Act 5 is a lot more gothic than previous acts in Diablo III. Best way to describe it is to compare it to Act 1 where players have encountered zombies and the undead. However, this time around it’s much more darker and is kind of similar to Diablo 2. Act 5 also features huge zones such as the Blood-marsh, that is full of nasty monsters called Bogans. Bogans are a brand new enemy type that have a unique AI system that has never been done before in a Diablo game. For example, a flying bat will turn a small Boggit into a Tusked Bogan that is much stronger than the small one.

The third type are the Bogat Trapper. These annoying creatures place traps to slow down and ambush you while their friends are on their way to help them out. The new AI system is impressive and it was fascinating to watch monsters work together in such a unique way against the user player.

"One of the coolest dungeons you will encounter in Reaper of Souls is Ruins of Corvus. Ruins of Corvus consists of Phantasms, Blood Golems, Scarabs and new dungeon events that award players with resplendent chests and mini-boss fights."

Another unique and beautiful zone that came to mind was the Battlefields of Eternity. Battlefields of Eternity is somewhat similar to Act 3 exterior zone area, but the scenery has been taken to a completely new level in terms of art style and graphics. From a lore point of view, it’s one of the most unique places you can ever visit in this expansion. This area features great monster designs not only from an artistic perspective, but also gameplay where you have to use strategy and figure out the best way to counter them.

It wouldn’t be a Diablo game if Reaper of Souls didn’t feature new dungeons such as Ripotstry of Bones which is a sewer-themed dungeon that is full of furnace traps, giant vermin rats and cursed chest events. One of the coolest dungeons you will encounter in Reaper of Souls is Ruins of Corvus. Ruins of Corvus consists of Phantasms, Blood Golems, Scarabs and new dungeon events that award players with resplendent chests and mini-boss fights.

Reaper of Souls also brings in a new playable class which brings in an interesting style of play to Diablo III. This new class benefit a lot from their shields, they’re also able to use two handed weapons and shields at the same time thanks to one of their passive skills that players can choose.

Best way to describe this new class is that it is literally a walking tower that you don’t want to be next to, they’re very hard to be taken down, especially if you build yourself strictly tank without much damage. If you don’t enjoy tanking you may also go more of a DPS or better yet a hybrid.

"The Adventure Mode adds so much more replay value to the entire game. It's unique, exciting and fun, especially for hardcore players. This what is what truly makes Diablo 3 so much better than what it used to be. My biggest issue with the game was the loot itemization and replay value, thankfully all of this is now fixed thanks to Adventure Mode and the new Loot 2.0."

Another big feature of Reaper of Souls is the Adventure Mode along with the revamped loot system called Loot 2.0. Adventure Mode is a completely new way to play Diablo III. You’re able to play Adventure Mode once you have beaten Act 5 on any of your characters (separate from hardcore/soft-core characters). In Adventure Mode players are able to go to any act at any given time and complete bounty missions that award blood shards, Horadic Caches, gold and experience.

There are total of 5 bounty missions that you can do in each act which is a total of 25 bounties in a single game until reset. Completing all bounties will award players with Horadic Caches that grand a ton of loot, rift keystone fragments, gems and a chance of a legendary item when you open them. The missions themselves can range from killing a boss such as Skeleton King, completing a spawned event or killing a certain number of monsters in a particular area.

Once the players have acquired at least 5 keystone fragments they’re able to open up a rift portal that consists of different multiple leveled dungeons that contain random monsters and environments. In the rift the players have to defeat as many monsters as possible to fill up a progress bar on the right side of the screen, once the bar is filled, the rift will spawn a random Rift Guardian boss that can contain different powers. As far as the blood shards go, those can be traded in for random gear at a town vendor with a chance of a legendary. However, to be completely honest, majority of the time you never really get anything good. I feel like they could do much more with the blood-shards and find better ways to make use of them.

The Adventure Mode adds so much more replay value to the entire game. It’s unique, exciting and fun, especially for hardcore players. This what is what truly makes Diablo 3 so much better than what it used to be. My biggest issue with the game was the loot itemization and replay value, thankfully all of this is now fixed thanks to Adventure Mode and the new Loot 2.0.

