Sunday 25 August 2013

Personal Review of Reapers of Souls, after around 40 minutes of gameplay.



So I played Reaper of Souls today for about 40 minutes on Gamescom in Cologne. The new class Crusader, plays a lot like a monk/barb mix, but I only played up to Level 40, which means, it might change later on. Will try to play a bit more in the next couple days to figure it out.

The art work and graphic detail is great as usual from Blizzard, but I think they even improved the detail level and atmosphere compared to vanilla diablo 3.

Monster design seemed to be improved as well, they are a lot darker and more ghulish, but imho it fits the game very good. A bit annoying was that tons of enemys where only spawning while running by them, needing you to stop running and wait for them before you could attack and kill them. It was really like 70% of the mobs in the beta, so I really hope they change that, because imho it interrupts the gameplay.

The two boss fights in the beta were kinda okay, nothing specials, usual destroy A) before you can damage and kill B) etc.

Also the level design for the couple of beta levels (only about 15 min per run, so not that much levels) looked improved, no endless dead ends, alternative routes to goals etc.

Loot Experience was a lot improved, there were barely any whites, a few blues, some yellows and three legendaries in 20 minute run. Even found one of the new legendaries: 




They removed a lot of statistics from the basic inventory view and focus completely on two values:

"Toughness" - which I assume is something like EHP from all the calculators that we know and love. "Damage per Sec" - which is the usual added damage per second

Of course 40 minutes was way to short to figure out exactly how they are calculated, but you also only get those two values on items to compare them to what you have equipped.

Sadly couldn't see or test any of the other announced features like:
  • Level cap being raised to 70!
  • Paragon changed, now account wide and allows you to allocate stat points.
  • New artisan to change the appearance of your gear.
  • Enchanting - re-roll affixes on legendaries.

I guess they are not in the beta yet, but maybe I find something in the next days. Hope that helps to get a feeling for Reaper of Souls, I look forward to the release.

edit

Totally forgot, there is also a new gem: "Diamond" and if I remember correctly from my mind it has at least "+ to all resis" on something, not sure anymore what the other were, will try to get the details tomorrow.