Diablo III - Reaper of Souls

The mystical order of Priests of Rathma

Diablo, a Blizzard megahit that has had it's place in forming the gaming world and rpg genre, for over 20 years they have built an devoted fan base (just Diablo III and it's expansion Reaper of Souls has already gotten 20 million sold copies) trough the eras of the Diablo franchise. The game has gotten new content continuously, Blizzard after all hold the title of being one of the best companies to keep their game-series alive with awesome updates, but the only new playable character that has appeared in Diablo III was the Crusader-class which was introduced about the same time as Reaper of Souls. Notice i said "was", because another class from the old Diablo 2 era will be playable in sanctuary. One of the games most popular classes, the death manipulating puppet master from Diablo 2 has risen from his grave. The Necromancer is back.

The nostalgic feeling is strong with our good old twisted friend the Necromancer.

Fans from the series has long been calling for some more gothic and dark elements to the third installation and with the Necromancers entry that hunger is filled slightly. Two scary zones and challenge rifts appeared completely free while the Necromancer-class was released behind a payment of about 15 bucks, if it's worth the hefty price tag i will explore as we go on - who is this Necromancer guy and how to you play him?

The mystical order Priests of Rathma has in the Diablo-series kept the balance between light & dark and also controlled the life and death since the beginning of time. Rathma, the spawn of a unpredictable love-couple, the angel Inarius and the demon Lilith. After growing up in the early days of the nephalem with parents on both sides of the hell-gate, Rathma quickly learned that a balance between light and dark forces is just not possible to manipulate but most crucial. When a imbalance occurred between them, humans suffered on earth and this knowledge was passed on to one of Rathma's apprentices Kalan which in turn constructed the order Priests of Rathma. The newly-released Necromancer-package will let you as a player (after you pick your gender) take the place as one of it's brutal, dark priests in the chaotic Diablo III game world.

You can't summon those big skeleton armies that we could in Diablo 2, but still the Necromancer is one awesome class.

As a master of death you as a Necromancer-player will find an array of different playstyles and the class does hold some resemblance to the already existing Witch Doctor with his many conjurable beasts. Want to call up some skeletons from their graves and order them to fight for you you can do that, and if you want to curse your demon opponents to then cut them down with your massive scythe you can do that to - the class and the playstyle is very well done.

The necromancers main resources is "Essence" and is something you can collect from the dead bodies on the battlefield. With Essence you can either use it for "summons", like bringing forth zombies, golems or skeletons to your aid, or cast powerful curses on your enemies and prolong your life with blood-spells, or just a mix of all of the above. As usual you have your passive abilities and new armor sets (5 new Necromancer-specific armors sets), where you will have to choose the set which suits your playstyle the best.

The master of death has many dark faces

As an example there is passive abilities that strengthens your Nercromancer when you play without summons and some who does the opposite. You as a player also have to choose between playing as a ranged Necromancer or if you want to get up and personal to feel the demon-blood splash on your face. Feeling extra sadistic? You can use your Necromancers more unique abilities and hurt your poor little priest to make him more powerful. If you happen to punish him a bit to much, just suck out some life from an enemy to self-heal.

The ability with the most focus, the Necromancers summons, Blizzard has completely redesigned since we last played our favorite death-priest. The massive horde of skeleton warriors that you could earlier command has been nerfed a bit by allowing you to summon less at any one time, and your zombies will decay back to the earth from once they came after a period of time.

Speaking of decaying corpses, another new feature is the possibility to desecrate corpses. Around the necromancer you as a player will notice how fast limbs spread and corpse-maggots flourish - these limbs will act as bombs on the battlefield and will blow up groups of enemies after exploding as the maggots feast on the remaining living enemies.

You feel very powerful when playing the Necromancer. You will feel as a master of death & life as you flip the balances between the two effortlessly and seamlessly.

A cool class with a hefty price tag

All the games in the hellishly good role-playing game series and all of it's expansions are so intriguing that the fan base of Diablo keeps coming back for every season, game release and new expansion and after that Blizzard announced the traditional playable class on Blizzcon 2016 everyone expected the same kind of enthusiasm. Now, a while after the release it's clear that it in the end the reception actually was pretty dull - but why?

The problem is that the Necromancer-package is just that, a Necromancer. The new levels are all free and just came with an ordinary update and no new dungeons, enemies or acts came with the class. All the (unbelievably many) Diablo-fans that have laid a crazy amount of hours on this well done, hack & slash-rpg that keeps getting better with updates deserves more then one class. 15 bucks is to expensive even if the class is super well done and a joy to play as. To justify such a hefty price tag something more is required, grinding the same bosses and hearing the same dialogues in several years gets tiresome and to have to push out 15 additional dollars for something that does not give anything else then a new playable character might seem a bit overkill for most.

If you are not one of those players who play until your fingers bleed and all "set items" has been gathered to your seasonal hero it could very well be worth to wait with a Necromancer-buy. It is, after all a very well done character and a fun experience when playing, but it's just to expensive for the content it provides. If you are a hardcore Diablo-fan that doesn't care about 15 dollars and really want to see a manipulator of death dominate his enemies on command, it might be worth a buy.