Diablo III released to critical acclaim nearly two and a half years ago. In that time the game has changed in a great many ways. Last year’s console version of the base game carried the first major changes. Aside from being balanced perfectly to play on a controller, the loot system was overhauled to be more in line with what players expected out of the game. Then, earlier this year, the expansion Reaper of Souls released bringing with it a new Act, a new character class (the lovely Crusader), Adventure mode, Paragon leveling, and a rebalancing of the difficulty. Now a definitive package featuring everything together has been released to consoles under the ridiculous moniker of Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition.
For those unfamiliar with Diablo III, it is a dungeon crawler sequel to Diablo II, a game many regard as one of the best games of all-time. In the game players pick one of a handful of classes as their hero and then take on hordes of enemies, securing loot to make them more powerful and cooler looking. The monster hunting is fun with a variety of special attacks mapped to the controller and easily customizable as one gains experience. But it is the fast and furious loot collecting that keeps players coming back for more and more, time and time again. It is a simplistic formula that is super addictive and anyone with a taste in fantasy based action games should play it because it is really the best at what it does today.
For those already familiar with the game though, The Ultimate Evil Edition offers up a slew of reasons to give the game yet another try. This iteration of the game comes complete with all five acts from the base game and its expansion. Act V picks up some time after the events of Act IV and sees players having to take on Death himself in an all new area. This new Act should take players a few hours to complete on their first playthrough and fans of the Diablo lore will be in for a treat as a ton more exposition on the mythology has been packed in. But while the new Act is great fun, the best expansion editions are the Crusader class and Adventure mode.
The Crusader class gives players a whole new character to master. In these types of games I generally use ranged characters as I like to keep my distance, but for this playthrough I gave the Crusader a go. With a variety of crowd control and escape maneuvers that never left me feeling cornered, after just a few hours of play I was already as attached to my Crusader as I was to my original Demon Hunter. The best thing about the Crusader was that despite the depth of moves for the character, everything was just a simple button press.
Blizzard did a great job modifying the game to work well on a controller, and all the classes feel great. As someone who has played each Diablo extensively on the PC, I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but it might actually be better on controller than with the classic mouse clicking. Granted some adjustments had to be made to make the game work on a controller and there are noticeably less enemies in each horde that attacks. That said, the hordes still feel large and crowd control is still very much a big part of the game. Game balance adjustments or not, the game still works wonderfully on a controller, and nowhere is this more evident than when managing one’s inventory. Gone is the jigsaw puzzle management system of the PC, and in its place is a simplified equipment based system. Players get a flat 60 slots to carry loot (of which some is stackable) and it is all pre-sorted into specific inventory slots (like weapons or boots) on a selection wheel making it really easy to see what is the best items for use.
The other big addition to the expansion is the introduction of Adventure mode. In the past the best way to get better gear after playing the game was to go back and rerun bosses. While this is certainly something that can still be done, it can also get aggressively repetitive and a touch dull. In an effort to provide players with better end game content and provide them with the special loot that they want, Adventure mode has been created. Once Act V has been finished, Adventure mode unlocks and allows players to return to the previous Act locations to take on randomized bounties (quests). Sometimes it may be a run at a previously defeated boss; other times it is defeating a particular horde of enemies, or completing an event. Regardless of the task, these bounties pay off with powerful loot drops and items as well as a chance to access Nephalem Rifts. Nephalem Rifts are randomized dungeons opened via Rift fragments which are gained by completing bounties in Adventure mode. These dungeons have a higher rate for legendary drops and defeating the Rift boss grants major gold and experience drops. The randomized nature of the dungeons and high drop rates for legendary items is something that will keep players questing for a long time to come.
The biggest change to end-game play is Paragon leveling. The max level for characters is now 70. However once maxed out, players can gain paragon levels, which have no limit. Leveling via the paragon system grants players paragon points to be distributed against player attributes, much like the leveling in the previous games. The hook here is that these paragon levels are not tied specifically to one character but are account based per mode (Normal or Hardcore). This means that any of your account characters can benefit from paragon leveling giving newer characters a great boost at the outset. It is just one more way that Blizzard has found to make sure you are playing their game years and years from now.
While certain people had issues with the way Diablo III originally handled its end-game content, there was no denying that Diablo III was still a great game. In the roughly two and a half years since its original release, Blizzard has overhauled massive aspects of the game and made something worthy of being played for hundreds and hundreds of hours. The Ultimate Evil Edition provides a hell of a lot of content in its retail priced package and the fact that it works just as well on consoles, if not better, than my PC experience is a testament to how much Blizzard has devoted to making sure their game is the best it can be.
Note: This review was written with material purchased by the reviewer. For more on our review process, please read here.
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