Loot 2.0 now drops better items that are more tailored for your character. The legendary items also have a tad increase in drop-rate than they had back in vanilla Diablo III and majority of them were also revamped to be more useful and have special stats that can lead to new builds for each of the classes. However, some of the legendary items are still useless as they were back in the day and just feel like they don’t belong in the game at all because they’re just worse than rare (yellow items) and no one will ever use them.

"Reaper of Souls is a fantastic first expansion for Diablo III. It has greatly improved the game and just made it a lot more fun and much more replay-able than it was before. There is now more incentive to farm gear thanks to Loot 2.0 and the Mystic, despite the fact that some legendary items still need work."

The Mystic is a new crafting artisan who enchants and transmogrify your gear in Diablo III. This is one of the best things to ever happen to Diablo III. Have a piece of gear that’s almost perfect, but has a stat that is useless and you want it to be rerolled into something else? The Mystic will allow you to do just that at a price of certain mats and gold depending on the quality and level of the item you’re trying to enchant. Mystic can also transmogrify your gear and it works in a similar fashion as it does in World of Warcraft.

Once you find a piece of gear that you like, you unlock a transmogrify option for it. Players also don’t even have to keep the item with them anymore if they’re trying to save up their precious inventory slots. Got a cool looking legendary one-handed sword that you’d like to have for looks, but not the stats? Well, now you can transmogrify it for a specified amount of gold.

Last but not least, the paragon system has also been revamped and now allows for a much better character customization. As players level up in paragon levels they’re able to choose where they want to put in their points that they can earn from each level. There are a total of four categories including Core, Offense, Defense and Utility. You will be able to cap everything out at 800 paragon expect for your main stat and vitality because those are infinite and have no caps. It’s an interesting design and gives the players more reason to play the game and make their characters more powerful over a long periods of time.

The game features new social aspects with the clans and communities features. Clans work similar as they do in World of Warcraft, while they don’t give any gameplay benefits but they do make the game much more social and interactive than it was before.  Communities are more general and broad than clans. Want to meet someone that lives in the-same state as you? Well, try to find a community that’s around your area and make new real friends. I am not sure how far will this feature actually go but it’s an interesting addition nonetheless.

Reaper of Souls is a fantastic first expansion for Diablo III. It has greatly improved the game and just made it a lot more fun and much more replay-able than it was before. There is now more incentive to farm gear thanks to Loot 2.0 and the Mystic, despite the fact that some legendary items still need work. Adventure Mode is super addicting, random, fun and most of the time feels rewarding with the exception of the useless blood-shard currency that doesn’t really do much.

This game was reviewed for the PC.

Microsoft Game Studios corporate VP Phil Spencer is interested in getting No Man’s Sky on the Xbox One. He also mistakenly said on Twitter that Diablo III would be on the Xbox One (it’s already available for Xbox 360), while pointing out the types of games he’d like to see on the next gen console.

“Have you tracked No Man’s Sky? Not exactly the same genre but would be good on XB1.”

As for the genres of games he’d like to see on the Xbox One, Spencer stated that, “For me personally, I’m a fan of platformers and good story driven adventure games. I’m pushing for a lot of story in one of our unannounced projects. I thought story in Ryse, as an example, really helped game.

“Yea, Diablo III was really nice on XBOX One. Sold well. Would be good to get more iso dungeon crawls as well.” Spencer later clarified that he meant the Xbox 360 version. Was it still some sort of confirmation that Diablo III could be on the Xbox One? “Not by me, that’s obviously Blizzards decision and schedule,” says Spencer.

Would you like to see No Man’s Sky or even Diablo III hit Xbox One? Let us know below.

Loot 2.0 strongly improves upon the original loot system of Diablo III. This is the way the itemization should have been in the first place since the beginning of Diablo III. After playing numerous characters from scratch in the beta I was actually having a-lot more fun than I did in the original version of Diablo III. The system is much more rewarding, fair and it’s well balanced.When you kill mobs and item drops, chances are that that it has the appropriate stats for your class as opposed to something completely opposite. The loot drops less often, but the point is that when it does drop it’s actually useful and most likely an upgrade, especially during the early levels in the game.

