Blizzard games have staying power. They're incredibly well crafted and designed to run on a wide spectrum of Windows PCs and Macs, both low powered and high. New content? They're all over it. I can't think of a single one of their titles that hasn't received multiple updates, oft-times for free, in the past decade. I played Diablo III on my Mac. When it came out for PS3, I played it there, too. It's a game that I return to time and time again, not because it is particularly challenging, but because of the grind: there's always something new to find–a new piece of gear that'll give the character that you're playing a slightly different way to play. So, when I tell you that Diablo III Eternal Collection for Nintendo Switch is pretty much the same deal as Diablo III played on any platform, you'll understand that what I actually mean is that it's great. I've always preferred playing Diablo III with a game controller over a mouse and keyboard. I like that a wee flick of the right thumbstick will send my hero rolling out of the way of danger. This was one of the first things I tested when I loaded up the copy of the game that Blizzard sent to me last week. The thumb-flick works with the Switch. The rest of the game's controls are similar to what I remember from my PS3 as well. You can't remap your controller's buttons, but your powers and attacks are laid out well enough in the game that it's not a hassle to use them, arbitrary or not. My first few minutes with the game seemed familiar. Back to New Tristam. Back to the cathedral. Given that I've played the game for so long, on so many different platforms, I suspected that it'd be hard to invest this time around. I was wrong. Diablo III could well be a perfect game for the Switch. It loads quickly, ready to play in minutes. The console's ability to hibernate makes it possible to put the game down with a push of the button. Have a few minutes to kill? Push the same button and kill a few demons. Coming back to the game after a week of adulting works too. The plot of the game, while well developed, is simple. So too the constant quest to murder the enemy and collect loot. You can't forget what you were doing in-game because you're always doing the same thing. Sit back down, start your Switch up and get playing. I can't say the same for games like LA Noire or Skyrim–a week away from those and I'm lost. I find that playing the game on the Switch's wee display helps me to focus more on the game. There's a lot going on in this game, from a graphics standpoint. While the Switch's display might not be the best out there, its compact size allows me to appreciate every iota of art that Blizzard's team poured into Diablo III. Of course you can play it on your TV too. If you plan to hunker down with friends for a bit of demon hunting, it's the way to go. Due to the limited number of buttons on each joycon, and the size of them, I found doing so a lot less enjoyable than playing in portable mode. However, it's an issue that could be quickly cleared up by bringing a Pro Controller or two into your life. If you're thinking of getting your game on with a pal using your Switch's display, maybe don't: while its dimensions are great for single player gaming, it's just too small to enjoyably support two players. Diablo III allows for online multiplayer and LAN play as well. I didn't get to take either of these for a spin. I suspect, however, with the port being made by Blizzard, that it'll work just fine. One of the best bits about the port of this game to the Switch is that, with the exception of playing any seasonal characters that you may have rolled, the whole damn thing can be played offline. For anyone that travels by air as much as I do, this is a huge win. I can say, without reservation, that Diablo III has been the most fun that I've gotten out of my Switch since I bought it this past summer. Images and video via Seamus Bellamy<doc-sep>Diablo III is basically Gauntlet on steroids and with better menus, which both helps and hurts its newest iteration on the Switch. The much-anticipated Switch port, which will be released November 2, teases at being the go-to couch multiplayer game Diablo III was always meant to be, and in some cases, succeeds at it. Yet where its Switch iteration shines, unfortunately, is its single-player. Advertisement This piece first appeared 10/29/18. We’ve bumped it today for the game’s release. What makes the gothic dungeon-crawler an exquisite multiplayer game is how interestingly its character classes’ skill systems can interlock with each other. A crusader provokes all the turgid Grotesque monsters to stand together. A barbarian beats their bodies until they explode and pour out worms. A necromancer takes the remnants of their corpses and explodes them, killing the worms. Everyone high-fives (and hopefully washes their hands). What I wanted from Diablo III on the Switch was an easy-to-pick-up casual multiplayer experience that, if I wanted to, let me dig into the game’s complex, multifaceted skill systems alongside my friends. What I got was a satisfying single-player portable Diablo III experience that doubled as a gratifying casual multiplayer game. Sadly, it doesn’t quite live up to the multiplayer Diablo III experience I’ve been craving for six years in part because, like its PlayStation 4 iteration, it doesn’t handle its multiplayer menus well. On Diablo III’s launch, my college buddy’s apartment was a tangle of