If you like your Diablo dark, you'll be pleased to find that act five starts that way and stays that way. Later, in an impressive moment, you stand atop a massive battering ram as it smashes open the gates of the fortress of Pandemonium, and then venture into the eerie ethereal realm that lies beyond. Instead, you explore the gloomy city of Westmarch on one of the worst nights in its history. Absent here is any hint of the life and color that sometimes clawed their way into the settings for the first four acts. Your journey to confront Malthael takes you through the most grim and beautiful locations Diablo III has yet featured. He's a terrific and terrifying villain, and it's just too bad that he doesn't show up a bit more between his show-stopping entrance and the challenging boss battle that concludes the act. In a bid to end the conflict between angels and demons once and for all, Malthael is slaughtering humankind and adding the dead to his ever-growing armies.

The angel of death, Malthael, is the force threatening humanity in the new campaign chapter, and the impressive opening cutscene establishes him as a fearsome adversary indeed, showing us why he's called the reaper of souls. This expansion adds a decent new character class, a great new campaign act, and most significantly, Adventure mode, a devious Blizzard concoction calculated to make Diablo III's existing content more rewarding-and more addictive-than it has been in the past. What motivates the heroes of Sanctuary to battle the forces that threaten humanity? Is it an unwavering desire to do what's right? Or is it a thirst for more power, more riches, and more stuff? Whatever it is, Reaper of Souls has it.

Diablo 3 expansion review