Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Expansion Review

Now it's been almost 2 years since Diablo III came out and the highly anticipated Reaper Of Souls Expansion has been officially launched.

LAUNCH DAY EXPERIENCE

Starting Act V. Just three Minutes after Launch hour.
That's how seamless the transition was.

Now unlike Diablo 3 Launch Day 2 years ago, there was a lot less hiccups in server-loads as soon as it went live. Also, the best part is, I was in-game when the announcement of the RoS Content finally went live. There was no downtime which is very nice though it'll be safer to logout and then log back in again IMO. Although re-logging back in was no way perfect with occasional error 3005s and 3006s, it was WAY (I mean way WAY) smoother and a less painful process as it took me about 4 minutes instead of like 2 freaking hours in Diablo III Launch to successfully get myself back in, transition to RoS and commence Act V pretty much right away. I actually expected a lot worse, but I guessed Blizzard has anticipated this and installed enough servers to accommodate with Launch Day. So Good one from your part Blizzard! So I join my regular group to conquer Act V.

PLAYERS: DarkNemesis - Myself (G2),  CruXed (G2), Rocket (G2 and Synarchy - Singapore's Local Competitive Clan), Visco (Synarchy)

A Screenshot in 5760 x 1080 while receiving a Banner Award.
Using my Barbarian as usual.

FIRST LOOK - CAUTION SPOILERS!!!!

Act V takes place at the Fall of Westmarch after Tyrael seals all the Prime Evils within the Black Soulstone.
It was then taken by the corrupted Lord Malthael. Malthael was a former Archangel who disappeared after the destruction of the Worldstone during events of Diablo II: Lord of Destruction. As one of the Nephalem, your task is to trace the whereabouts of Malthael and his allies, destroy them, and reclaim the Black Soulstone from his grasp.

Diablo III Reaper of Souls adds some new content while trading that for the departure of the Auction House. This is a great point as it promotes farming the way it meant the game should be. And it boils down to luck. The most obvious is Act V. The game also unlocks the Level Cap to 70. Reaching that level will unlock the 4th Skill Point which you can use and only then will your characters start regaining Paragon Levels. And upon reaching a certain part of Act V unlocks a new NPC; the Mystic which is FREAKING useful. For a cost of Crafting Material, you can change one of that stat you don't want. Upon beating the Act V, the Adventure mode is unlocked where you can just pretty much go anywhere without changing acts to take on random bounties and rifts for random loot. These can be done at your own leisure and is a great way for earning Legendary Items and Experience. In fact in the post-game, Rifts are your primary means of levelling.

A Portrait of my Very First Crusader: GuardianZ

And of course the big one is the introduction of the Crusaders. This new hero class really resembles the Paladin from Diablo II in terms of appearance and his role in the game. He's a hybrid of a melee fighter, tank and a Holy Spellcaster who can don heavy armor and specialize in Sword and Board combat, or rather, Greatsword and Board Combat with a certain passive ability. At least now we have use for the 2-handers now!

A Cutscene Prologue of the Crusader.
Taken via my Aftershock X11

Other additions intended for Reaper of Souls have already been implemented in the Pre-RoS Patch. So if you've been playing throughout the last couple of weeks and this week, you'll know all this. But just a summary:

- New Paragon System - Limit is practically removed and the levels are spanned throughout all characters account wide. Every Paragon Level-up gives a point to spend on certain attributes available in your Paragon Layout. Any Character you have who has reached 70 (or 60 without RoS) can level Paragon Levels for all Characters.

- Item Quantity Drops reduced but proportionately boosted in quality. Yellow Rares need not be identified. Set and Legendaries you pick are account bound but most carry abilities that can potentially boost your builds. Legacy Items (Legendaries that you picked prior to this patch) are not account bound, but can't benefit from the new Mystic NPC.

- Cursed Chest and Shrine Events - Primary Objective mostly is to kill as much as you can within the time frame. Most of them however have a timed bonus event which rewards a Radiant Chest upon successful Bonus Objective met like killing 5 waves or a specific number of monsters.

- Difficulty Overhauls. Torment Difficulty (with Torment VI being the hardest difficulty currently in the game)

- Pools of Reflection - These Pools will boost the rate that you gain experience by 25% till you reach a certain amount. These promote more defensive play.

All these changes make the game having a large replay value. So you've always have something to do all the time.

MY IMPRESSIONS

The fact that I literally whacked through the game throughout the night last night and for 12 hours the day before with little sleep is a big testament on how much work that has been planned out by Blizzard to get it done the right way.

The difficulty of the monsters as you level from 60 to 70 gets harder dramatically with most of my level 60 gear pretty much become obsolete as you creep the levels in. But it's been loads of fun.

As for Crusaders, the class uses a combination of holy magic and Melee Combat. He carries a sword and shield. With a certain passive, he can wield two-handed weapons on his main hand and shield on the other. It makes him quite tanky. But a few complaints is that he is painfully slow in attack and damage isn't really promising. Although 2 handed-weapons are high damage, their slow attack speed severely hits.

However, that said, a new patch is upcoming, which practically increases damage of most abilities all across the board for all classes, most heavy is on the Crusader with the exception of Heaven's Fury Fires of Heaven Rune.

GAME REQUIREMENTS

The game requirements in general aren't high; as what you might expect when the game launched 2 years ago. For low details and resolutions, the game can run happy on just the HD 3000 graphics from Sandy Bridge line, but should have at least a Core i5 CPU to run at playable frame rates. Dual cores and below unless with Hyper Threading, won't be enough. HD 4000 Series and up will run it no problem. The higher up HD 4XXX series graphics can even crank it to Medium High Details at 1366 x 768. So as of now; most Integrated Intel Graphics Solutions from the Sandy Bridge line till now can at least run it without a problem in Low Settings.

Maxing out the game will require a bit more at 1920 x 1080. But as far as Dedicated Graphics Go, then the CPU requirement is less of an issue, even a Pentium Dual Core with a GTX 580 can pump 120+ Fps excess Maxed out. But as a desktop guideline, if you have a decent CPU, your minimum GPU requirement is at least a Radeon 6450.

The Iris Pro 5200 will simply breeze this through maxed at that resolution. However it is still playable on a DDR3 Radeon 6670 or even the older GeForce 8800 GT. So you can expect at least a GT 540 and above no worries. At 2560 x 1600, even the old GTX 550 Ti with its 192-bit bus and limited 1GB RAM, is still playable at max but recommend you just turn the settings down just a little bit. Anything higher than a Radeon 6770 and a 7770 is pretty much overkill unless running 3 Monitors surround via Windowed Fullscreen mode. For me I run my games in a 3 Monitor Setup; and even that resolution of 5760 x 1080 is merely calling for more in my GTX 780. And here's a video of someone actually running this at a whopping 7680 x 1440 in Eyefinity, that's a full 11-Megapixels compared to my 6.22, that's like nearly 78% more pixels to fill!

BOTTOMLINE:

Diablo III Reaper of Souls offers a Hugely expanded amount of playtime. But be prepared of some mechanics that may put you off slightly. Game requirements are nice and easy, even an entry level gaming system or a high end gaming system that's over 6 years old can still run it.