Platform: Switch
Publisher: Blizzard
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment Inc.
Genre: Action, Adventure, RPG, Party
Series: Diablo
Players: 4
Release Date: November 02, 2018
When Diablo III was originally released in 2012, it was the first game to truly make me want to get into PC gaming. At the time my family only had a $300 pre-built desktop from HHGregg’s that was laughably far from meeting the minimum requirements. I remember being convinced that a game like Diablo would never come to console, and that if I ever wanted to play it I’d have to buy a new, powerful computer.
It didn’t take long for Diablo III to be ported over to PS3, Xbox 360, PS4, and Xbox One with the Reaper of Souls expansion and its Ultimate Evil Editions. Now, in 2018, Activision and Blizzard have ported the game one more time to the Nintendo Switch as Diablo III: Eternal Collection. Even though I ended up playing the game on PC after all, Diablo III on Switch has been the most fun I’ve had massacring demons on a console and a handheld since DOOM.
The Evil Among Us
Diablo III: Eternal Collection contains the original 4 acts of the base game in addition to the Reaper of Souls expansion contained in act 5. For the sake of not spoiling the Reaper of Souls expansion, I will only discuss the plot of Diablo III’s main 4 acts.
Diablo III sees you playing as a a nephalem, a race of people born directly from angels and demons. As a nephalem, your character has the potential to wield and manipulate incredible amounts of power. Aided by series staple characters Deckard Cain and Tyrael, and newcomers Leah and Adria, your character goes on a journey to defeat the growing diabolical threat by various evil powers at work. Across 4 acts, the story will take you from undead infested forests to beast-riddled deserts to insanely grotesque and corrupted demons in the depths of Hell. As your character travels to new worlds, gains extraordinary power, and defeats armies of hellish enemies, the mystery of Diablo III slowly unravels.
In addition to in-game scripted events and voiced characters, the narrative is presented through beautifully produced CGI and sketched cinematics. In 2012, these cinematics were absolutely breathtaking and helped make the horrifying demonic threat appear realistic. They still hold up even today thanks to their high production values and attention to detail.
As far as narratives in video games go, Diablo III: Eternal Collection makes an effective use of rhetorical frameworks to pique your curiosity and compel you to follow the story to its conclusion. By throwing you into a world with ongoing mysteries, hundreds of questions, and an ominous history, Diablo III’s narrative rewards you by slowly revealing its deepest secrets. By the end of it, however, I believe it is fair to say that the story is a bit all over the place and over the top. From the cheesy voice acting to the dramatic motivations conveyed by both the heroes and villains, Diablo III’s narrative is enjoyably incongruous.
Growing Wrinkles in the Face of Death
As far as ports on Switch go, Diablo III: Eternal Edition is rock solid. Frankly, it better be. Diablo III is six years old at this point so I think it’s perfectly reasonable to expect nothing less than excellent performance from this title in docked mode. The real surprise in performance here is found in handheld mode. Dungeon crawling, loot-based experiences (specifically Diablo) are characterized by copious amounts of monsters and oceans of information flooding the screen from one moment to the next. The game performs at a stable 60 frames per second in both handheld and docked, with a hiccup occuring in only the most insanely crowded altercations. UI elements like health bars, damage numbers, and ability icons translate surprisingly well and are sufficiently legible on the Switch’s 6.2-inch display. Things do get cluttered when playing local co-op in handheld mode, but it is a small price to pay for a full cooperative multiplayer dungeon crawling experience on the Switch’s relatively small screen.
Outside of the game’s solid performance, Diablo III: Eternal Edition on Switch isn’t completely up to par with its PC and current-gen console counterparts. Characters, pets, and armor sets have noticeably lower textures especially when viewed up close in the pause and character menus. Environments are less detailed and lack sophisticated lighting elements like bloom and ambient occlusion found in other versions. Even though it is a bit of a bummer that the Switch almost always has compromises when it comes to graphics, I am glad that Activision and Blizzard prioritized performance over presentation.
Diablo III: Eternal Collection is delightfully repulsive in its environments and enemy designs. Diablo III will take you from the ominously foggy forests of the Weeping Hollow to the Hellish staircases that surround the Tower of the Cursed. One of the more interesting locations the game has you play through is defending the wall of Bastion’s Keep from Azmodan’s demon army. The contrast between the red, bloody demons on the gray and snowy white floors of the Bastion is striking. Diablo III’s enemy variety and designs are remarkable. Some enemies might be hard to differentiate like the common skeleton, ghoul, imp, etc., but other enemies impose a sense of power and threat in their design and attacks. Enemies like the repugnant (and somewhat cute) demonic tremors found in the dungeons of act 3 or the towering and statuesque Morlu haunt my thoughts. It’s always fun to see what enemies will appear in the next act, and to see if they are as tough as they look.
Dungeon Crawling: It’s About the Loot, Not the Journey
Diablo is a dungeon crawling, loot-collecting, action RPG series that began in 1996. The genre is characterized by exploring labyrinth-like environments littered with objectives, enemies, and loot. Diablo III’s gameplay loop is simple; you receive a quest, explore the assigned areas, defeat hordes of evil forces, gain experience, collect loot, and upgrade your character. Diablo III manages to make this loop incredibly addicting by constantly rewarding and empowering your character through unique skills, varied loot with meaningful attributes, and the potential to challenge you further through increasingly punishingly difficulty levels.
