Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Collector's Edition

I felt like I should post an updated review for this game since the top reviews are pretty out-dated. As a returning player who hasn't played much since the first season (season 4 is currently in progress) I can give a pretty good perspective on the changes and value of the expansion. Let's start with the changes (as of patch 2.3): - No more rift shards for normal rifts - No more realm of trials for greater rifts - Kanai's Cube added to the game - Additional area added to the game - New legendary gem (bane of the stricken) added - Bounty rewards completely changed - Legendary crafting revamped These are some pretty big quality of life improvements for people who haven't played RoS in a while, and for people who haven't played the expansion at all...it's a completely different game than the original was. Adventure mode was already the primary means of leveling/progression, and now it's even more friendly for people just starting out. The addition of Kanai's Cube makes gearing even easier initially but still makes it a challenge to obtain BiS pieces with ideal affixes and perfect rolls. ----------------------------------- Rifts - Previously you needed to complete bounties in order to obtain rift shards to run normal rifts, then you needed to complete the trial and level up your keystone. If you wanted to run in a group you had to all have the same level keystone, it was a pretty annoying system design. That's all gone. You no longer need rift shards, meaning you can run rifts from level 1 without being forced to do bounties (although there are actual rewards for bounties now!). You also no longer complete a trial but instead get to choose what level to complete based on what you've completed previously and keystones no longer level. Since you no longer level them that means playing with a group is as simple as choosing a level and everyone accepting (you each need a key). It means you will need to farm greater rift keys more often but they drop very frequently in higher torment levels and it's very easy to get geared to that level. Rifts are significantly more enjoyable now with the extra torment levels (7-10) and legendary drop rate feels good, on higher torments you will frequently get at least several drops per run and greater rifts above 40 (pretty easy to get to) drop many. ----------------------------------- Bounties - The removal of rift shards means that they had to revamp the rewards for running bounties, they also added additional missions and changed how bonus acts work. Bonus acts are no longer random, they rotate and each run for an hour, so if act 1 is the bonus it will remain the bonus every new game until the hour is up. However, when you complete a bonus act a *NEW* act becomes the bonus act. That means you can complete all 5 acts and receive a bonus for EACH one in a single game without remaking. Since the rewards are actually worthwhile now it makes running a full set more meaningful. In addition, you get two caches when you complete a bonus act. The first has a chance to drop an act specific legendary, along with the new act specific crafting mat and some random crafting mats. The bonus cache includes more act crafting mats, gold and some blood shards. I'm not sure which cache drops them, but you also get the crafting plans (gems/blacksmith) from the bounty rewards. The act specific crafting mats are *VERY* important now because they are used for the new crafting system and also for Kanai's cube which I'll talk about shortly because it's one of the biggest changes in the game. You will want to learn to effectively split farm bounties, where a group of people each complete a mission on their own, it makes it possible to complete a full set of bounties in roughly 15 min when it could take an hour or more solo. ----------------------------------- Crafting - There are no more legendary crafting mats in the game, so no more farming purple mobs over and over hoping to get the rare drop needed to craft something. Since the patterns are no longer world drop (as I mentioned above they are bounty cache rewards), that makes getting a set of crafted gear much more reasonable. You run bounties as you level or split farm them when you reach 70 and that will allow you to make a starter set of legendary gear to help you jump into torment and start farming the class sets. In addition, they have consolidated the crafting mats and there are no longer pre-60 and post-60 mats. That means that a level 40 legendary will turn into the same crafting mat as a level 70 legendary, so while you're leveling you will want to salvage everything and save those mats for when you're 70 since they can be used to craft gear and in the cube as well. Just make sure you hold onto any Puzzle Ring's or Bovine Bardiches, don't salvage those! ----------------------------------- Kanai's Cube - The single biggest change to the game since the expansion itself. Kanai's cube allows you to use various materials to perform different actions with items to your benefit. It allows you to change one stack of basic crafting mats or gems into another, you can "re-forge" a legendary which will re-roll it as if it had just dropped, you can extract legendary powers (affixes) to equip them to your character, you can convert a set piece into another piece of the same set, and most importantly: you can upgrade rares into legendary gear. Each "recipe" requires different mats, many of which include the basic crafting and act specific mats. Upgrading a rare costs 25 Death's Breaths, and 