Tyreal takes on human flesh and joins the earthly struggle against the encroaching devilish horde, believing that mankind’s unwavering valor and bravery are the only things that can once again defeat the prime evil of Diablo … the most powerful demon in existence.Īfter that ominous introduction, players make their way through this unfolding epic fantasy as a hero who’s part of Leah and Tyreal’s tale. Rather, he’s here to defy his aloof angelic brethren and help humanity. His fallen state, however, isn’t due to rebellious choices. Amid this chaos, a fallen angel named Tyreal drops to Earth like a flaming meteor from the heavenly realms. Then it’s up to his young niece, Leah, to gather his notes and continue looking for lifesaving revelations. And so it does, in the form of rampaging demonic creatures and risen corpses besieging Tristram’s panicked populace.ĭeckard himself doesn’t last long. ![]() But evil has a way of clawing back up from the depths, doesn’t it? In this case, a wizened old scholar named Deckard Cain has been studying ancient texts and concludes that, simply put, all hell is about to break loose once more. The story picks up in the foreboding, crumbling city of Tristram, a place that saw the defeat of the infernal demon Diablo some 20 years before. And while it’s easy to see how a decade has changed the world of gaming graphics and the physics of play, there’s a lot here that will look familiar to any PC gamers who might have traversed this series’ diabolical challenges back in the day. Now the franchise has been revived after an 11-year break. And then, like its titular demonic nemesis, it went underground, so to speak. The Diablo franchise was once considered to be the definitive dungeon-trolling, battle-action series in the RPG genre. Of course, gamemakers at Blizzard Entertainment consider the video game’s record-breaking sales-a rush that started with a reported 3.5 million units sold in the first 24 hours and 6.3 million in the first week-nothing short of heavenly. Rather, as its title might suggest, this M-rated RPG is all about hell-spawned monstrosities and congregations of demons. Even without major new additions, the Switch’s portability makes it easier than ever to pop into Sanctuary, kill a few hundred monsters, and scoop up some sweet new loot.It’s certainly no surprise that a game called Diablo III doesn’t have a lot to do with, say, cute-and-cuddly bunnies. It doesn’t completely alleviate the sting of having to start the game fresh (you can’t import progress or cross-play with other versions of the game), but it helps.Įven after all these years, I still find Diablo III’s loop of starting small and becoming a godlike force of destruction irresistible. I’d still recommend that new players roll through the story, since it introduces some of the basic systems in an easy-to-digest format, but if you’ve done it before there’s no reason to slay Diablo and his cronies yet again. Adventure mode is where the “real” game is, filled with challenges that are designed to be beaten and replayed, such as clearing out enemies in rifts or running through short bounty quests. ![]() ![]() One of the most welcome things about this port is that new players can dive right into the adventure mode without having to complete the campaign first. Inventory management can be a pain, especially when you’re trying to sort through and compare large quantities of gear, but those are legacy nitpicks that have been around since the game originally came to console. The text is small – particularly if you’re looking at the Switch’s screen – but I didn’t run into any problems with legibility. I preferred using a Pro controller, but the default Joy-Cons do a serviceable job in a pinch. In the actual game, however, it looks great. The only real graphical compromise that stood out was how some details washed out in the zoomed-in character screens. It remained rock solid in four-person local co-op, too, even as we filled the screen with my necromancer’s herd of skeletons, a witch doctor’s army, and a crusader’s barrage of spectral hammers. The game runs beautifully on the hardware, whether portable or docked, and I didn’t experience any distracting slowdown or graphical hitches during my playtime.
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