Diablo IV

I have been playing RPGs since Final Fantasy original on NES, the Immortal, Lagacy of the Wizard, etc. So, a really long time.

This Diablo was extremely hard to rate. The utilization of the UI is kind of frustrating at first, but has its similarities to previous Diablo entries. This time the inventory uses a slot system measured by a maximum amount of items, where previously it was a grid to measure space and therefore the size of the item would determine your inventory space. There's some changes to navigating the UI as well, which are tedious but soon adaptable.

The gameplay is not bad at all. Controls were precise and easy to use. The graphics were great for an overhead RPG. The cosmetics were excellent all around.

All this being said, let's talk about the logistics of the game. Previously, the Diablo franchise had used chapters or "ACTS" to maintain and divide segments within the Diablo world. Here in Diablo IV, they use one gigantic map. I said, "okay, I'll go with that." However, the enemies are packed everywhere. I know that no one likes an empty map, but they should've dialed it back a notch. You were blessed to catch a break sometimes, especially if you were a Necromancer and had skeletons that would constantly run after far away enemies. Furthermore, the dungeons are no longer randomized. You do them once, get the accolade for it, and that's all. You can redo the dungeon, but it isn't any different.

The storyline was ookkaayy. The ending was confusing and left you wondering if the whole thing was a setup by "someone else," to not spoil it. The concept of Lillith was great and so was the art. There was one part of the story that I deemed to myself- unnecessary. It involves a snake. I will not go into further detail due to spoilers.

I am convinced that Diablo may be turning towards an MMO platform.

--To Blizzard--

Change takes time. You have a great game here but this is the first MMOish type Diablo release. Let's try convincing players, both veterans and casual, that Diablo is a fit franchise for this. ESPECIALLY since the studio implemented microtransactions now. Anybody can say what they will, but this was a risky decision. Other games like the Elder Scrolls, Final Fantasy, etc, have enough material to create their own universes, due to length of existence and story development. I guarantee you made some previous Diablo players look at it as a "really?" I know, because I was one of them. However, I do think you may have pulled it off. You were extremely lucky. Now you just have to merge previous and new generation Diablo players that this is equally acceptable amongst both.

All-in-all I think the game made some drastic changes. Were they bad? I don't think so. They're just different.

Final Conclusion: You'll be playing a great game, but is it a Diablo game?

It's done well, for the most part. The writing harkens back to Diablo's original two outings; a gothic, low fantasy miasma of hopelessness and intrigue. Most impressively, this version of Diablo's world feels, well, like a world again; a place with history and tension, rather than a collection of maps strung together to facilitate dungeon delving.

Diablo 4 adopts a muted aesthetic and a slow-burn narrative that seems desperate to mimic Game of Thrones or Sony's God of War reboot, but it's constantly in tension with how massively unsubtle the series' worldbuilding has always been. "It was probably demons," would have been an exceptionally useful dialogue choice to have for every person who asked me if I could investigate what happened to their loved ones. And, I'm sorry, I can't take it seriously when a sad quest where I end the life of a tortured man tied to a tree ends by giving me the spear I used as a temporary weapon upgrade.

So far, nothing has convinced me the endgame is so brilliant that it's worth stripping everything out of the initial leveling process. The thin storytelling doesn't help either-thankfully you can skip it on subsequent characters. Diablo 4 is a live service game that puts an insulting amount of effort into trying to convince you it's not. It's backwards; trying to build up to the most robust part of itself instead of starting with it. The moment entering a fresh dungeon feels more like a chore than a ride is the moment Diablo loses me, and I've been worryingly close to that feeling in my time with it so far.

Diablo IV went from a drudge completed only in service to my professional responsibilities to a pleasure I sought. There's something in Diablo IV that will appeal to you, if you know enough about yourself to find it. I don't know what that is yet, but in the coming weeks, I hope to find out and share it with you.

Wasted potential. ~15 years of Diablo 3 development & maintenance, and a few years of Diablo Immortal, yet they learned nothing about what makes a good Diablo game in the 21st century.

Instead they tried to cater to the Diablo 2 fossils by copy/pasting all the classes & skills from it, and then charged us full price for the same old cr@p that everyone and their granny has already played for 1000 hours 10-20 years ago.