50 each of the basic crafting mats (yellow, blue, white) and will turn a specific 70 rare item into a legendary or set piece of the same type. That is incredibly important, it allows you to target farm weapons and armor. For example, a Barbarian currently wants to be running the Bul Kathos 1H mighty weapon set for Whirlwind builds and since there aren't many 1H mighty weapons you can typically upgrade anywhere from 5-10 rares (250 DB) and get both. That's a single evening of play-time, when farming the set traditionally could take dozens of hours or even weeks of play time. Reforging is also a big deal because it allows you to take an exceedingly rare item that dropped with really bad stats and re-roll it until you get what you want. Get Hexing Pants on your Barb but it rolled with Int? Instead of enchanting Int to Str you can re-forge it and then are still able to enchant another stat. The one caveat is that if you re-roll an ancient item (the rare upgraded variant, 1:10) it is NOT guaranteed to be an ancient, you have the same 1:10 chance. It does also work the other way, if you roll a normal item it CAN become an ancient so that is a good method of getting a very good item if you farm up the expensive mats to do so. Kanai's cube also has a couple special recipes, entering a puzzle ring by itself will destroy it and open a portal to the goblin vault. The goblin vault on higher difficulties can drop anywhere from 30-100 million gold, a bunch of items, gems and legendary gear. Getting someone to carry you through a T7+ vault is a GREAT way to get a jump start on a new character so that you don't have to worry about gold in a new season and also gives you the boon of the hoarder legendary gem. The bovine bardiche opens a portal to the not a cow level that will always include a couple pool of radiances and is a great way to get shrines before pushing higher greater rifts with a group. Finally, you can enter a piece of gear and a level 25 gem of ease (legendary gem) to remove the level requirement from a single piece of gear (level requirement 1). This allows you with a bit of patience and OCD to create an entire level 70 gear set with level 1 requirement for powerleveling alts. I have personally greated a set of crafted gear (cains, borns, etc) with exp boost and it takes under 30 minutes to solo level to 70 in torment 6, although if you are playing HC you will want to drop that a couple levels and play a bit more careful since losing all that gear would be DEVESTATING since it requires leveling at least 9-10 gems for a full set. ----------------------------------- Overall Impressions: Reaper of Souls is a significant improvement over Vanilla Diablo 3. The addition of seasons, adventure mode and the change to paragon levels and the switch from a trade-based AH to smart-loot has made the game significantly more fun. Seasons introduce new gear sets, legendary gems and keep things fresh by resetting things every few months while consistently rolling your progress into your non-seasonal progress. Act V was pretty fun but the real star is adventure mode. Bounties are far less tedious now than they originally were and both normal and greater rifts are fun without becoming a burden for people who only play an hour or two a couple nights a week. It takes a relatively short period of time to reach max level if you are familiar with the game and gearing with the new options (blood shards, cube upgrades) in addition to the crafting revamp is easier than ever. I have estimated that within 20 hours you can easily be speed running the newer torment levels (7-10) and be above GR 40 solo on most classes. From a balance perspective they have done an admirable job of presenting different sets/builds as viable for even high-level play. I have seen at least 2-3 different builds for each class I play become popular for progression over the course of the past few months, something that was unheard of in previous seasons. Class balance is still a bit hit or miss but that is to be expected and shifts from patch to patch, each class is able to attain GR60+ for the seasonal conquest with EASE in the duration of the season. The graphics and atmosphere are still good, although the graphics have never been the emphasis of the game. The game engine has some slight issues with performance in group play with certain builds (rend barbarian, helltooth witch doctor) but the issues are relatively minor unless you're running on a toaster and have been acknowledged and are being worked on for a future patch. The only actual criticism I have for the appearance of the game is the lack of UI functions like cooldown timers, DPS information, buff icons, and the basic things that other Blizzard games (like World of Warcraft) have either integrated or in add-ons that they have not added to Diablo. They can be obtained through a third party overlay, but its use is most likely (read: almost certainly) against the ToS and while no one has yet been banned it is definitely use at your own risk. I think RoS is definitely worth the money, although having been out 1.5 years I think at this point a $25-30 base price point and $20 or less on sale would be more appropriate. If you had the original Diablo 3 and never got the expansion I would HIGHLY recommend it, virtually all of the negatives that were present have been addressed at this point and they are continuously working with the community to move forward. I don't always agree with their decisions but they are one of the most proactive developers in the industry and they take their community feedback seriously.

