Diablo III. Come this May, the game would be 8 years old. I remember being very excited getting the game at launch, and it really didn’t disappoint. Many nights were spent slaying demons with my favourite character being the Demon Hunter.
At that time, I didn’t really get into Blizzard’s attempt at further monetising the game, the real money auction house, but it was a good thing that Blizzard took it out (apparently I wasn’t the only one feeling apathetic about the feature).
One common criticism of the game at that time was that it was too colourful, and not as dark as its predecessor Diablo II. While the colour scheme didn’t really bother me (I was busy with slaying creatures, demons and whatnot), the 2014 expansion Reaper of Souls seemed to have rectified that, giving fans a dour grey/brown Westmarch (with plenty of death to go along with the whole setup) and the Pandemonium Fortress.
Reaper of Souls also introduced a whole bunch of stuff to extend the longevity of D3 with one in particular being a favourite of mine: Adventure Mode. Adventure Mode has plenty of content, dungeons and locations both big and small and that’s what I’m pre-occupied with in-game most days. To further add to the “dark” came The Rise of the Necromancer DLC, which introduced my current favourite character which happens to be in the title of the DLC.
Ok, now let’s talk about the Nintendo Switch version of D3, dubbed the Eternal Collection which includes ALL of the stuff that I’ve mentioned above. The game was out earlier on the PS4 and Xbox, so the experience of translating the controls to thumb-sticks and buttons is definitely there.
On Nintendo’s latest hybrid console, Blizzard has upped its game to take advantage of the Switch’s mobility and power to transformed D3 into a “play-anywhere, resume-anytime” piece of addictive dungeon-crawling crack.
D3 on the Switch is such a fast, powerful, flexible and refined iteration of the game in terms of mobility, controls, gameplay and graphics that you won’t even think that it is 8-years old. The guys at Blizzard have done a bang-up job with this game, and it will do well in any Switch owner’s collection (check it out at Amazon or Play-Asia).
With the Nintendo Switch fast becoming the mobile “greatest hits” home for games released on home consoles and PCs (this is well worth an article of its own), it’s probably time to get one if you haven’t done so already. Check out Amazon or Play-Asia for one.
