How does Diablo III look compared to the newly released Ultimate Evil Edition?

By Adam Rosenberg August 19, 2014

Read our full Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition review.

Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition is out now, bringing Blizzard’s loot-filled dungeon crawl to the latest Microsoft and Sony consoles, along with all of the content from the recent Reaper of Souls add-on and related balancing updates. We already know from the PC release of Reaper that Blizzard’s tweaks and additions to Diablo III are a very good thing, and now console players get to find out for themselves.

While what’s under the hood is what matters most in Ultimate Evil Edition, those that grab the game for PlayStation 4 or Xbox One — it’s also available for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 — also get to enjoyed some freshly souped up graphics that take advantage of the new consoles. The difference is pretty dramatic, too. We don’t have an Xbox 360 version of Ultimate Evil Edition to compare, we do have the console version of vanilla Diablo III that was released in 2013.

Related: Your guide to getting the most out of Diablo III: Reaper of Souls and the Loot 2.0 changes

You can see both the Xbox One and Xbox 360 versions of the game running side by side in the video above. The biggest element separating the two is the overall level of clarity; Diablo III certainly doesn’t (and didn’t, in 2013) look bad on PS3 and Xbox 360, but the textures are visibly less defined in the older release as compared to the Xbox One game.

The difference in detail extends to the visual effects as well. The Xbox One version of the game feels more lively overall. There’s more definition in flames and other spray effects, the glow surrounding elite monsters is crisper, and ambient elements like fog feel less like a visual overlay blanketing the screen and more like a physical, ever-changing quantity within the virtual world.

There’s a good chance that anyone making the jump to Ultimate Evil Edition on PS4 or Xbox One is more interested in the content changes than the technical execution, but you’ll be happy to know that there’s a very noticeable added layer of visual polish in Diablo III‘s appearance on the new consoles.

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PC Gaming

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Previously, Adam worked in the games press as a freelance writer and critic for a range of outlets, including Digital Trends…

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