No new classes, hardly any new skills, terrible legendary powers, zero innovation or originality. Tries to be MMO-lite but provides zero incentive for grouping up, and doesn't even have a Group Finder or Lobby Creator, or even a decent chat system.

Result: a stale-from-the-start mess with zero replayability, terrible class design and no real endgame to speak of, with players abandoning it in droves.

I've dragged Diablo 3 over the coals plenty in my lifetime, but it still kept me playing for ~10 years despite having no mod support - mods being the only reason Diablo 2 stayed popular enough. Diablo 3 gave us vastly improved classes to the point where you felt like you were playing something completely new. That is what Diablo 4 is missing - something new to play.

The game director's only skill is copy/pasting & cutting corners from top to bottom. Diablo 3 has no less than 8 fully professionally rendered Cinematics. Diablo 4 only has 2, the rest are rendered in-game in much lower quality.

The Bestiary is the same 5-6 boring enemy groups copy/pasted across the entire game. Lycans, Skeletons/Ghouls, Ghosts, Goatmen, human Bandits, Fallen, with the occasional cameo of Wasps, Scorpions, Spiders, Bears/Boars and some varied Hellspawn during timed events. As soon as I heard the phrase "monster families" I had a sinking feeling in my gut, but I never imagined how bad it was really gonna be.

The Endgame...what endgame? They took the worst of Diablo 3 and somehow made it even more tedious, with the same 4-5 variations of Dungeons being considered "the endgame" while you grind your way to max level 100 at a snail's pace.

Add on top a bunch of one-time irritating side quests with mostly unskippable dialogue, the same 4-5 copy/pasted random events across the game world, a poor excuse for a timed event called Helltide, and a couple of terribly designed "world bosses" that appear without any warning so you never know they're there. Because there's no decent chat function or group finder.

The Cosmetic shop is a complete fail because in-game colors are terribly washed out to the point where it doesn't even matter what your toon looks like.

The game itself has been completely outdone by a mobile game built around Pay2Win. When a P2W mobile game is more fun than D4, then you know it has failed miserably.

You would think it was created by Kathleen Kennedy.

I've taken my time exploring every area, going through the full campaign (and starting Tier III), and doing just about each piece of content. The gameplay itself is well done. The game is fun to play. Story story, though, is not that amazing. It doesn't try anything new, and uses the same tropes from every single "safe" fantasy story. It is clear that love and care were taken to make a game that plays well, but the time that could have been spent on more story, doing something new and memorable, etc, was instead spent on making sure there was room for a live service component. I've spent my entire life playing D&D, MMO's, reading fantasy novels, etc and a couple of the characters were decent, but most of the game is just simple tropes to get you from point A to point B so you can start the live service part of the game. Honestly, I took my time leveling, doing the story, watching all cutscenes, and trying to experience everything the first playthrough but I'm not sure how much longer I'll play it after finishing the main story. I've started the "repeatable stuff" at the end and it feels hollow. I was in a drought of games to play, with over 10k hours in heavily modded Skyrim in the last 5 yrs, and I don't regret buying it but this isn't going to be that memorable to me in a few months, I have a feeling. Unfortunately, it appears that Activision (I don't call them Blizz anymore) had the story writers spend more time in their formula and making sure there is nothing memorable, funny, or possibly offensive to a single person, rather than writing something truly memorable. The story is just.... meh.

The game is not worth the 70 price tag.

The positive: The design is awesome, Lilith is perfect, the game feels great to play, it is responsive and the attacks have weight behind them. The cinematics.

The negative: The history could have been epic and it really felt epic until almost the end... then it just felt like they missed the mark, or were eager to end it.

The builds, the way the skill tree is made there is like 5 builds possible max per classes which is very very disappointing.

The constant stuttering is something unbearable.

The "AI generated fetch quests"... most side quests feel like they were made by AI.... go fetch this and go to the other side of the map and come back, which never was the point of a diablo game.

The gear system is so basic it's disappointing, stripped of everything that makes a Diablo game with the excuse of "we will bring stuff later" but still charging full price for an incomplete game.