Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Closed Beta Preview, Part Four

Calling the fourth installment to their closed beta preview series a “spectacular list-tacular wrap-up”, AusGamers has devoted the final article to telling us about “the little things” that make Diablo III: Reaper of Souls a must-have for action RPG fans. A couple of mentions:

Nice Looking Map
Adventure Mode is fantastic, it allows you to travel to and from any place you wish regardless of Act to complete bounties, kill monsters, and collect loot. Now with a simple tap of the map button you can travel from the sandy swept dunes of Act II to the gothic buildings of Act V through a few easy clicks — and also with the visual aid of fantastic looking hand drawn maps. The new map interface is a wonderful addition and works wonders in bringing together all of the various locations, making them feel like they’re part of an actual world to explore as opposed to a linear string of locations and tile sets. Seriously brilliant work on Blizzard’s part, and they would even make the most diehard Tolkien fans put down their “Twelve Dwarven Songs to Get Your Lasses Off Their Asses” books and take notice.

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A Friend in Need
Not only are the single-player companions now worthy, err, companions, but they also have their own mini-quest lines. So in addition to actually doling out a decent amount of damage and using abilities that are helpful even after you hit level 70, they also have personal scores to settle — which come in the form of companion-specific dungeons and bosses. These are all welcome additions too, and they also help in stopping the Templar from talking about his order and all the weird Templary things he used to get up to.