Got this for my brother. I myself have been playing for a long time. I'll try my best to explain this to newcomers. I'm assuming you haven't bought the original diablo 3 in this review. Ill add the expansion review in under that. Diablo 3: Honestly its a very imcomplete game without the expansion. You can get to level 60 and have access to most of the classes(Demon hunter, wizard, monk, barbarian, witch doctor). The main drawback is you pretty much only have story mode to do and that gets old quickly. You can't play with friends who have the reaper of souls expansion unless you have it yourself. Overall its still a fun game for a playthrough or 2 solo. Diablo 3, Reaper of Souls:You gain access to level 70, an extra chapter in story mode, you gain the ability to play as the Crusader, and you gain adventure mode once you've beaten story mode(including the extra chapter). I'll try to explain adventure mode the best I can. Basically you have access to the entire game world, you can jump between chapters, do any boss fight, explore any side caves. The appeal to adventure mode is you get quests that give you various crafting items and keystones to unlock a randomly generated dungeon called rifts. Rifts are my main reason for playing adventure mode as the map is random along with the enemies. If you manage to hit the difficulty max and still don't feel challenged they have special ranked rifts where you have 15 minutes to complete a rift of various difficulties(you choose before you start with a special keystone). This special rift is attached to its own leaderboards for you competitive types. Perhaps my favorite thing so far with the game is the developers are keeping in touch with the community and adding new items and enemies every few months at no extra cost. They add seasons which are basically a separate account where you can start fresh with friends. Seasons typically have special items that can only be accessed in seasons at first. These seasons come with there own leaderboards and typically last 3 months. Overall I'm glad the developers continue to add to this great game.

The game is great. Played about 6 hours yesterday (3-25-14) and leveled the Crusader to lvl 15 as well as my Wizard to lvl 64. Love the mousepad, the artbook, the soundtrack. It's a great game. Note: If you do buy this, just go to Battle.net and register the product code. The download/update from February did the install for you. So the physical disc is kinda worthless. It took me 10 minutes trying to figure out why I can't install the expansion. To get the digital goodies, after you are ingame with any toon, down in the bottom left corner there is an envelope, click it to claim your angel wings, spectral dog, and 2 books for plans for the Mystic (which I have yet to find). With the wings and the dog, leave them in your chest and they can be put on any toon. After you have them in your inventory, just click on it to activate then put it back in the chest. I would also like to add, people that are butt hurt about the game, if you don't like it then don't play. I played WOW for a year and paying the monthly fees was enough for me to quit. I have never had a problem with the Diablo III servers crashing, glitching, or anything. Not that Blizzard is the best company in the world, but they are a company and they are in it to make money. Just like sports franchises, if you don't like it then don't participate. I love this game, don't really like Starcraft, and don't want to pay-to-play WOW, so guess which game out of the 3 I have bought, installed, and play. This is a review about the game not about the politics inside of running a corporation. Stick to the review of the game.

