ACTIVISION Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition

Diablo III's Ultimate Evil Edition includes Diablo III and the Reaper of Souls expansion. It's a fun hack and slash, that can be enjoyed solo or with friends, online or in your living room. However, in an effort to simplify the game to appeal to a wider audience, Blizzard created some flaws.Gameplay: 7/10When the game is fun, it's great, but there are times when I actually died because I was falling asleep. Choose from 6 Character classes with a variety of special attacks and a nearly infinite array of weapons. Then you slash and cast your way through dungeons filled with hordes of demonic creatures. As you're slaying them, they'll drop loot in the form of new armor, weapons, gold, and magic gems. If you find better loot than what you are using, equip it, and become more bad ass. It's fun, easy, and rewarding!Unfortunately, the enemies that you encounter in the earlier part of the game are too similar. You'll either fight 3 tough guys or 10 weak guys, all of which can be defeated by holding A (attack), and occasionally unleashing a spell with X, Y, or RB. You also generate health per hit or kill, so you rarely need to heal. The gameplay feels like you're a bug zapper and the enemies are mindless moths flying into you. It's so easy and the enemies are so similar, even in Hard Mode, that you won't have to make any strategic decisions during combat until much later in the game. I fell asleep 3 times playing as a barbarian.The later Quests vary the speed, damage, and powers of the enemies, and you'll have to make quick decisions during combat, which is great. And they're tough, so you'll need to dodge and heal as well.Graphics: 9/10For this type of game, the graphics are really good. Blizzard took a lot of heat when they announced that the dungeons were not going to be randomized like the previous Diablo games, but the decision to not randomize them allowed the developer to optimize them. The landscapes look great. Diablo is all about killing and looting, and not cartography, so this was a pretty good move.Story: 9/10The story is a good one and it actually has some emotional appeal. It's told in amazing cutscenes and in game dialogue. It's the best story I've seen in a hack and slash.Sound: 10/10The combat FX punctuate the action and the music is a blend of heroic and creepy. It's idea for an action horror game.The Upgrade System: 7/10The Skill Trees are gone and have been replaced with a perk system. If you reach a certain level, you unlock a new attack. If you keep advancing you unlock optional properties for that attack (more damage, stun enemies, gain health when attacking...)The problem with Diablo's old skill trees was that they didn't level up with the character. So, if you spent skill points on Magic Missile, which does 10-20 damage, this skill became useless when you were at a high level and enemies had 1000 hit points. In order to address this, all of your skills and special attacks are based on the weapons that you carry. If you have very powerful weapons that deal out a ton of DPS, damage per second, all of your offensive spells are great. If your weapons are weak, all of your offensive spells will be weak. Unfortunately, this makes your DPS the most important character stat by far. It simplifies the game too much.There are 4 types of Attributes:Strength gives the character +1 Armor and +1% Damage for the Barbarian.Dexterity gives the character a chance to Dodge, and +1% Damage for Monks and Demon Hunters.Intelligence gives the character +0.1 to all Resistances and +1% Damage for Witch Doctors and Wizards.Vitality gives the characters more health.Because DPS is so important, the only stat that really matters to your character is the one that gives you a damage boost. If a Barbarian finds a powerful item, but it has no Strength bonus, but a pretty good Dexterity and Intelligence Bonus, it's pretty useless to that character.Loot: 6/10You find loot everywhere. Unfortunately, most of it is Junk, and will be much weaker than what you have. You'll end up selling most of it in bulk back in town.Later in the game, you can melt down the loot and have a blacksmith craft you powerful items, or visit the enchantress who can change a stat. So, if a Barbarian finds a great item that has +500 intelligence, he can change it to +500 strength. The loot has lots of stat bonuses associated with them. More damage, find more gold, randomly cast a friendly guardian to help you, gain more experience per kill, etc... If you have a great weapon and want to swap out one of these stats to make it even better, you can.The loot is also classified by a simple icon system. At a glance, you can tell if a sword is better or worse for your offense, defense, or special stats. A green triangle = better in that category. A red triangle = worse in that category. 2 triangles = even better or worse. 3 triangles = a whole lot better or worse. This system is great because you don't have to spend 5 minutes deciding if the new gauntlets you found are worth picking up by comparing all of its stats to the gauntlets you are wearing.Maturity: M for fantasy violence and gore, no sex or swearing though.Value: 10/10It's only $40 and if you want to play through all of the character classes on the 10 different difficulties with your buddies online, there's 1000 hours of gameplay here.Once you finish the main quest, you unlock Adventure Mode, where there are bounties placed on the bosses. You can teleport to their lairs, skipping all of the story elements of the game, and take out the boss for tons of experience, gold, and loot. This is a great way to keep advancing your characters even after you finish the game.A paragon system also becomes unlocked after you break level 70. This allows you to customize your stats and fine tune your characters. You can add more health, more damage, more magic, more speed, etc... And the beauty of the paragon system is that if one character goes up 10 levels in the paragon system, those skill points are available for every other character on your account and every new character that you create. Your gold, magic gems, and stored items are also available for every character that you have.Overall: 8/10Diablo 3 is very fun at times, boring at others. If you want hours and hours of mindless hack and slash fun with your friends, then you can't go wrong here.Buy it if you love games like Borderlands, Diablo, Titan Quest, etc...Buy it if you're going to take advantage of the coop modes.Rent it if you have about 20 hours to blow through the main quest.Avoid it if you are into tactical RPG combat like Baldur's Gate, Divinity, or other D&D style games.Avoid it if you want really deep character customization like the Witcher 2, Dragon's Dogma, or Skyrim.