computer charger cords. To play together, our party of four sat on separate couches and chairs in a living room, each one contributing to an increasingly choked wi-fi. Of course, it was an exquisite dungeon-crawler, rich with possibilities for interesting character builds, which we’d all excitedly fine-tune in menus on our private screens. But Diablo III was a sub-optimal local multiplayer experience, despite how enthusiastic we’d all been about engineering our adventuring party in the days prior. The ideal thing, of course, would have been for Diablo III to follow in the stead of other couch co-op games and let us play on one damn screen with four damn controllers. When the game released on the PlayStation 4 in 2013, it offered real local multiplayer. Thank god. Everyone on one screen, fighting the same cluster of undead. There was just one big issue. Diablo III’s character-building element (its greatest asset) was totally suffocated by the fact that everyone has to share the same screen when they’re fiddling with their character—and that screen is entirely dominated by their menu. I don’t have a lot of fun watching my couchmate decide between the Inundating Leather Gloves of the Bear or the Gathering Leather Gloves. I just don’t. And it feels bad to subject them to my debate over whether to put Punish or Slash in my Primary slot. Six years after Diablo III’s initial PC and macOS release, the sinister dungeon-crawler will land on one of the best consoles for multiplayer ever designed. Except for a couple of weird quirks, it does all the Switch things you might expect very well, like allow for casual couch co-op using two Joy-Cons. Yet Diablo III’s reliance on menus ultimately makes it a little awkward to play on the Switch. Advertisement Whoever was assigned to design this menu-obsessed game to be played with the Switch’s Joy-Cons really made a great effort. Diablo III works with a single Joy-Con and that’s exciting. Mapping six skill slots, a healing potion, two menus and whatever else onto a Joy-Con is a huge challenge and there is no world in which it would feel seamless on such an itty-bitty controller. The port’s attempt is good, although it took a long time for me to figure out how to access the game menu (push in the control stick + the minus symbol). It also took a long time to figure out how to equip an item (push in on the control stick + Y button). Advertisement Playing in docked mode with two Joy-Cons is super fun once you figure out the scheme. The game’s just not a great candidate for the Switch’s propped-up portable mode, since there’s so much text to read. A wacky thing: Every character can dodge roll in Diablo III’s Switch port using motion controls. The player just has to twirl around a Joy-Con. It is very, very silly that there is a motion control element of Diablo III, perhaps one of the most self-serious games ever. I found myself doing it a lot for the lols. There are a few other nods toward Nintendo: Some crossovers between Nintendo’s Zelda franchise and Diablo III, including a Cucco pet, a Triforce portrait, Majora’s Mask-ish wings and a Ganondorf transmog. Advertisement Regrettably, the Switch’s Diablo III port has the same menu issue as its PlayStation 4 port. I hate sharing a menu with whomever else I’m playing with, especially since it takes up the whole screen. If you play a lot of Diablo III, you know that whether or not you want to replay the game is basically contingent on whether you enjoy coming up with fun builds and stacking skills on top of each other. It’s similarly reliant on picking up items and equipping them strategically based on their stats. That means a lot of text-reading and thinking and rejiggering that’s only fun for me when I’m doing it. Please liberate me from my teammates’ min-maxing, Blizzard. (Players can fast-equip items in the Switch port.) Advertisement For players who are more interested in a casual Gauntlet-like home arcade experience, the Switch’s multiplayer is great. It’s really easy to pick up and, for the most part, you’ll have no trouble clubbing skeletons and running around mouldy cathedrals together, so long as you’re not trying to be ambitious with your builds or armor. What surprised me about Diablo III’s Switch port is how much I loved playing it in handheld mode on the train. A mobile version of Diablo III would be an incredible morning commute time-killer, but it would be pretty tough to play on a small smartphone screen. In the Switch’s portable mode, it hits that perfect balance between satisfyingly repetitive gameplay and strategy that absorbs me while I’m getting from point A to point B. The text is readable; the graphics look great; it’s got a take-it-or-leave-it plot; and it’s of course playable in offline mode (although you won’t be able to access Seasons or other online content). It’s also got a really intuitive control scheme, and the framerate feels smooth. Advertisement On a larger screen, Diablo III on the Switch doesn’t get anywhere near the graphical detail of its PC or PS4 iterations. It does run at 60 fps. You can’t see every grain of a Wretched Mother’s vomit. Just most of them. If you skipped Diablo III on the PlayStation 4 but crave that couch co-op experience, the game’s Switch iteration is a great way to go—if you enjoy helping min-max your couchmate’s character, too.