"At the end of every act the final boss guarantees to drop a legendary, although it is still possible to get multiple legendaries throughout the act depending on how lucky you get."

The loot system also applies to the crafting system. Crafting is now actually useful and gathering materials are worth your time. You can easily craft items and get good stats/rolls within the first 5 or even less crafts. However, sometimes you can get a bit unlucky and not get what you want until 10 crafts later, but that’s usually not the case and it’s not really an issue. Another nice thing is that items of white and gray quality are not useless anymore because they can be salvaged for a new crafting material called “common debris” which are required for crafting items.

Loot 2.0 has also added many new secondary stats that never existed in the original game. The biggest update in the loot system is the fact that legendary items are now actually deserved to be called ‘Legendary’ due to their massive upgrade and truly unique stats. It’s quite exciting now to see legendaries drop items because they can totally turn the game around for you, especially when you are playing Hardcore mode and trying to stay alive and have as much advantage as possible early on.

At the end of every act the final boss guarantees to drop a legendary, although it is still possible to get multiple legendaries throughout the act depending on how lucky you get. One of the legendary that I have received during my playthrough was a mace that had good stats for my Crusader and an awesome proc that had a chance to cast chain lighting across multiple enemies on a hit. It did a decent amount of damage, looked cool and it made me feel more powerful as a low level despise the fact that I was only level 20 or so when I have received the legendary. Stuff like this is what makes the game fun and exciting. Blizzard has finally delivered the fun factor to their itemization system for Diablo III.

The paragon system has also received a major overhaul/update due to the majority of the players asking for state allocations. Blizzard has finally implemented a true stat allocation in their ever-popular Paragon system. The paragon levels are now infinite rather than 100 cap at per character. What’s even better is that all of your toons will be at the same paragon level because the system is now account-wide. However, Hardcore and Soft-core characters will have different Paragon levels depending on your toons on each of the two different servers. If your character is level 75 paragon on Hardcore then the rest of the characters on Hardcore will also be 75, but, if your software characters are 50 then they will also be 50 on soft-core. Long story short, the Paragon levels don’t share experience points across hardcore/soft-core servers.

"Your core stats can be raised infinitely, but the offensive, defensive and bonus stats each can only be raised by 50 times each."

Stat locations are divided into 4 different groups; Core, Offense, Defense and Bonus. Your core stats can be raised infinitely, but the offensive, defensive and bonus stats each can only be raised by 50 times each. Your core stats include Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity and Vitality, those can go up infintely. However, stats like Attack Speed, Crit Damage, Crit Chance can only go up by 50 levels each and get capped. It’s very difficult to judge on how this system actually works out in the long run due to the simple fact that this something that needs to be tested worldwide once the game gets released on March 25th. However, from my personal beta experience, it’s safe to say that this the step in the right direction and it makes the game feel a lot more progressive and interesting for those who enjoy the true end-game progression.

The Crusader is a brand new strength based class which are pretty much the Paladin from Diablo 2 with a couple of new tricks and unique gameplay mechanics. Playing the Crusader from start to finish multiple times was a complete blast. It was refreshing to try out something and exciting at the same time.The best way to describe this class is by saying that he/she is simply a walking tank that is able to pull off a decent amount of damage up-close and personal or even mid-range. One of my favorite Crusader abilities is the Shield Bash which allows you to charge an enemy and beat the living crap out of the demons. The shield bash does a lot of damage on its own and feels very powerful thanks to the fantastic particle effects/graphics.

Another one of my favorite skills is called Shield. The Crusader can throw it at the enemy and it bounces off from one to the next and then back to you causing tremendous damage and creates satisfying sound effects. The best part about this skill is that you can put a rune on it which stuns enemies every time it bounces off them making it one of the most useful skills for tough fights and its fun to use.

"Blizzard has created new graphical additions to their Diablo 3 engine that makes Act V feel more immersive than the previous acts."

