Well, I've been at it on the main story since monday midnight. Basic feelings? I enjoyed it alot! The new act gave me about 12 hours of play, and that was spent chasing every corner, looting, porting to town lots of times and talking to every damn npc every time they lit up with a blue '*' over their heads (means new conversations). Now that I did beat Malthael,
Adventure mode is available. Adventure mode is simply a distraction for those who want to grind out ultimate gear and whatnot. In any previous diablo title you simply re-grinded the entire story over and over and over. Well in reaper, you now have adventure mode. What this does is place random bounties in each act that award gold and exp above the normal reward as well as shards that act as a new merchants currency. On top of that, doing enough bounties in any act gives you a bonus chest and a chance at a key that can be used to unlock nephalem stages. Extremely challenging areas with really good rewards. The bounties are sometimes boss kills, sometimes their quantity kills or clear this out types and what have you. Every time you enter the game, they are randomized. All in all, this simply gives you a chance at getting your gear upgrades in a more timely manner.
The new mystic stall is nice. You can firstly enchant all your gear, this simply lets you add futher stat bonuses to your equipment. You choose from a variety of enchantments and bam, good to go. The mystic is also home to transmog. Trasmog simply lets you change the appearance of your arms and armor to look like something else. Your choices are only limited to what you've looted. Once something is picked up, its available for transmog. The expansion comes with several sets already available and pre-order/deluxe nuts got some additional options.
The blacksmith and jewel crafters both got new tiers of upgradability to their stalls. Jewelcrafters can finally make rings and whatnot. Blacksmiths, at max level several new patterns drop all over the place, legendary quality that you can put your smith to work on.
Reaper also brought with it another tab in your stash, not sure why its necessary. I havent filled half of my current three tabs to be honest. Infact with crafting mats being streamlined and also allowing stacks of 999, I have more space than ever. -shrugs-
If you don't want to know the story of Act 5, don't click "Read More" link that follows. You've been warned.
Ok, act 5 begins with malthael, former angel of wisdom attacking Tyreal and his Horadrim as they were securing the black soulstone (still has diablo in it) somewhere deep and dank. He kills most of the horadrim, spares Tyreal (sentimental reasons, tyreal being former angel and whatnot... and tyreal has no demon in his dna) and takes the soulstone.
Malthael immediately sends his loyal minion angels out and they start reaping. Their collecting human souls and sending them to Malthael. Why? Well during malthael's absence from heaven he discovered two things. 1, Everyone dies, end game wisdom. Probably what drove him over the edge. 2, He can use human souls to strengthen himself. Malthael decided that with the 7 lords of hell down to 1 and that 1 in his posession, now would be a great time to finally and forever wipe all demons off the map.
He hero(you) rescue Westmarch because thats the nearest city to where you were when hell breaks out. Along the way you resolve the Scoundrel Followers storyline. Along the way Tyreal also learns that Malthael is altering the black soulstone, reprogramming it for some unknown reason. Everyone agrees its in sanctuary's best interest that the hero stop malthael and well there's really only one mortal on the planet who's ever been overly good at tracking super powers like angels and demons.
Off to Blood Marsh where you chase down Adria.
When you find Adria, she's in fact tracking Malthael, saves you the trouble of asking her where he is. She proudly reveals that Diablo isn't dead and he'll be back. He always comes back she tells the hero, and then she turns in to a big spider thing and you kill her.
Good news, good news. Adria is dead and Malthael is at Pandemonium Fortress. Two things here. 1, this is your second time going to this fortress as a player. Act 4 Diablo 2, the fortress was your staging ground for chasing diablo. Fortress was home base, you headed south across pandemonium and in to hell's side of the battlefield. 1, Pandemonium lesson : This is the infinite battlefield between heaven and hell. It was created when "God" and the "Devil" killed themselves while killing eachother. A piece of god landed in the heavens, started spitting out angels, its the arch spire. The devil was a 7 headed dragon, each head became a lord of hell and they started spitting out their armies. In the middle of pandemonium 'god's' eye was found, and it was named the worldstone and the fortress was built around it for protection.
There's more to the story but thats all you need to know for this. Now the bad news is that Tyreal figures out what Malthael is doing to the stone. He's retuned it to accept all demon essence, and its also now designed to take it from any source on any plane it is currently sitting on. Dosent sound too bad until another bit of Historical lore is revealed, Humanity is the offspring of a group of demons and angels who way back when decided they didnt want to fight anymore. They stold the worldstone, made sanctuary and had babies. If malthael has his way all of humanity will drop dead.
Tyreal and the hero head up to heaven, there's only two ways in to pandemonium and the other is hell naturally. In heaven they find it under attack (getting old already), malthael sent one of his lieutenants up there to break the door that connects heaven to pandemonium. You stop him, Imperious is pissed that your up there but even more pissed that Malthael attacked and killed angels. You see Imperious was happy as pie sitting in heaven letting Malthael kill demons and humans entirely, but once Malthael hits heaven and tries to prevent angels from ever entering pandemonium again, Imperious aligns reluctantly with the hero and tells him how to kick down the front door to the fortress in pandemonium.
Alot of demons die, alot of things get smashed, you kick down the front door, kill abunch of deformed human souls turned in to twisted demon-looking-things and finally you engage Malthael. Malthael has enough souls collected separate from the soulstone so that you normally cant touch him but along the way the hero gets in touch with someone significant to them (unique to each class / gender) and the hero collects enough soul support to make the fight feasible.
Fight engaged, half way through Malthael makes a mistake. In a panic to have the upper hand he consumes the black soulstone harnessing all the souls it collected from sanctuary. And diablo's. And when you kill malthael, diablo is now host free / soulstone free and Tyreal confirms, he just escaped.
Oops.
Credits roll at this point, very big cliff hangar. One of two things happens now, 1 we wait 2 years for another expansion or 2, blizzard goes the wow expansion route and gives us periodic content updates that progress the story along.
I'm personally hoping for the wow approach.
o/
No comments:
Post a Comment