Being a lifelong fan of Diablo 1 and 2 I was extremely disappointed by the release of Diablo 3. In short, it was nothing like the previous games and more something like Wow. With that said, I didnt have any hopes for Diablo 4 and put it out of my mind. Shortly after D4 release I had a chance to play it as much as I wanted so I completed the campaign and have been playing a lot of the endgame too.
Diablo 4 first impression is that it atleast tried to steer away from the aesthetics and tone of Diablo 3, its much darker and stern and serious and gritty more like Diablo 2, but at the same time theres a lot of places about the presentation where I'm again disappointed and it feels like Diablo 3.5. One of the major disappointments for me is the Inventory, no longer do you have these beautiful big sprite representations of your gear like D2, but you have these tiny cubes where you can barely see what the item is supposed to be, it looks more like the WoW inventory. I don't know, but for me, in these item collectahon games its actually really important for me to have a cool inventory where its satisfying to look at and sift through items, Its not really the case here. The inventory doesn't even look hand decorated or designed it looks more like a Microsoft office grid or something. Theres no longer any 'inventory tetris' where you have to figure out how to place items yourself, which Im sure some people like, but for me its just stupid how a giant 2 hand sword takes up the same space as a pair of cloth shoes, it makes the items less tangible and feel more like stupid pieces of stats than real pieces of gear.
Anyway, heres 5 classes to choose from, its sadly missing some classics such as Paladin which I'm sure they will charge for later, I chose the Barbarian. The combat works where you have 2 skills on your left right clicks, then 4 skills on your hotbar 1234. However, every class also has a Resource management thing to deal with. So basically, mana. But for Barbarian its called Fury, for Necromancer its called Essence, etc. What this means is as you look through the skill tree, which is decently laid out and isnt overly complex and isnt too simple, you will see some skills called Basic skills which use no resources, but then other skills such as Core skills use Resource (fury). So essentially what ends up happening is for a large portion of the game you're stuck using the most basic level 0 attack skill over and over desperately trying to build up enough Resource to be able to attack enemies with your actually satisfying good skill. I don't really like this system, Id actually just rather chug potions. There is no mana potion or resource potion, just health, and the enemies randomly drop health potions that you automatically collect upon walking over it. So you will constantly be fighting these enemies but find yourself having no Resource unable to use your cool skill, so you have to keep spamming the shitty basic skill to generate resource. It just doesnt feel very good and isnt a very elegant solution to the chugging mana pots thing, even after completing the campaign and playing the end game I sort of just find the whole system stupid like why am I being forced to use some shit level1 skill just as a placeholder to generate mana?
Other than that, the combat does feel satisfying ...mostly. Like Diablo 3, the game really wants you to look at all these damage numbers and text flying over the enemies heads when you attack them, again, like World of Warcraft. Diablo 1 & 2 doesnt have these tacky damage numbers shit. Yeah, you can disable it in the menu, but its like such a core integral component of the game youre missing vital information to where its almost unplayable without it. So while youre attacking these monsters you see these numbers flying all over the screen, occassionally telling you when you debuff enemies such as "Vulnerable" "Overpowered" and so on popping off. It just looks bad, it looks like a shitty chinese MMO game, not some horroresque medevial game, its just not immersive, I never liked when games do this. Path of Exile doesnt do this, and while PoE does a lot wrong, it definitely understood why this sort of thing is stupid in a Diablo type game.
Other than that, the campaign is mostly straight forward. The loot system here is at first glance extremely dumbed down even from D1 or D2. Items have a green ^ arrow simply telling you when theyre better. Now, this isnt always reliable, but in the context of just the base campaign level 1-50, its good enough, and if you do nothing but just stare at the green arrow and equip it, youll always be more than strong enough to overcome anything in the campaign. Its kind of a problem, because most people probably quit the game after end credits, but theyve made all the loot so dumbed down during the campaign that it invalidates a huge portion of whats supposed to make Diablo games exciting. The kinds of stats you can roll on gear are nowhere near as large in variety or exciting as D2. Its stuff like Cooldown reduction, Vulnerability % dmg, Dmg to slowed enemies, Dmg % increase to Core skills, Dmg % to bleed enemies, Dmg % to slowed enemies, Crit % dmg increase, Crit % chance increase. Thats basically it, its just variations of those kind of things, besides the basic DPS stats which are calculated separately on the top part of an item a combination of the attack speed and wep damage. For defenses, just raw Armor value is all that matters , atleast during campaign. You can roll other stuff like % damage mitigation while fortified and a few other things, but for the most part its even more simple than the weapons. The game does have resistances, like early Diablo games resistances were huge, if you werent paying attention to your res, you were fucked. But actually in D4 the resistances are completely pointless. At first I was focused on stacking res like my instincts tell me to in a diablo game, but after awhile I was noticing that it didnt seem to matter. So I looked it up, and it turns out the way Resistances currently work is that they pretty much do nothing. Yep, thats right, the actual logic and coding of the game right now turns out that resistances basically have such a marginal effect that its virtually nothing. Ok then.