The Crusader is also able to get on his mighty ghostly steed that runs super fast and can be used as escape mechanism to get out of difficult situations. This ability is called Steed Charge and it can also be used to damage enemies or even heal yourself and your party depending on the rune you decide to choose. It’s a super flashy skill that is fun to look at and it makes the Crusader truly stand out on his/her own. The Crusader has many more abilities that I can talk about all day, but that’s something that will have to be saved for our final review of the expansion. Overall, I was satisfied with this class and I am looking forward to playing him/her in the retail version of Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls later this year.

Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls adds a new Act to the main storyline/campaign of Diablo 3. The new Act takes place in Westmarch, which is a gothic-like city that has been taken over by Malthael. He is the next baddie that you will have to take care of in the expansion. Malthael has risen ghosts, undead and all kinds of evil things from the dark to wreak havoc upon Westmarch to destroy humanity and it’s the Nephaelms (the players in Diablo 3 lore) job to stop him from killing innocent life and protect the Soulstone from evil.

Blizzard has created new graphical additions to their Diablo 3 engine that makes Act V feel more immersive than the previous acts. First and foremost, the act is much more randomized both in exterior/interior areas, the lighting system is improved. My favorite part about this Act is the story and the setting/mood that it has to offer. It’s much more dark, gritty and evil than previous Acts and that’s how a Diablo game should feel like the majority of the time.

Blizzard has also over-hauled the core gameplay mechanics by adding a new difficulty system, scaled leveling and of course the addition of Adventure mode. Leveling is less tedious and much more enjoyable due to the fact that monsters now scale up with your character as he/she levels up. So for example, you can replay your favorite part of an Act and get yourself all the way to 70 without killing a single boss if you really wanted to.

"In Adventure mode, players are able to travel to any waypoint that exists in the game and jump across Acts whenever they want to at any during their adventure."

Levels are also not seperated by difficulties like they used to. You can play the entire campaign from 1-70 on any difficulty you want. Previously, you were forced to play through the entire campaign 4 times to get to 60. First you played on normal to get to level 32, then Nightmare to get to 50 and Hell to get to 60 and then finally you unlocked Inferno which was the end-game difficulty for Diablo 3. This will not exist anymore as soon as patch 2.0 hits live servers which will be available sometime before Reaper of Souls and will be playable for original Diablo 3 owners without the purchase of the expansion.

The new difficulty system now has Normal, Hard, Expert, Master and Torment which has a difficulty slider adjustment on top of it. Torment can only be unlocked by reaching level 70. The difficulty will also have higher drop rates for legendaires, it will also drop items that are exclusive to that difficulty and will be mostly played by players who want to experience the ultimate challenge and the best rewards possible in the game.

Exclusive to Diablo III: Reaper of Souls is the Adventure mode. Adventure mode is a completely new gameplay mode that can be unlocked after finishing all of the 5 Acts. In Adventure mode, players are able to travel to any waypoint that exists in the game and jump across Acts whenever they want to at any during their adventure. However, the main mechanic of Adventure Mode is the bounty missions and nephalem rifts.

When you start playing Adventure Mode you are randomly given 25 different bounties to complete, 5 in each Act. Bounties can range from killing a specific/certain amount of mobs in a particular zone, completing specific events and so on. Once you complete all 5 bounties in an Act you will be given a item that will grant you access to Nephalem Rift. Nephalem Rifts are randomized dungeons that have random environments, bosses and monsters. Once you complete a Nephalem Rift you will be given a special bag that you can click on in your inventory to see the rewards you have received.

This is a completely new way to play Diablo III and farm for items and this mode is where most end-game players will spend their time in for the ultimate loot hunt. Although, the Adventure mode was a tad buggy and had missing bounties in the beta on Act 5, but that’s because everything is still in work-in-progress and hopefully will be fixed in the final release. Despite the current technical issues in Adventure mode, it’s probably one of my favorite additions in the expansion besides the new Act and the new Crusader class.

The beta for Diablo III: Reaper of Souls has left a positive impression on me. Thanks to the new loot system, Act 5, Crusader class, difficulty system overhaul and Adventure Mode there is a lot to look forward to talk about and experience. Look for our final verdict of Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls in the coming months as we get closer to the release of the expansion.

