I was only level 12, barely a couple of hours into my first runthrough of Diablo III when it happened. My Witch Doctor was neck-deep in battle on the Fields of Misery, bloody body parts, loot, and gold spraying everywhere when suddenly a ring hit the ground with a distinctive clang, shining a bright, amber shaft of light into the air. It was Leoric's Signet Ring – a Legendary drop. With its whopping 23% bonus to experience gain, it would stay on my finger beyond even the 30 some-odd hours it took to reach level 60. When I finally find a better ring to replace it, I'll pass it down to my next character to speed them on their travels through Sanctuary. This game changing drop, the first of what would be many, embodies what makes Diablo III on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 so special. It creates a cycle of tangible reward that had me hopelessly and happily trapped like a hamster on an action-RPG wheel.
Oftentimes, games that make the transition from PC to consoles flop around awkwardly like a fish out of water, but Diablo III navigates the stream confidently. Not only is it flush with all the PC version’s content, but it comes with few of the drawbacks. Gripes about the always-on internet connection requirement? Gone. Cancerous auction houses? Vanished. The weak story and corny writing? Okay, that’s still here. But, far more important are the tweaks that Blizzard has implemented to make Diablo III the game it always should have been, one that hits most of the notes my inner Diablo fan craves while welcoming newcomers with open arms. The action is every bit as beefy and bombastic as ever, but the loot game has changed dramatically, and for the better.
It calls itself an action-RPG, but Diablo III is an action game first and foremost. After all, whether in single-player or co-op with up to three other adventurers, you spend most of your time wading through hordes of skeletons, zombies, succubi, and all manner of other awesome-looking hellspawn, usually with little respite between scraps. With so much constant action, the transition from mouse and keyboard to gamepad could easily have been a disaster, but instead, it feels natural and – in some ways – even better. Moving about with the left analog stick feels very direct, creating a sense of connection with my avatars as they bob, weave, and generally wreck shop.
The new dodge mechanic on the right stick adds a level of mobility that really jives with the way enemy encounters are designed. This goes double for the many great boss battles, where rolling to evade their massive onslaughts feels so useful it's hard to imagine playing without it. Targeting is handled by simply facing in your foe's direction and letting the auto-aim figure out the rest. It sounds like playing on autopilot, but for the most part it's a surprisingly elegant solution. Ranged characters may have minor issues picking a specific target out of a tightly packed mob, but it never got me killed or led to frustration. And it certainly didn’t make decimating the denizens of the Burning Hells any less satisfying.
But then, I don't know that anything could. No matter which of the five classes you play, you’ll have a vast array of skills to choose from as you level up, each more fun to use than the last. Barbarians hit with a palpable, limb-severing violence that’s instantly gratifying, while the Witch Doctor’s more artful setups made me feel both crafty and explosively destructive all at once. And boy, do Diablo's cronies know how to sell a hit. Skeleton parts litter the air as I detonate my zombie dogs, eviscerated corpses reel from my Monk's lashing tail kick, and defeated demons rear back and scream to the heavens as they disintegrate from the ground up. It's all incredibly well-animated, instilling the combat with an irresistible sense of raw, kinetic force.
Of course, all that spectacular carnage is a lot to handle, especially when the screen is filled from top to bottom with the teeming hordes of Hell. Getting it all to happen while mostly maintaining 60 frames per second comes at a price in terms of graphical fidelity. While this version of Diablo III isn't ugly by any means, it largely gets by on the strength of Blizzard's art department, whose skill is evident in every loose cathedral stone and gnarled tree branch. As strong as the art direction is, there's just no ignoring the fuzziness of the textures, or (relative to the PC version) some toned-down spell effects. Even those concessions don’t keep the framerate from dipping a bit when the action crescendos, but overall, Diablo III’s performance is impressive given how joyously chaotic the battles can get.
Less impressive, at least in terms of their looks, are the new gamepad-friendly menus and interface. It might seem petty to knock a game for using a plain-looking font for the sake of readability, or revising the iconic inventory screen into something more console-friendly than the traditional paper doll, but all those little differences add up to drain just a bit of that gothic Diablo flavor I’ve grown to love over the last 17 years.
Thankfully, they make up for their lack of character with sheer functionality. The new radial-style inventory screen takes a bit of getting used to at first, but once you understand it, parsing through gear and equipping what you want becomes a total breeze. A new “quick equip” function mapped to the D-pad allows you to swiftly scan, drop, or equip your most recent acquisitions without even opening a menu. A larger carrying capacity means fewer trips back to town, and item identification has been all but eliminated, too. These wise refinements all add up to less time spent staring at that new Legendary sword, and more time spent swinging it.
And you can actually expect to find your fair share of Legendaries, a probably not-coincidental effect of the wholesale removal of the auction houses (funny how that works.) Drop rates have been tuned up dramatically, and the effect it has on the item hunt is difficult to overstate. Legendaries can truly shift your character's progression, either with stats that dwarf those of other comparably leveled items, or with unique traits that no other item has. It could be a gauntlet that augments the damage of all your fire skills, or an axe that has a chance to summon a ghostly warrior to fight at your side, but whatever it is, it almost always feels substantial and exciting.
As many of the best Legendaries are only found in Inferno, the highest difficulty setting, playing past max level becomes an irresistible prospect for the loot-hungry. PC Diablo III's endgame content has seen significant additions and iterations since launch in order to fix what the community didn’t like, and all of that carries over to this version as well. Combined with the new attainability of the most exciting items, farming and replaying feel exciting and tangibly rewarding in ways the PC version never was in the over 200 hours I sank into it. As fun as the climb to 60 is, your character isn't truly “complete” until you hit Paragon level 100, have perfect gear, and can plow through Inferno with Monster Power set to maximum. There’s just a ton to do here.
If that's somehow not enough replay value for you, you can always explore Diablo III's multiplayer options. Online co-op can be invite only, or drop-in/drop-out, and the ability to specifically seek partners for PvP or endgame key-warden content makes it easy to find a party that suits your mood. But as nice as that it is, nothing beats the four-player couch co-op. Transferring characters over via cloud, or USB is simple and painless, and no matter whose system you’re playing on, you get to keep what you find. Mining demon-infested dungeons for loot until 2 A.M., fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with friends is an experience that precious few, if any games deliver anymore, and even fewer have done it as well as Diablo III.