The main interesting point of the gear is this thing called Aspects which are these special powers you can put onto any item to turn any item legendary. These powers drastically alter how your character plays it can do all sorts of stuff such as turn your basic Hammer of ancients ability into a supercharged version that slams down a big AOE of lighting. So its a pretty big deal to be aware of these Aspects and put them on all your pieces of gear. The game has all sorts of side dungeons you can find on the map, and when you complete these dungeonsit guarantees you get a certain aspect. You can open the menu and go to Codex of Powers to view all the basic aspects in the game and even Pin it to map to go complete the dungeon of the exact one you need. The basic Codex aspects you get from dungeons can be used infinitely, but are the lowest possible roll of that kind. You can find the same aspect off random items, which can roll randomly and be much stronger than the Codex versions. So it becomes this juggle of trying to find better versions of the ones you already have and trying to decide when to Imprint them because you cant remove an aspect once you put it on, you can only replace over it. Anyway it sounds like a complex system but its not that bad, its the most interesting part of the gear in the game, however I think the campaign could of done a better job introducing and explaining it.
So as I played the campaign, I was getting annoyed at how much damn dialogue , text, and cutscenes there are. Don't get me wrong, the cutscenes are very high budget and well done, but its like the kind of modern game slop where you get a chance to play for 5-10 mins, then you have to pause to watch some cinematic movie event for 10 mins , rinse repeat. Just have the damn gameplay without interruption, why are modern games like this? The game is basically an open world rpg, and it even tries to take influence from the fame of Elden Ring, because halfway through the campaign it gives you a horse to ride around on, it feels fine but the devs put all these roadblocks and barriers all over the map that the horse cant get over so you find yourself getting off the horse just to smack down a wooden fense then you have to wait 20 seconds for the horse ability to cooldown, what the fuck?
So yeah the campaign has way too much cinematic cutscenes and dialogue, I would frequently find myself annoyed having to stop and listen to people talk constantly or watch cutscenes, also none of the actual campaign missions were that memorable it was mostly like escort mission after escort mission or fetch quests, sometimes it tries to tap into your nostalgia for Diablo 2 by showing you old places like Tristram and old characters like Mephisto but it just feels like fan service and pandering more than anything. The game also has a odd lack of interesting or iconic music, instead going for lots of boring ambience and stock sounding tunes.
The actual open world of the game is pretty decent, theres obviously a lot of care and attention gone into crafting the world here, its darker and more gothic and gritty than D3 atleast, but I cant say theres really any big memorable places or locations really, its just alright.
Well I finished the campaign without much struggle, the game has 2 difficulties at default World tier 1 and 2, I picked 1 because people advised that was better for Barbarian. Well when you beat the campaign youre suppose to then do the endgame grind which is various activities you do over and over and over such as Helltides which are these hourly events where you go to a place on the open world and kill monsters to get coins to open chests, then you have Nightmare dungeons which are just harder versions of dungeons youve already beaten, then you have World events like big bosses you can fight in MMO style with random people which is pretty mindless, stuff like that. The campaign was really not that great, the cinematics were the most impressive part, but the actual missions I basically forget them all. I remember at one point I was fighting Andariel from Diablo 2, that was cool I guess, but other than that the constant pacing issues and interruptions, the constant escourt missions, its a very meh campaign. Luckily the devs put an option that if you beat the campaign once, upon creating a new character theres an option to Skip Campaign so you dont have to do it again if you dont want to, which is really surprising and cool I guess.
Well Ive been playing the endgame a lot too and I have to say theres a lot to complain about here too. For one, theres this system called Renown which in every area of the map you have to get a certain amount of Points to unlock rewards such as extra Skill points, extra permanent health potions, extra Paragon points which is basically the 2nd skill tree after level 50. In total you can get 10 extra skill points, 20 extra paragon points. Its significant. What this means is that its basically mandatory to get the highest tier of Renown to make endgame fun and play as it should. To get renown you have to complete side missions and side dungeons in each area as well as a few other minor things. So what that means is I ended up doing nothing for hours but mindlessly grinding side quests and side dungeons just to get in a good place for end game. Not good. Even worse is this thing called Altars of Lilith which are 150 little statues placed around the map that give you permanent stat buffs to your character, people say getting all of these is basically mandatory for endgame so once again I had to look up a fucking map of all these things and spend a few days doing nothing but riding around my horse picking them up. Not. Fun. Lastly, the experience grinds to a fucking hault after level 50 post campaign. It took me like 20 hours to go from 50->60 just grinding the same dungeons over and over from the campaign. Thats where I'm at. I'm planning to keep playing the game to experience all it has to offer, just because its Diablo. So i'll cut my review short here and say its obviously a very polished AAA game with a lot of money into it, its got a lot of things I dont like about it, It's not really the successor of D2 I still wanted to see, neither is PoE so that true successor still has to be made yet...
5/10
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