Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Expansion Set - Mac, Windows

"Reaper of Souls" basically turns Diablo 3 into an entirely new game! New enemies, crazy loot, insane challenges, and the addition of the Crusader class all work to put Diablo 3 on top of the gaming heap! I would have liked to have seen some more of that glorious animation between sections of the game, but that's a small quibble for an otherwise excellent game.

For the sale price of $20 definitely a great buy. I do not recommend spending $40 when it is not on sale. New level cap, new zone, new class a lot of fun.

Diablo 3 was a long awaited breakthrough in the franchise, and the expansion pack continues to make it a very fun game to play. If you've played at all since the beginning of March, you'll notice many of the changes already. Rare and Legendary items are easier to find, potions are easier to work with, there are new crafting materials, and many of the character's abilities have changed. What you get with Reaper of Souls builds on that. You can reach levels above 60, while still keeping your Paragon bonuses, and there's a whole new Act to play. If you like bashing monsters, especially with your friends, there's certainly no shortage of that. You'll find that crushing mobs with your new 60+ powers incredibly satisfying, and these powers bring characters closer to proper support roles for parties. If that isn't enough, there's a whole new character class, the Crusader, to master. Unfortunately, what you'll also find in Diablo 3 is a story which is just as predictable and illogical. Things like Maltheal letting Tyreal live at the beginning of the story to Kormac seriously believing the head of his order had nothing to do with his kidnapping are predictable and leave you scratching your head. If you want to play the game without all the dialog, however, you have two new game modes to choose from. There are no cutscenes to go through, and in adventure mode, you can choose whatever act and quest you would like to start in. Nephalem rifts add on to this element, and the game has successfully recaptured the spirit of the original Diablo where the point was to go bash monsters and get cool loot. The new loot system gives you some really powerful characters, and you'll find many more useful items in drops (even if bats still do drop plate mail). However, it makes merchants even more useless, and crafting items isn't nearly as satisfying anymore because you can find things that are far more powerful in elite drops. With the disappearance of the auction house, it leaves you wondering why crafting even exists. Overall, Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls is a must-have for anyone who loves the Diablo 3 franchise. The expansion is choc full of new stuff, and will leave you (and me) wishing we had gotten more sleep on Monday morning.

While I did enjoy Diablo III, I ultimately didn't stick with the game do in large part to the redundant content. Diablo III forced you to play through the same content over and over again to try and get better gear. The main problem with that model being the content wasn't so replayable (Azmodan's threats wear thin quickly), and often the gear drops weren't useful for my class. Even crafted gear cost a large sum of resources and weren't necessarily useful for your class. Because of all that, it was more rewarding just to buy whatever you needed off the auction house, which would give you something you know you wanted for your gold. In Reaper of souls, the auction house has been removed. But the crafting mechanics and loot algothrims have been redone, such that you acquire loot which is suitably stated for your class of choice. This makes it far more likely a crafted item or random drop will be useful for your class, and helps ease the loss of the auction house. However, you still have to spend time farming the game. The new Act V brings some variety to the farming process, although the story is standard Blizzard fare. Those familiar with WoW will be all to familiar with the "This character has been corrupted, now you must fight them" style of storytelling. As Arthas, Illidan, Malygos, Neltharion, etc. before him, the former Angel of wisdom has been corrupted and now must be fought. Uninspired story notwithstanding. Act V provides some atmospheric environments and interesting new enemies. Upon completing the ACT V the first time, adventure mode becomes available, that brings a lot of variety to the process of leveling through gear. While not perfect, Reaper of Souls does address most of my complaints with the original Diablo III. And with adventurer mode, the replayability is increased by orders of magnitude. So grab your friends and try out Reaper of Souls, which ultimately gives a much improved and complete Diablo III experience.

I was pretty hesitant to get the Reaper of Souls expansion after being so disappointed with Diablo 3, but Blizzard did a great job of fixing all the things that disappointed me. The new Crusader class is solid, and all of the old classes get very useful (and powerful) new abilities. The Loot 2.0 patch is amazing. You actually get drops you can use, instead of stupid items like Str/Int drops left and right for a Demon Hunter. I feel like it's more like old D2, when you would just do dungeon runs to see if you got a new item drop that really improves on your current gear. One thing that is a real stand out to me is the music. In most games, music is so boring or annoying I either don't even notice it, or I turn it off completely, but the music you hear when you go through the storyline in Act V is awesome. Be aware that when you play solo, pretty much every drop you get is account bound--you can trade it between your own characters but not to other players. If you are in a multiplayer game, you have 2 hours during which you can trade items to players who were in the game when something dropped.

It was entertaining enough, but I think it could've been spread through 2 more Acts, instead of just the extra Act V. The new Adventure mode, as well as the limitless Paragon levels, helps keep its replay value up. One of the new features, being able to alter one attribute slot from an item, is very welcome (similar to crafting, you pay the materials and gold; it provides 3 random options from a restricted list (e.g., you're not going to get a Resist All attribute from a Thorns damage slot) to go into that slot). Of course, I wish you could change multiple attributes (once you change an attribute slot, only that slot can be changed; all others are "stuck"), but it's something. Legendary items are easier to come by (still rare, but not like before where it was one out of a million to get a really weak Legendary (though there are still weak Legendaries)). Also, no more fearing that you missed a Legendary drop because there was too much stuff going on and it was off screen because it now shows a star on the map as well as an orange beam of light where the item is. Unfortunately, if you want to give an item to a friend, Legendaries have to be given within a few hours (there's a timer) before it becomes account bound and items with an attribute that was modified are account bound. I'm fairly unlucky with drops, so I always feel like my attack and defense are lower than my friends' at the same level, with them almost doubling mine it seems. Still, I feel like I'm less prone to dying a lot now, so I don't feel like I'm just tagging along while my friends do all the work.

This expansion is a must have for anyone who even remotely still plays Diablo 3, it makes the game much more fun and playable. The new adventure mode has you running 5 missions in each act every time you make a new game to earn bonus rewards or go into a randomly generated dungeon called a rift to just kill and kill and kill swarms of enemies for fast experience grinds. New gems are available to place in gear to make it better and new crafting mats are specific for items level 61-70. Act 5 of the story line doesn't have much replayability with the advent of the adventure mode and the story for act 5 is rather hard compared to the previous acts, but most people only play in adventure mode anyway after they initially beat act 5 and get access to adventure mode.

With Reaper of Souls Blizzard has fixed alot of the problems with diablo 3 that made it not fun. Instead of mindlessly grinding the same area in the campaign over and over for random drops now you can do bounties and rifts for your random drops. They are a nice change of pace. Bounties give you 5 tasks to complete in each act and upon completion you are awarded with a bag of random items which may contain a legendary. Rifts are randomly created "dungeons" where mobs from any area and act can show up. After you kill enough monsters you get to fight a rift guardian (which is just a super powered boss monster) and they drop a ton of items again with increased legendary chances. Downsides to the game it is more random what gear drops you cannot target specific legendaries for the type of build you are going for, which is disappointing. Since there really is no trade mechanic anymore and almost everything is locked to your account when you pick it up you can't even trade that awesome barbarian thing you found on your monk for something good for the monk. Overall if you like action rpgs or the diablo franchise this is a must buy. Plain Diablo 3 is terrible without Reaper of Souls. If you are looking for something more challenging or less rng dependent there are plenty of other action rpgs on the market for PC so check one of those out.