The much lauded (while in beta) free to play action RPG that does Diablo better than Diablo or even Torchlight has finally officially launched today on Steam, after a public testing period in excess of a year. Developed by the New Zealand outfit Grinding Gears Games, the game is now finally available to the general public.

Of course, its general release doesn’t mark the end of the development period- the game will be updated with new content, which includes new skills, items, microtransactions, weapons, balance fixes and patches for glitches, and power gems, every two weeks routinely. Or at least, so the developers promise.

Path of Exile is a great action RPG that should scratch the itch for a Diablo style game for those who were let down by the relatively underwhelming Diablo III or Torchlight II. Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more coverage on the title, including, hopefully, a full review soon.

Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, the expansion for the troubled third installment in Blizzard’s storied franchise, will be hitting the PlayStation 4, Blizzard has confirmed, and it will be making its public debut at Blizzcon, where it will also be fully playable.

The Blizzcon PS4 demo will have players explore the haunted streets of Westmarch as one of our five original classes, or test their mettle as the unyielding Crusader. Blizzard is promising innovative controls for the game using the DualShock 4, and its touchpad technology, as well as some unique social features, utilizing the extent of PS4’s connectedness.

Blizzcon 2013 will start on November 8 2013, and then continue on through the weekend. Many major announcements are expected, including the next Starcraft II expansion after this year’s excellent Heart of the Swarm, the next World of Warcraft expansion, details on Blizzard’s MOBA, and maybe a look at their upcoming MMORPG. Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more coverage and information.

"Diablo III is a truly satisfying gaming experience in which the player really gets a sense of progression with their character which after hours of play transforms into a deadly weapon of mass destruction."

Diablo III for consoles is still the exact same divisive installment of the series that it’s proven to be on the PC bar a few unwanted features such as the Auction House left out for good measure. Every piece of content in the PC version is complete on consoles including all major updates since the original version’s release. What we’re getting here is the pure essence and experience of Diablo III.

Diablo III is a truly satisfying gaming experience in which the player really gets a sense of progression with their character which after hours of play transforms into a deadly weapon of mass destruction. Starting off as either one of the 5 classes available; Barbarian, Witch Doctor, Wizard, Monk or Demon Hunter you’re immediately tasked with the effort of fending off the evil hordes of hell that have besieged the familiar town of New Tristram.

"Combat wise, Diablo III has made the leap over to consoles with aplomb. The intense battles and quick-thinking tactical decisions that need to be made on the fly in order to triumph over your enemies work extremely well with a gamepad."

The key gameplay element with Diablo is a the plethora of Loot that is dropped with the inevitable slaughter of the endless enemies this world has to offer. Loot can be anything from a new piece of armour, money, magical items and weapons. All of these build and continue to develop your character into a walking arsenal. There are no skill trees to navigate through in Diablo III, all progression feels natural and controllable as the player ultimately has the decisions of which loot to use and how to craft their character through their journey.

The decision to bring an offline mode to consoles cuts out all those nasty DRM issues Diablo suffered on the PC and ushers in welcome additions of LAN capability and up to four players offline. This truly harkens back to the days of old where we’d once sit on a couch surrounded by pizza boxes slogging through dungeons with our friends in multiplayer.

Combat wise, Diablo III has made the leap over to consoles with aplomb. The intense battles and quick-thinking tactical decisions that need to be made on the fly in order to triumph over your enemies work extremely well with a gamepad. The six abilities for your character are mapped to the face buttons with the analogue stick controlling the direction of the attack. Diablo has a generous auto-aim feature, which does come in handy when you find yourself quickly outnumbered and needing to pick of a few enemies to make an escape.

While graphically the game won’t leave any jaws dropped the art design and sheer beauty of the environments you will find yourself in certainly will. There is no doubt that despite the rough animations and the odd dodgy texture or two Diablo III is still a great looking game.

Diablo III has made the perfect jump to consoles and whilst lacking the ability to create or access any mods it is certainly the best and more distilled version of a fantastically epic game.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 3.