Ok, so no secret that the original Diablo 3 was terrible. It played pretty bad, it was horrible when it came to loot, and the leveling up system was dull. In comes the expansion to right everything wrong with the original Diablo 3. AND I must stress, it RIGHTS everything that was wrong. Basically with this expansion, you have an entire new Diablo 3. Aside from the graphics, pretty much everything gameplay wise has been rebuilt from the ground up. The loot has vastly improved where it's actually fun to collect now. The, way that you earn new skills and spells by leveling up has a better feel to it now due to the fact that gear has been changed around to benefit most of your skills. What do I mean? You can find a bunch of gear that all increase the amount of damage of a specific spell you are using so now that spell has a new meaning than before where you might of not used it. It makes for greater build varieties and experimentation with things you might of not used otherwise. The auction house has been removed which brings back the feel that everything is up for grabs now. No longer do you feel cheated or that only people who paid the most have the best gear. The playing feel has been leveled out now and anyone and everyone has a shot at the very best gear the game has to offer. Monster density has been improved. No more patches of dungeons or areas outdoors where you are running for great amounts of time that you don't spot any monsters to kill. Now they are greater and more varied. The new Adventure mode that opens up after beating act 5 is a great welcome. You can just run around from way point to way point accomplishing little "missions" if you want to call them where you earn greater rewards and tokens that eventually allow you to open up what they call, "Nephalem Rift" portals. This is basically a huge dungeon run that allows you to collect even greater rewards while you kill monsters combined from many different acts in dungeons that are mixed and matched together from all the acts. Reaching the new level cap of 70 and above continues to allow you to spend points in your paragon levels that give you an additional feeling of achievements after reaching the level cap. The new Crusader is an awesome addition to the Diablo 3 cast and feels great. His hits feel solid and his spells do serious damage. Putting aside the fact that he was the only new character to try out with the expansion, I was hooked directly to him for 50 levels straight before trying any of my other characters which I enjoy just as much. The Crusader is just real fun and fits perfect. Honestly, I love everything they did with the expansion. What I originally thought was Blizzard's worst game they put out has done a 160 degree about face and can hold it's head up proudly again with the Diablo name. My only complaint that I think everyone could agree was having only 1 new additional character. Even Diablo 2: Lord Of Destruction gave us two and it was great having choices right out the gate of the expansion to decide which to go with. Having only 1 new character means everyone goes right for it, but luckily it was a great new class so Blizzard can be forgiven. I only suspect they gave us 1 character because they will put out another expansion before Diablo 3's time is over and will obviously give us another additional character. Until that time, we have a great expansion that EVERYONE that owns Diablo 3 must get to fix EVERYTHING wrong with it.

The Diablo series has long been able to polarize gamers. Kind of like the New York vs. Chicago Great Pizza Debate, most gamers are either in love with the game or hate it. I, fellow reader, am one of the few who is in the grey zone. I eagerly purchased the Collector's Edition of the expansion when it was first available on Amazon, and after playing for hours today, I have a verdict. Graphics & Sound First and foremost, this expansion is beautiful in its dreariness. The city of Westmarch is huge, especially as compared to the city environments of New Tristram (Act I) and Caldeum (Act II), and the devastation as wrought by the minions of Maltheal (called Reapers) is detailed in the various homes and alleyways. The two years since the release of Diablo III was not wasted by Blizzard; the tweaks and upgrades to the graphics and noticeable. With that being said, some of the enemy body-types have been recycled, but by-and-large you are encountering new monsters with a bevy of attack styles and debuff abilities. I will expand more upon the playing mechanics below. As to the sound, there is not much to say other than it is an appropriately epic soundtrack to suit the dire state of the world in Diablo: Reaper of Souls. The haunting melodies fit the game so well that there are times I don't even notice that they are there. As with every game that Blizzard does, the music, sound effects, and general mood/tone is spot-on. Gameplay Here is where players arm themselves to fight to the death about the quality of the game. To make this simple, here are some Pros and Cons: Pros 1) As long as you have a character that has both reached level 60 and beat Diablo III on Torment difficulty, you can choose to play the new chapter on any difficulty level that you wish. As a consequence you can choose an appropriate difficulty level for a character that may not be decked out in as much epic gear, or for those battle-hardened characters that lay down the BOOM, you can crank your Torment levels and lay waste to the minions of Malthael. 2) Starting with Act V, you have a chance for gems to drop that are marquis cut (and account bound due to the awesome stat boost). The harder the difficulty level, the better the chance of the drop rate. This is great if you are short on cash to upgrade the older gem cuts from Diablo III, or if you want to power up a weaker character quickly. 