D3 is a very fun game, and I played it exclusively for two months straight. Still it's not the best action RPG on the market. D2, Titan Quest and Torchlight were all better than D3, in my opinion. At times D3 seems to be the exact same game as D2, just redone with prettier graphics. Many of the level layouts don't feel randomly generated, like D2 did. I really don't care for the character progression system and I thought D2 and even D1 did character progression was better. Blizzard is all about balance, and they don't want anyone exploiting (or overloading) one skill vs another. Unfortunately, the ability to develop your character to fit your play-style really takes away from the fun of action RPGs for me.Some of the achievements are grindfests. The worst achievement requires you to raise all 6 different character classes to level 70. The Barbarian and Monk were two classes I really didn't enjoy playing that much. Luckily, it's not as hard to level a character as D2 was. This achievement could've been better if the game didn't have the same feel/look to it everytime I played. The level randomization is something I feel the developers of Torchlight had a much better grasp on, than those who replaced them at Blizzard.Despite my complaints is still a very fun game to play, pick it up when Amazon has a sale. Oh yeah, and the one improvement I love that was implemented with the console version was removal of harder levels. In D2 you had to beat the game on normal, then on Nightmare, then on Hell. D3 originally had a 4th level to beat to get your character up to max level. Now everything scales with your character level. You can still adjust difficulty, but no longer are you required to play progressively through fixed level settings.

This game and expansion are well worth the money... as long as you have friends to play it with you.I bought D3 on the PC when it first came out. I played the whole thing solo and made it through the storyline once and decided I was done with it. It was fun, but I couldn't see why anyone would play past that point.I got it on the console when a buddy told me he was getting it, and I convinced my dad to get it too (we're all big Xbox live players), and I found out why people play beyond that point. Then, we got the expansion, and I lost another hundred hours to it.It's a loot grind. Plain and simple. So the real joy is finding gear that help you and your buddies delve into harder and harder modes. It's also helpful for you or your buddies to look online at what CAN be found, so you can get excited about what might be coming up. Then, when you get it, it's fun to show off to your buddies, and if you find another, you can give them one of yours (the one that's not as good of course).I have every character at level 70, plus a couple at level 70 in hardcore mode (where if you die, you don't regenerate), and I'm finding other things to play after my dad and buddy don't get on as often and after we've all dumped upwards of 3 or 4 hundred hours into it. Well worth the money, again, so long as you have buddies to play it with.

After playing this on my PS4, I have to admit being shocked at how good the Xbox 360 version looks and plays. The gameplay is identical to the PS4, and the graphics, while not quite as sharp and clearly at a lower framerate, nevertheless look and feel pretty close to the same. You'd notice a good bit if you played back to back, but if you only own a 360, don't hesitate to pick this up. It's really something pretty darn cool.The game includes both the original full game and the expansion pack, and while neither has an especially groundbreaking story (if you've played Diablo or Diablo II, this is basically the same game, just way prettier), it's a lot of fun to play.Play through the first time on normal mode, and explore like crazy. You'll easily hit level 50+, and have a ton of great gear. Then, move up to the next level and play again. You'll get even more good stuff and continue leveling *from* the 50+ you started at, unless you start a new character. And even if you DO start a new character, you're still pretty darn hooked up, because your main character can share money and loot with your secondary characters via the in-game "stash" treasure chest.The game is also a ton of fun for people to play together. My fiancee and I are having a lot of fun playing Diablo III together, kicking butt and taking names. Okay, I lied. We take no names, we just kill bad guys indiscriminately. It's how we roll.

I am a great fan of dungeon crawlers. I have heard lots of Diablo but I never tried it - I had a very weak PC so I only play games on the xbox console. It has been a while since I played hack 'N' slash (last ones were Dark Souls 1 and 2). I immediately set the game to the highest difficulty available (expert, I think) and started playing.The good:* huge world and lots to explore* lots of monster types* okay plot* lots of armor/weapons to buy/loot* ability to craft weapons/armor ( crafting slots)The bad:* ok graphics (but it didn't really bother me)* Lame character dialogues* I become way too powerful too early* No real challenge - no sense of achievement* I died about 5 times, overall* I think the game is not DID (dead is dead). Upon resurrecting yourself (town, current place of death), enemies retain the damage they took (pretty certain about that). If indeed the case, further decrease in challenge.* many mini bosses (and their mobs) are much more difficult than big bosses* boss enemies are ridiculously easy* I played as a demon hunter and I guess there are various builds. But apart from a fewI was disappointed with the game as it didn't pose any challenge and there wasn't any specific strategy against different types of foes. Perhaps Dark Souls made me a hardcore gamer, but this game suffers what many RPGs out there suffer from: getting too powerful way too early and having more gold that you can possibly spend - lack of challenge and sense of achievement. Perhaps there is a value in playing the game again after unlocking higher difficulties and perhaps with a different class. However, I did beat the game in 2 days and I don't think I'll play it again or continue with the expansion (Reaper of Souls).