<doc-sep>Diablo 3: Eternal Collection for Nintendo Switch review - Prime Evil The combination of Diablo 3's wealth of content and a portable adaptation that sacrifices little in the way of visuals make Diablo 3: Eternal Collection on Switch the best version of the game yet. There was a huge gap in the Switch's library of multiplayer titles until recently. From Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart to the heyday of Rayman’s rabbid pals on Wii, Nintendo and its third-party publishers drown consumers in party games on every generation of Nintendo hardware. You know the ones. You get together with your friends, run a few races or play a few dozen mini-games. Then the party disbands until the next time you go back to the game, where little to anything has changed. Same tracks, same characters, same mini-games, same rules. My wife and I each own a Switch. When we want to play a multiplayer game, we turn to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. It’s fun, but we’ve been spoiled by a diet of progression-heavy games on other platforms: Resident Evil 5, EDF 2017, Dark Souls—the types of games where you invest dozens or hundreds of hours and are rewarded with upgrades and continuity from session to session. We both enjoy Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but that’s a meal for one. With few exceptions, the Switch sorely lacked the type of multiplayer game good for more than a laugh with friends. Then along came Blizzard Entertainment determined to feed us Diablo 3: Eternal Collection, a veritable feast compared to the bevy of snack-sized games that clog Nintendo’s eShop. From the original 2012 campaign and the 2014 Reaper of Souls and Rise of the Necromancer expansions to a cornucopia of end-game content, the Switch version has every last morsel of content Blizzard has baked into the game since its initial release on PC in May 2012. Best of all, it’s playable on the go, making the Switch adaptation arguably the most robust incarnation. No Bones About It Diablo 3 turned heads when it came to current- and last-gen Xbox and PlayStation platforms. Not just because of all the content it provided, but because of how well and natural a game designed to be played with a mouse and keyboard has translated to gamepads. The Switch version is no exception. If you’ve played any of those versions, you’ll feel right at home playing Diablo 3: Eternal Collection on Switch. You move with the left analog stick, dodge and roll with the right stick, map skills and their accompanying runes (modifiers that change some of the effects and mechanics of your character’s abilities) to six of the controller’s buttons, and use the rest for miscellaneous actions such as swigging health potions and hopping a portal back to the nearest town. The game supports Joy-Con and more traditional, Pro Controller-type peripherals, so go to hell on your own terms. Hell is quite full these days, and that’s a good thing. Diablo 3: Eternal Collection packs in every piece of content currently available for Blizzard’s game, including the 2017 Rise of the Necromancer expansion. The key difference is that Adventure Mode, where you enter procedurally generated areas to track down bounties (kill bosses, explore areas, and so on) in exchange for greater rewards is unlocked from the start rather than as a reward for finishing the story. You can go from creating a level-1 character to Adventure Mode right out of the gate. That should appeal to veteran players who have finished Diablo 3’s campaign dozens of times, as well as new players who should be immediately introduced to the best content the game has to offer. Aesthetically, little separates the Switch port from its counterparts. The graphics are slightly sharper on beefier platforms, though that’s something you’ll notice more in the “paper doll” inventory screens where you get a close-up view of your character than during play, when you’re more focused on mowing down monsters and gobbling up loot. The load times are slightly longer on Switch, especially when creating or joining a session. Even then, your fun won’t be put on hold for long. Creating or joining a session takes around 12 to 15 seconds. Once you’re up and running, jumps from town portals to hostile areas and vice versa are near instantaneous, and the odd loading screen won’t keep you waiting for more than a few seconds. Up to four players can play on the same system, or via online or local networks, and all multiplayer modes feature drop-in-drop-out functionality. While playing solo and over online and network connections with my wife, I noticed only one instance of slowdown, and it was so minor I’m not sure it even happened. The action held fast and frantic when I played in docked or portable mode, even on higher difficulty settings with hordes of monsters pouring in from all sides and both of us detonating corpses while our armies—dozens of skeletons, revived demons, and a golem each—clobbered our foes. Every battle was like a barroom brawl, only with bodies exploding and monsters rising up from the ground to do our bidding. Reaper of All My Spare Time There are two schools of thought on the deluge of ports that have come to Nintendo Switch over the past 20 months. Some players won’t touch old content and are eager for new games, while others who view any ports in a new light thanks to the Switch’s portability. I fall into the latter camp. The Switch’s greatest advantage is that it can be played anywhere. As a Diablo fanatic for more than 20 years, I’ve always wanted a version of any installment