3) To compensate for the Auction House being disabled, the quality of the loot drops has improved tremendously. When Diablo III first came out, even after leveling three different classes to 60, I only got one Legendary drop, and it was nothing that I could use (for the character that got that drop). Playing today, I got two legendaries on my Demon Hunter and one on my Monk; in both cases the items were at least spec'd for my class, if not an outright upgrade to my current gear. This is worth mentioning because... 4) Loot drops will primarily focus on gear/stats that benefit the current character that you are playing. While there may be a few pieces that would better benefit another class, at least 95% (if not more) of the items that you will find will be something that your current character can use. So in short, if you are playing a Demon Hunter (which focuses on Dexterity), you will get very few, if any, drops with Intellect as the main stat. 5) Repairing armor will no longer be a debate between buying more potions/upgrading a gem/crafting a piece of gear or paying for the repair. Armor repair prices have been reduced dramatically so that the player can focus on obtaining new content rather than fixing their gear. Along the same lines, potions now heal a set percentage of your health (60%), so the same potions are used across all levels. Accordingly, potions are now much cheaper. Cons 1) If you are a true fan of the series, then the price for the Collector's Edition is worth the money paid. In addition to the new content for Diablo III, you also receive some minor perks for other Blizzard game franchises. That being said, the expansion is only ONE act long, and while that act takes a while to clear, the fact remains that you're paying the same price for an expansion that offers less content than the original Diablo III game. But, I want to note, the act is very large, and I still feel you are getting a lot of replay value, just like with the initial game. 2) While a new "Hero" class has been introduced (the "Crusader"), as compared with the earlier Diablo II expansion (Lords of Destruction), you are not being given much variety. This is especially noticeable due to the price of Reaper of Souls, the fact that there is only one Act, and you are paying full price. I am hoping that Blizzard will release content updates through the life cycle of this expansion that includes new Hero class characters as well as new story content. Conclusion I am sure that this review is TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read), but I will try to keep this portion brief. While I feel that the "Pros" outweigh the "Cons", I admit that the price tag for Reaper of Souls is hard to swallow. With the Auction House out of commission, it does force people to actually grind and find new items themselves, and even with the generous gold drops from monsters (especially in the higher difficulty levels), crafting the best quality gems and armor is expensive. Yes, the gameplay mechanics are still fun, and new online play options to do Treasure Hunts and/or Key Warden do give a lot of diversity to this title. So if you are a fan of PvP or playing with friends/strangers online, you will have a lot of content to play once you are done with the Act V storyline. With new Adventure and PvP modes, Key Warden and other gameplay styles, there is a lot of stuff to do that doesn't require you to play the story as the only choice to build up your character, a somewhat bitter pill with the original Diablo III. After the past few weeks of gameplay, I can say without a doubt that Reaper of Souls is an absolute joy and a great fit to the Diablo franchise. The environments for Act V are huge, the monsters a bit harder to beat, but the variety and awesome quality of the drops that I am getting keep me laughing and having a great time. Just be aware that unless you enjoy playing with other people, this title may not be the best investment at the current price. Otherwise, there is a lot more content than the storyline, and while the tale being told is fun, everyone knows that at its heart, Diablo is all about bragging when you get that awesome loot drop; Reaper of Souls carries on that tradition and gives you an enjoyable romp for your Nephalem. Collector's Edition Perks As with any game, the justification to pay a bit more for the Collector's Edition is something that only die-hard fans can justify. I have the collector's edition of Diablo III, and I did invest in the collector's edition of Reaper of Souls. Here is a brief description of the items: Invite-A-Friend Gameplay Codes for Blizzard Games Blizzard included gametime codes for their other franchises: WoW & Starcraft (and I cannot find the other card for some reason). Art Book Beautifully illustrated hardback book of the art of Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, includes armor, monster, and some background designs. Just amazing! Soundtrack All of the environments of Reaper of Souls; hauntingly beautiful. Mousepad Reaper of Souls mousepad; rubber back and tough top. Has a nice surface for laser/optical mouse usage. "The Making Of" Video A nice montage of the team behind Reaper of Souls; how they made it, the ideas, putting it all together. Pretty fascinating, honestly. Game Case The Reaper of Souls game case with your Collector's Edition Code. This code will unlock the bonuses that you receive for other Blizzard franchises; for example: if you have an account in World of Warcraft, a special pet will become available to you as a thank you for buying Reaper of Souls. Overall Impression Everything included is of a high quality and individually worth more than the $20 price difference that the Collector's Edition was priced at when first offered to the public. If you are a true fan of the Diablo franchise, I feel that it is more than worth that difference. The box that the set comes in is very nice, not only to the eye, but durable enough to store everything so that the contents will not be damaged. If you want to spoil yourself, the investment is minimal and has a lot of eye candy. Personally, the soundtrack alone is worth the $20! If the gameplay is all that you really care about, save yourself the extra cost and just go for the standard edition. No one can fault you for that!