Porting a game designed for the PC to a console always raises concerns about whether the integrity of the original experience would be preserved. It happens with any RTS, for example. It happened with Minecraft. And now, with Diablo III, a game that was designed with the PC interface and keyboard/mouse combo in mind, is getting ported to the PlayStation 3, so there are obviously concerns about whether it will have suffered any changes.

Well, as Blizzard tells us, we have no reason to worry, the core experience will not be compromised.

“Since a big part of Diablo III is the loot, you can imagine that you do need a robust inventory system, and that had to be adapted to console. It’s safe to say that we redid every UI screen in the game—but we spent the most time on the inventory and the skills UI, which are the screens you interact with the most,” said Mathew Berger to The Examiner, senior level designer for the game.

“The UI in general was a full-time task for a core group engineers, tech artists, and designers, who iterated over all those screens several times before they settled on the ones that worked best for the game. We didn’t cut any menus, but we did make sure to only have as many screens as was needed for the console game. The whole point is to play the game and not spend time in menu screens.

“Every decision we made with regard to the UI always kept in mind that idea of trying to get you back to playing the game as quickly as possible, trying not to break your flow, to distract you from the real meat of the experience, which is bringing mighty pain to the next poor monster that lies in your path,” Berger said.

So yes, every menu would be redesigned, but every menu would still be there. Which is great.

Diablo III’s launch and subsequent post launch support period have been a bit of a debacle for Blizzard, as some stupid decisions aimed at maximizing revenue and profit, such as the inclusion of the Real Money Auction House, and the rebalancing of the entire game based around that, or the always online connection requirement (see also: SimCity) led to massive backlash against the game and a forum life less than a tenth of its predecessor’s.

With all that in mind, Blizzard has announced the first expansion for the game, Reaper of Souls, which might manage to fix some stuff with the game, and might even redeem the game in many fickle gamers’ eyes.

“From the beginning, Diablo has always been about the struggle between good and evil, and Reaper of Souls explores the darker notes of that conflict,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment in a press release. “This expansion also represents a big milestone in the ongoing evolution of Diablo III, with key enhancements to the core gameplay, along with a new act to experience, a powerful new character class, tons of new loot, and even more end-game options. We think players will love playing Reaper of Souls, and we can’t wait to get it into their hands.”

So it looks like they are fixing some of the core functionality of the game. We’ll see.

Blizzard Announced Diablo III during the PlayStation 4 reveal back on February 20th, 2013. According to Blizzard their team had “just received the new console generation development kits, so the translation to those platforms is yet to be done.” This suggest that the game won’t be ready for launch on the day of the PlayStation 4 release.

However, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 version will be arriving on September 3rd this year. Meanwhile, the PlayStation 4 version will most likely be coming out sometime in 2014. Diablo III has been out since May of last year on PC and has received tons of patches, bug fixes and new features overtime. Blizzard promises that the console counterpart will be up-to-date just like the PC version.

Let us know if you’re looking forward to playing Diablo III on your PlayStation 4 sometime next year, in the comments section down below.

Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more news and updates.

Source: DiabloFans

Diablo III’s Production Director John Hight says “For us, the thing that’s exciting about the new console is actually the controller. That’s where it all begins, that’s where you develop that relationship with your character on the screen.”

He continues explaining, “One of the things that we’re excited about with the controller is the touch pad. Diablo is a pretty deep game, and we don’t like a lot of overload on the buttons, we wanted to keep it really simple so that you can get to the things that you need to get to fast. We think the touch pad’s going to give us a lot more opportunity to make that interface a lot easier.”

Lead console designer Josh Mosqueira decided to talk more about the game’s touch pad controls and says, “We now have a different way that the player can interact with the game. For a game like Diablo 3 that has a lot of cool inventory things you’re doing, just the possibility of the track pad is really exciting and we really can’t wait to dive into it and make it as awesome as we can.”

Blizzard also stated that they have built the UI and the inventory screens “from the ground up” so that they can meet the requirements of an easy controller usage.

Check out the video below:

Let us know if you’re excited for Diablo III on the PlayStation 4 in the comments below.

Check back on GamingBolt for more media and updates for future Blizzard titles.