of the trilogy to play when I get the itch to pop monsters like pinatas. That makes Diablo 3: Eternal Collection on Switch a dream come true, even at the $59.99 price point, which some may consider steep when most ports run $40 or cheaper. If that’s your mindset, consider this. Diablo 3: Eternal Collection and Dark Souls Remastered, which launched on Switch in mid-October after a delay, quenched my wife’s and my thirst for multiplayer games we could come back to again and again thanks to substantial progression to show for our time. Sure, both are re-releases, but they’re endlessly enjoyable and, I hope, will encourage developers to create more progression-centric multiplayer titles to Switch. Blizzard should be commended for the gestalt that is Diablo 3: Eternal Collection. If you’ve followed Diablo 3’s history, you know the game walked a long, often bumpy path. It’s been addictive for several years, but the option to play on the go makes this package a must-have any Switch owner, especially players looking for a game to lose themselves in for dozens or hundreds of hours. This review is based on a Switch digital code provided by the developer. Diablo 3: Eternal Collection will be available at retail and on the Nintendo eShop on November 2, 2018, for $59.99.<doc-sep>
Diablo 3 is grinding at its best. I’ve spent more time than I can count joyfully taking out demons and collecting piles of loot while also listening to music or talking with friends. But after putting roughly a thousand hours into the PC version over the past six years — spread across dozens of characters — I was still excited to sit down with the Switch version and start all over again. The great news about Diablo 3 on Switch is that it’s Diablo 3 on Switch; it’s as good as you might hope. Blizzard stuffed a whole lot of Diablo into the diminuitive Switch. The bad news is that, due to the handheld, on-the-go nature of the Switch, sometimes you won’t have access to the internet, walling you off from one of the game’s most enjoyable modes. The Switch’s unique hardware creates a different kind of experience. Playing Diablo with a controller has always been a bit strange, but surprisingly playable, and the Switch offers a variety of controller and play styles. With the Switch Pro Controller, the game plays beautifully. Sure, you lack the precision of a mouse, but the demon-slaying, loot-grabbing chaos that you want from Diablo is still butter-smooth. The controls for Diablo 3 get a bit wonky once you throw another player into the mix. Just using what comes with the Switch out of the box, both you and your couch buddy can slay demons with a single Joy-Con each. Playing this way is surprisingly functional, but not necessarily comfortable. The smaller number of buttons on each Joy-Con creates some interesting workarounds, like having to click in the control stick and then hit the top controller button in order to access the brilliant, console-only quick menu. This is the case with a few different shortcuts, like opening your map or for returning to town. The whole thing involves pressing in the analog stick and holding it — which deactivates your abilities on the face buttons — and then using the face buttons to input commands such as up or A for the quick menu, and right or B for return to town. That control scheme is both complex and impressive, considering how few buttons the Joy-Cons have on them and how functional it all is. Playing with a single Joy-Con may cramp your hands after a few hours — and someone in your party will definitely forget the button shortcuts once or twice — but co-op on the Joy-Cons is still better than playing alone. However, if you have a regular demon-slaying pal to play with, you should probably invest in two Pro Controllers. While it runs great on a TV, Diablo 3 really sings during single-player in handheld mode. With the Adventure Mode and Nephalim Rifts added in the Reaper of Souls expansion — included here, along with the Necromancer — Diablo 3 is the perfect forever game, made even better now that it’s portable. Being able to run through rifts at your desk, sitting on the couch while watching a movie or while traveling is great. Unless you’re really trying to push the limits of your current character, Diablo 3 is about as chill as it gets, and having it detached from big screen and ready to play whenever you are is reason enough to pick up the Switch port. Unfortunately, like a lot of Switch games, playing multiplayer on the go isn’t great. While you can pair whichever controllers you like in tabletop mode, the screen is just too small for a game like Diablo. For better local co-op play, the other option is to bring along a second console. The Switch version of Diablo 3 has a wireless local multiplayer option, meaning that four players within close proximity of each other can link up to run rifts together — no internet connection required. The only real problem this port runs into is one of internet connection. Seasons in Diablo 3 — months-long in-game events, in which all players start with fresh characters and try clearing the highest rift possible — offer an expiration date to your loot runs. This is my favorite way to play Diablo 3, but it is slightly less perfect on Switch. There are some caveats to seasons and offline play. Namely, you need to create your seasonal character while connected to the internet, and you must have a constant connection to be eligible for leaderboards.