There have been a lot of negative reviews about this game. They have been calling it a simple DLC that shouldn't cost as much as it did. They said it was too short and didn't provide very much to the game. This almost stopped me from buying this expansion. But I am glad I did because it has brought new life into the game. When the original came out, I played it for a while but lost interest in the game. This expansion changes the game dynamics in a pleasing way. The new character s enjoyable to play. There were small tweaks to some of the boss fights that are improvements. The look system has been fixed. I realize that there was a small fix implemented in the Loot 2.0 patch to the original game but this expansion further improves that effort. You have more of a reliance on crafting and using the black smith. The drop rate for unique and set items has greatly increased. I was really worried about having too much of an advantage from playing the game early on when the auction house made OP items cheap. This game successfully adds a whole new chapter to the game. The items you will find will be much better than anything you had on the original game.

I'm a pretty hardcore gamer and I believe the rating for D3:RoS is now justified as a 5/5. My rating for the original D3 is probably somewhere between a 3 and 4. I played D2 forever, and I rate that a 5/5. And, of course, those of us that even bother reading reviews for this are probably D1 fans. Let's get to the points… 1) This is not World of Warcraft, Neverwinter Nights, Final Fantasy or Elder Scrolls (Skyrim). Diablo was and has always been a hacking, slashing, casting, demon-killing, loot-collecting game. The cinematic that we are given is only enough to get a glimpse of the backstory, but it is still far better than the previous Diablo games. It is unfair to compare this game's storyline to another game where a storyline is much more prevalent and expected. 2) This is not specific to the expansion itself, but instead an overall improvement of the game. Each class now has multiple, playable specs. This promotes the re-play value of the game. I actually have multiple wizards so I can play as an ice mage, or fire mage, or lightning mage. The skills have been changed enough for all classes that it promotes unique character builds. The new gear additions also have interesting/fun attributes which contribute to the new creativity aspect this game now has. 3) The gear drops are much improved. For the casual gamer, the drops are now geared towards the character that you have. For the more hardcore gamer, there is a new addition to the game (expansion only) which allows you to both change the attributes on a piece of gear as well as how that piece of gear looks. Let’s face it, Diablo has always been about loot, and the loot has gotten much better AND customizable! 4) Different game modes. Yes Diablo 3, and other diablos, has always had this. But, the new adventure mode brings a new aspect to the game. Again, casual players can hop on and play for 10 minutes without feeling like they’ve left something behind whereas the hardcore players can run around destroying maps full of mobs hoping for lots of loot. Whether re-running the campaign for achievements, performing and collecting bounties, creating infernal machines, or closing demon rifts, the replay value is enough to keep people engaged now. Cheers – hope to see you in the game!

Is : BORING, after just 1 week of playing. YES: the legends are coming more rapid then before, good graphics of the game, but still boring. Think the AH should have been in place or at least to be able to change items with my friends , rather than be able to do that within 2 hours time frame !!!!!! horrible.... For what are friends for?: to help each other with items.. and so on.. Think if they do not do something to keep us playing is a waiste of money. Better play PoE.. or Grim.. or whatever.. MOBA games which are more fun.... than again grinding same bounty's and rifts and..???? what's actually fun in it? to make a new caracter CRUSADER?... Dh seems to be fragile still, barb class is doing well same as before, monk same, witch the easy-est maybe to play togheter with the crusader which had received a lot of buff's. That being said , you pay same money for a new game, withoiut getting the same satisfaction back a week later. Pro-: Improved meka's of the game overall. Too good graphics; so good that if u party with a witch-wizz-crusader u can see a damn thing on the hole map( blind play and hopefull u have good gear and do not die in the meantime/.) -story is better, but not worth 40 buks's to play and is over to fast, too soon for such a "good game" -no more RMAH but also no Ah which in my opinion is bad , as u are left with crafting tools= u can't share items , not even with your friends as they become account bond. - crafting is way better, but useless as I can;t share my items with my friends. Cons: no Ah at all... hard times for the HC players( the most dedicated to the game actually) aldo the drops have been improuved a lot. - no value for your gold also -as u can't buy nothing with it. - u really do not get the value back spending 40 $ for a game which is not changed much( or completly new as we deserved) . - no PvP... nothing major that we've expected... no idea why they do not listen to the comunity as other do for ex. TL 2 ( funny game) or PoE - BORING -BORING-BORING my major complain................BORINGGGGGGGG pls do something and make this game more challanging or rewarding..... something to make me play this game more and more and more.... as D2.....