Future Classic: Diablo III
modern games you’ll still be playing in years to come
With a new Switch version out there’s never been a better time to revisit Blizzard’s hit role-playing sequel
Diablo III The Background
Following up one of the most revered action RPGS of all time was always going to be an uphill struggle for Blizzard. As with other high-profile returns of recent years like Doom and Final Fantasy XV, the game went through several iterations before the team reached something it was proud to call Diablo, leading to a whopping seven years of development before the game was first revealed in 2008, then a further four years of development before release. Some fans weren’t overly enamoured with the art direction at first, with numerous petitions decrying the apparent shift to a more colourful palette almost reminiscent of Blizzard’s other big hit, World Of Warcraft. Like so many similar outcries, this response was wildly exaggerated and Blizzard took it in its stride – in fact, the final game shipped with a secret level called Whimsydale in response, a cartoon world full of rainbows, unicorns and murderous teddy bears. While the game itself proved to be a solid and engaging lootfest, it wasn’t until the 2014 Reaper Of Souls expansion that it really hit its stride, with the massive update adding several bottomless new modes that meant that the loot grind never had to end.
The game
Reaper Of Souls can be seen as the turning point for Diablo III – the moment it went from being a good game to a truly great one. The core game had the loot system and skill variants to facilitate many awesome character builds, but it didn’t really offer that much in the way of replayable content to put those creations to use. Reaper Of Souls introduced a pair of solutions to this issue, namely Adventure mode and Rifts. Adventure is basically a freeplay option, letting heroes dive into any of the maps from the campaign to complete bespoke challenges and bounties. Tilebased maps mean that layouts and enemy placement differ on each visit, some variants bring with them additional missions or other chances for extra loot, while completing whole sets of tasks in each act offers yet more rewards. On top of this, Rifts take things a step further by producing unique dungeons at random from all of the game’s available locations
Some games have ‘classic’ written all over them from the moment they are released, but others need time to earn that status. With the recent Switch release being perfect proof of how far Diablo III has come, it’s time to confirm its legendary status Words by Luke Albigés
and monsters. The basic versions, Nephalem Rifts, are tied to your current difficulty level (the options for which were also vastly expanded in Reaper Of Souls) and offer plenty of shiny loot as you battle your way to the Rift Guardian, but it’s the super-challenging Greater Rifts that really provide endless action and improvement. These have their own difficulty levels independent of that chosen for the rest of the game, with success within the allotted time unlocking higher tiers and potentially even greater rewards. Greater
Rift ‘pushing’ – the act of just seeing how far through the ranks you can get – is almost a game in itself, an endless loop of slight gear improvements and gem upgrades that you can easily lose months to if you go hard on it. Pushing beyond GR60 transcends the games maximum difficulty level, Torment XIII (which, for reference, itself ups base monster health by over 2 million per cent and enemy damage by a factor of almost 300), so only the best builds will even get to that point, let alone beyond it.
Fortunately, the game has other systems in play to help determined adventurers reach their full potential. The Paragon system is the best example of this: once you hit max level with a character, all further experience goes into an account-wide Paragon level pool with each level translating to a minuscule stat boost of your choice to help further improve your build. As these additional points rack up into the hundreds and even thousands, though, you start to see significant benefits and ones that apply to all your max level characters, making playing as one rewarding for all of them. Since each offers their own twist on the hack-and-slash actionrpg formula – Wizard and Demon Hunter play mean ranged games, Barbarian, Monk and Crusader excel in close quarters, and Witch Doctor and Necromancer have pets and status ailments do the work for them – it’s great fun to bounce between them, especially in multiplayer where these roles synergise brilliantly. It’s pretty amazing that the game’s performance keeps up with the mayhem with four characters, dozens of enemies, countless explosive effects going off, and loot and debris flying all over the place, but that’s just part of the incredible sense of overall polish that makes Diablo III stand out from its peers. There are plenty of games like it, sure, but we’d struggled to name one that was nearly as slick as this.
WHY IT’S A FUTURE CLASSIC
When we talk about games being ‘classics’, we’re usually referring to the fact that it’s as good to play today as it was at launch. Diablo III is an odd case, then, because it’s already a lot better. While it’s technically still possible to play the vanilla game, most versions playable on modern platforms are allinclusive packages that contain all the new hotness that transformed Diablo III into a best-in-class loot grind action RPG. Whether you want to return to the game today or ten years down the line, it’s one of these versions that we’d recommend – Reaper Of Souls made the experience genuinely bottomless with so many new ways to plays and new things to strive towards, and it’s a game that has been in our rotation since launch and will be for years to come now we can play it on the go thanks to the Switch release.