One of the greatest things about the Diablo III experience is the variety of skills available for its seven distinct classes. You can choose between male and female versions of the Barbarian, Crusader, Demon Hunter, Monk, Necromancer, Witch Doctor, and Wizard. Out of all of these classes, my favorite ones to play are the Necromancer and Witch Doctor. These two classes make use of summoning skills like Revive or Gargantuan to create armies out of the corpses of fallen enemies or the living dead. It’s incredibly fun to use the Necromancer’s Corpse Explosion ability after defeating multitudes of enemies to clear the room of any remaining threats while the Witch Doctor’s Soul Harvest allows you to literally suck the life out of your enemies. Classes like the Barbarian, Crusader, and Monk have active skills that are more close quarters combat focused, while the other four make use of ranged skills. In addition to these active skills, Diablo III features runes that serve as modifiers to your main attacks. For example, Necromancer’s Command Golem can be made out of flesh, ice, bone, decay, or blood depending on the rune you choose. Passive skills play a large role in customizing your character as well as they serve to give your characters additional boosts and enhancements that otherwise would not be available through active skills or loot.
Speaking of loot, Diablo III will reward you with tons of it. Even though a majority of the loot in these types of games will be ultimately replaced by something better in the short term, Diablo III makes loot identification and switching easily accessible. Based on the color of the item on the floor, you’ll know whether its rare or simply junk. Assigning loot is done easily through the character menu where you’ll be able to see the way loot will improve your characters stats and other attributes. It’s important for me to have armor and weapons that will always be healing me passively or per hit. Attributes like strength, dexterity, intelligence and other properties like attack speed and critical hit success rates are affected by the armor and weapons you choose to equip. Loot configuration goes even deeper when you consider the artisans available at the hubs like the Blacksmith, Jeweler, and Mystic. They all exist to further enhance your armor and weapons through repairs, gem allocations, and enchantments.
The Paragon Point system is another way of leveling up and upgrading your character in Diablo III: Eternal Edition. After hitting the level cap of 70, your characters earn experience towards their Paragon Level. Paragon Levels go on for infinity so theoretically, you can keep improving your character for as long as you keep playing them.
If you’re a hardcore Diablo player, then all of those ways of upgrading your character and managing your resources will come in handy when tackling the higher difficulties. Diablo III: Eternal Edition has three main modes: campaign, adventure, and challenge rift. The campaign is the standard story mode that can be played for higher difficulties from Normal all the way to Torment XIII, where monster health and damage is exponentially more powerful. Adventure mode, in general, allows you to play through the game with the ability to freely teleport through all available waypoints with no story elements or quests available to bother you. This mode allows you to explore the worlds of Diablo III freely as you grind to your heart’s content. Adventure mode features various modes within itself as well known as Bounties, Nephalem Rifts, and Class Set Dungeons. Bounties are essentially special missions available at random that will either ask you to hunt a special enemy/enemies or to finish an event in designated areas.
Nephalem Rifts are randomly generated dungeons made up of various monsters and areas. There’s plenty of rewards to be had in this mode, and it is by far my favorite because it provides the freshest Diablo III experience for those who have experienced the campaign so many times already. Adventure mode is rounded out with Class Set Dungeons, a mode where you’re given an armor set and various objectives to complete in a challenging dungeon. I didn’t enjoy this mode as much as the others because it forced me to play in ways that were out of my preferred play style. Challenge rifts are pretty much ghost races against other player’s times through Greater Rifts. It’s a fun race against the clock type game mode that offers an unusual way of experiencing Diablo III.
There are even more ways to play Diablo III: Eternal Collection thanks to seasonal play, hardcore modes, and a simple PvP mode. Seasonal play in Diablo III is a fancy way of playing the game for a certain period of time to earn exclusive items and to see how high you rank on the leaderboards. You’ll need to start fresh with a new character every season because once the season is done, your character is retired. Speaking of retirement, the hardcore mode in Diablo III: Eternal Edition literally treats your character as a mortal and once it dies in battle it is permanently lost after that. This is a true test of skill for Diablo and can be done in conjunction with seasonal play. Finally, PvP is available in this game as a simple “let’s settle this” 1v1 or free-for-all type experience with your party. This mode is clearly not the focus of a game like Diablo III so its importance is mostly novel.
Diablo III: Eternal Collection on Switch has a few exclusive items to differentiate it from the other editions. From Zelda items like having a Cucco as a pet, having access to a Triforce portrait frame, or wearing special wings, you can also have your armor transformed to look like that of the infamous Ganondorf (a great fit for Diablo). Diablo III happens to make use of amiibo as well with Blizzard going as far as making their own Loot Goblin collectible NFC toy for the game. Since the amiibo isn’t available yet, I used my Smash amiibo to test out this feature and it rewards you by summoning loot you can use/sell. The Loot Goblin is expected to transport players to a location with more treasures and rewards, making the amiibo valuable for the most loot-rabid players.
Concerns
One noticeable missing feature on the Switch version of Diablo III is the lack of in-game communication. You cannot communicate through voice or text with your party without using an external method of communication. I’m not sure if to blame Nintendo or Activision Blizzard for this oversight, but if you plan on dungeon crawling with friends online you will have to arrange another way of talking to each other throughout your sessions.
Conclusion
Diablo III: Eternal Collection has enchanted me once again. I’ve spent every free moment of my past week devouring the game: making every possible effort to collect more loot, level up my characters, and crawl through dungeons with my friends and family. Even though it is a game I’ve played multiple times before, Diablo III still manages to satisfy an itch that other titles never seem to accomplish.
While the game’s growing age and novelty is a concern for a player who’s played the game multiple times before, Diablo III: Eternal Collection is a great way for newcomers to experience the armies of Hell at home and outside for the first time. I cannot overstate how enjoyable, and detrimental to my productivity, it has been to play Diablo III on long commutes or while relaxing in bed. Diablo III: Eternal Collection is a phenomenal cooperative multiplayer experience that spends every moment rewarding you for indulging in its enthralling universe and combat systems. Diablo III: Eternal Collection is available at retailers and on the Nintendo eShop for $59.99.
Review Copy Provided by Blizzard
