often take two years to develop an expansion pack in the past?

Starcraft and Brood War were released in the same year. Baldur's Gate and its expansion pack 4 months later. Baldur's Gate 2 and its expansion 8 months. Diablo II and its expansion just shy of a year. Age of Empires 2 shy of a year as well.

Two things, I guess. One is that development complexity has gone way up. Two is that at least Blizzard - for the most part - still bakes it long enough to be fantastic rather than forcing it out.

It bums me out that you have to go through the previous acts as crusader, I find them extremely boring at this point. Not gonna buy this.

Though I like having a barb in my party, playing as one looks so monotonous.

@sooty said:

As long as you finish Act 5 with any character, you can take a new crusader straight into adventure mode which shouldn't be as tedious.

@drakir: I think the theory is that the PS4 and Xbone versions of Diablo 3 (whenever they come out) will have this expansion installed already. But who knows...

So I don't want to be a downer but the last time a name-swap happened it was like 3-5 months after Ryan's passing. Jeff called Brad Ryan. I think it was on the podcast. He quickly fixed the statement but the entire podcast had dead air for a good second or two. It was awkward and really sad. I think about it anytime someone messes up on someone else's name within GB.

Wait, did Blizzard pull a Castlevania by introducing Death doing the same shit before with Dracula, except he's resurrecting Diablo now?

Isn't that the issue with all games of this type. Never played diablo 3, but I have played through (some of) torchlight, torchlight 2, PoE, and Titan Quest.

My issue is I NEED to play these games with other people I'm chatting with. Which I've only ever accomplished with PoE.

@mithical: Thanks for clearing it up for me. Sounds like I may have to pick it up again after all!

Loot 2.0 patch and this expansion completely revitalized this game for me. So much fun again, reminiscent of Diablo 2 on so many levels.

I like how the Crusader looks straight out of Warhammer 40K. The male is an Ultramarine and the female is a Sister Of Battle.

When tried out the fem Crusader I just started squealing to myself like a school girl when I recognized the voice actress was the same lady that does the voice of Major Motoko Kusanagi from the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex series.

Diablo 3 Fem Crusader:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIBcF_7KuAA

GITS-SAC:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z_gYTXzM9k

I bought Diablo III on sale last week and have been having a lot of fun with it. Speaking (and playing) with my friends who played at release it seems like they've made huge leaps forward in the loot system, where you are fairly frequently picking up improvements to your gear and you will see legendary uniques pop up every so often, rather than perhaps once in a couple of playthroughs.

Probably going to pick up this DLC soon because I'm enjoying it a lot right now.

I look forward to Hellfire of Team Satan.