I have been playing Diablo III expansion, Reaper of Souls (RoS), for the last two months and I am exhausted. I believe, whatever conceivable ounce of playability there is in it for the casual to semi-hardcore player like me has been ringed out and I do not wish to play the game any longer. So, having reached the end of the end game and made off with most of what my 40 bucks got me, it’s time to deliberate—was Diablo III Reaper of Souls a good expansion and a worthwhile expenditure of time?
You must be thinking, why wait so long before writing a review for this? Most reviews come out a week within release don’t they? Well yes, but unlike them, I’m not here to provide sound consumer advice—though you could read it for that purpose. This is a personal examination and reflection of my time with the game. Conducting this inspection earlier would have been premature; premature because as with vanilla Diablo III, I was initially suspended, in the first week or two, in an aesthesis of bliss and infatuation. It wasn’t only until I propitiously kicked torment-level Diablo down the pinnacle of heaven when I realised, holy schmoley… there’s bleeding nothing left to do here.
At the core of the D3 expansion is the campaign extension. It’s a robust entry that boasts its own unique set of vile creatures to slay and randomised curiosities to interact with. However, in its entirety, act five feels like a bigger adventure than any of the four compartmentalised stories before it. Rummaging through broken back alleys, searching ancient ruins in Blood Marsh, swinging on a battling ram, and traversing the horrors of Pandemonium and the fortress within; the sheer variety and board nature of the chase makes act five feel like a more endowed package in comparison. Yet as good as it was there is no saving act five from descending into a chore after playing it more times than required.
All new characters are still required to play through the entire campaign at least once and I played it thrice; once with my crusader and twice more with fresh hardcore characters. It’s the Diablo tradition, and why break tradition? Well why not? I’m glad the designers thought the later because this question ultimately gave birth to the single best thing of Reaper of Souls—adventure mode. Adventure mode takes away the monotony of grinding by zesting it with variability and reward, making it the new standard of post-campaign levelling, and end game gear-material farming.
The pièce de résistance of adventure mode though has to be the Nephalem Rifts. The option to break open a portal to a randomized string of locales populated by waves of any to every monster, beast, or demon conceivable in Diablo III, was a tantalizing and often exciting affair. Clearing rifts at optimal efficiency demanded an acute awareness of skills and item synergy; the effects of which when combined with the spells and passives of your rift-ing buddies, produced a highly satisfying symphonic smorgasbord of vibrant animations and wanton destruction.
The new class, the crusader, packs a fine wallop and plays as it looks—badass. Whether it’s any more fun to play than the barbarian or witch doctor is arbitrary, the fact is if you have Reaper of Souls you owe it to yourself to try it out. If being able to effortlessly wield a two-hander on one hand and summon a spectral steed to ride on doesn’t entice you I don’t know what does. The crusader is a beast of its own and it was a gratifying experience taking it through the levels. Sure the crusader was borne out of an old Diablo favourite, the Paladin, but it distinguishes itself just enough so that you can’t accuse it of being cut out of the same mould as any of the existing classes.
The biggest draw of Diablo in my opinion has been playing with friends. Like previous versions of Diablo before three, there has been a palpable diversion to community. Despite notable lack of proper PvP content, cooperative play with crowds of two or three good friends has been, for the most part, very enjoyable. Yet despite the talk of greater coaction, need for social interaction has been somewhat reduced in this expansion. There are benefits to running rifts in teams but there’s an unhealthy number of players who I find much rather farm/grind alone, and there is a reason for that. The call to community feels like a hollow one when crafting produces bind on account items and the rules surrounding trading is even more burdensome than before. Taking into account the closure of the auction house and the impoverished PvP system there really isn’t much need for community in the Diablo III biosphere.
The closure of the auction house, while eradicating gold inflation, produced a different set of problems. With the notable restraints on item trading, Reaper of Souls has devolved into a game that can only reward effort and efficiency—which is a good thing, until you realise that the mystic doesn’t quite adequately fill the void left by the action house. There is disincentive to experimenting with builds now because the convenience of the auction house is no more and the inconvenience of rerolling one stat at a time at the mystic is present and real. If you want to construct a “melee wizard” and don’t quite have the pieces of gear to pull that off expeditiously then be prepared to embark on a potential long and arduous search.
With that being said, the game feels more casual than before and it’s getting more casual with each patch. I am not dismayed by it but I do find that this diminishes the achievement and accomplishment of having a pimped out 70 character, even when it’s on hardcore. Before it was — brave inferno or you’re never getting desirable legendaries, now it’s — farm efficiently at any level you can boss the demons of hell at. Stats like “immunity to ice and freezing” are so overpowered they can make the average player a survival king. The absence of leaderboards doesn’t help the cause, but then again when the game is going from hardcore to casual why does it matter? It’s a stat race, not a skill race anymore.
Two good months of Reaper of Souls and I have five level 70 characters to show for, and the satisfaction in knowing that I got my money’s worth, if not more, from the game. Diablo III Reaper of Souls attempted to fix the multitude of problems created by the Jay Wilson edition and it does with varying success. What it does is it stops the rut that Diablo 3 was but it’s still taking a turn away from what many know the Diablo franchise to be—a hardcore gamer’s time sink that possess extraordinary replay value. The fact that I, as with many of my friends, do not wish to play Diablo III anymore (perhaps until the next expansion) saddens me because I came to expect the same grand longevity that marked earlier iterations of the series. I might not totally agree with the direction of the franchise but at least I had a great time in the recent expansion.
Tl;dr: Like Jay Wilson’s Diablo 3, Reaper of Souls does the Diablo ideal a fair amount of disservice, but as an expansion it is a solid entry. It was fun and a worthy purchase even if the notion of playing Diablo 3 again only remotely interests you.
