You may look at the Necromancer, the latest class to be added to Blizzard’s action-RPG loot-em-up Diablo III, and see a long list of exciting new skills to try out. However, there’s really only one you need to worry about: Corpse Explosion. It’s oh so glorious.

Yes, you can summon an entire army of skeletons to do your bidding and send them scurrying into a brawl wildly swinging their swords. You can curse the floor your foes walk on and leech their life away through the earth itself. You can even rip the bones from their bodies and outfit yourself in armour made from their femurs and fibulas. These are all deviously fun choices, but not one compares to Corpse Explosion.

It’s the visceral squelch. It’s the cascading splatter of crimson that envelopes the entire screen. It’s seeing each body in line exploding like a firework of giblets, chaining onto the next one, and the next one, and the next one. Then, there is only silence and an overwhelming feeling of satisfaction.

Sorry. May have got a little carried away there…

Look, it may sound strange to describe the Necromancer in such a fashion, but even during its questionable early days of stingy loot systems and a dodgy real-money Auction House, Diablo III nailed the finer touches. The way gold twinkled across the ground, how the environment shattered with the force of attacks and when loot erupted out of defeated foes in a fountain of brilliant colour. That same level of feedback and responsiveness is what makes Corpse Explosion – and the Necromancer as a class – so great to play.

This isn’t the place to tell you whether the Necromancer is going to be viable to help you farm Greater Rifts in Torment XIII. There are far more learned minds for that. What we can say, however, is that if you’re looking for a new reason to bash some skulls in dusky crypts, send the Greater Evils back to where they came from and search for that elusive legendary orange glow, the way of the Necromancer is a devilishly good time.

INFO
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment
Release: Out Now
Formats: PC, PS4, Xbox One
Price: £12.99