Blood! robbery! number! cows! devil is a legendary series built on the strong pillars that have supported ARPG classics for many years. The name still holds some well-deserved clout, even if Diablo Immortal (and, to a lesser extent, Diablo 3) have tarnished that reputation in the minds of fans. As Diablo 4 looms, Activision Blizzard has a chance to divert your mind from stolen breastmilk, canceled PvE modes, guild busting, and tough takeovers to an old-fashioned bloody brawl.
Diablo 4 is a game that clearly harkens back to the Diablo 2 era from the start: dark and terrifying, unafraid of the harsh realities of demonic invasions, and eager to sprinkle heavy religious overtones into your game Face. Diablo 3 was good, but it always felt more like a fantasy epic. Diablo 4 returns to the terrifying Hades form – but, perhaps fittingly, it’s betrayed. Betrayed by inexplicable design decisions, betrayed by bugs, betrayed by problems that range from simply aggravated to downright devastating.
With that in mind, let’s start with what Diablo 4 excels at. I won’t spoil the narrative, but if you’ve played any of the betas, you know that Sanctuary’s world and its characters are full of personality. There’s no question that Diablo 4 is a metal album; full of climactic moments and great battles with terrifying enemies and dire odds. But it’s also sad. damn sad. As you’d expect, in a world where the threat of a demonic invasion becomes a reality, tragedy unfolds in Sanctuary. No place in the world looks habitable. Every inch of Diablo 4 is the Port Talbot of Wales.
It’s not a game you want to play with your podcast (at least not for the first time). The Diablo 4 OST is excellent; equally haunting and intimidating in parts, as is its traumatized world. Traversing the broken countryside, I found that my ears often perked up when I wasn’t knee-deep in combat. The boss theme is particularly good–the final boss track stands out as the perfect crescendo to the game’s epic finale.
Twenty years later, Activision Blizzard’s film team is still one of the best in the business. Watch the embedded trailer above for a reminder – the world around your monitor will disappear when we get these tantalizing Diablo 4 previews. These fully realized Diablo titles are a testament to Blizzard and a culmination of the quality the studio is still able to put out.
The directing and voice acting are equally prestigious. Ralph Ineson bounces effortlessly between sage wisdom, bard-like charm and utter frustration as Lorras in a performance that might just fill Michael Goff’s role as Deckard Kay Grace leaves a hole in our hearts. Donan, a character you don’t want me to dwell on here, is also masterfully portrayed.
Diablo IV oozes a grim undertone, like freshly baked melted chocolate cake. You get a taste of that sweetness that makes your mouth water very early–a beautiful collaboration between talented environment designers, animators, composers, and voice actors. It’s a morbid sweetness that offsets the dark bitterness of the world and setting. And it couldn’t be more.
Therefore, it can be said that Diablo 4 is an audiovisual feast full of bloody fun. But how does it play? Well, it’s more like a rare steak. As a barbarian, you can dash through the blood-soaked swamp and slam your ax at one of countless fearsome monsters. The resulting splash is tantalizing, viscous, and appealing, just as you’d hope. The team responsible for making players feel like Dreadnoughts of their class have done wonders – whether you’re slashing, casting spells, or summoning, Diablo IV will make you feel unstoppable.
Diablo 4 has five distinct classes, each with unique skill trees, class-specific features, and the expected arsenal of exotic weapons and armor, each containing different modifiers.Much like its fellow genre and series, Diablo 4 is a game that rewards diehards for their willingness to try, all in the name of driving content (and ultimately Astonishing) difficulty.
But this trip to hell wasn’t without its drawbacks. For those who don’t know, Diablo 4 ditched the linear format of other games in the genre in favor of a large open map. There’s still action, but these now refer to the main story missions, which generally lead you through each of the main areas. After beating the game and messing with endgame content, Diablo 4 loses precious momentum and slips into a predictable, grinding-focused cadence much earlier than you’d expect.
You first wander into Scholesglen during Act 2, to the main hub town of the region. You’ll encounter several side quests there; quick and engaging side objectives that follow the main path and break up the monotony. But here, due to the open-world MMO nature of the game, you’ll be given objectives like “kill 10 wild boars” or “kill specific enemies until they drop random quest items”. If this sounds a bit like World of Warcraft, that’s because it is. If you’re the type of player who likes to wrap up every area as soon as you arrive, you might find yourself walking into Duskwood, circa 2004.
I doubt that’s the case because it’s necessary – these side objectives have to have you go out and farm quick respawn mobs, because the game has to assume you and 35 other hellish conscripts are all doing it at the same time. If you’re going to kill a specific exciting elite enemy, I don’t think this will be a problem. Stick to the dungeon! They’re a better way to pass the time between story missions. I’d be willing to trade 50% of all these quests for a cow level.
If you just want to get that good old fashioned Diablo story stuck up your neck…too bad! I played the campaign on World Level 2 for the first time, which gives you extra experience gain. Even so, when you enter the main mission, you will find that you are not good enough. It’s better to carve out areas as much as possible and fly through a few strongholds or dungeons, rather than having to stop at the entrance to an endgame area.
At this point, you start to feel that the previous melted chocolate cake seems a bit too filling, a bit repetitive after eating too much. You want to go back to that steak – but Blizzard has now moved on. For better or for worse, you stuck with the course/
But there is also a positive side to this. The open world bosses and events are a lot of fun. Anyone who’s been in a beta or started an MMO in the past 10 years can tell you that. It’s pretty cool watching other players wander around, and while I didn’t actually have a chance to kill anyone in the open world PvP areas (not for lack of trying – I did spend a few seconds chasing down a rogue collecting a Lilith altar), these are I’m sure many people will enjoy the gameplay approach.
The sheer amount of content means that the act of leveling up new characters in future runs depends heavily on the quality of the game’s seasonal updates, where much of the ARPG’s long-term fun comes from. We don’t yet know what these are, so I can’t say whether going back to Diablo 4 is an enticing adventure. If Diablo 4 seasons offered only minor changes to general gameplay, I wouldn’t invest too much time in repeat games. And I probably do hardcore runs because I’m a masochist.
No matter what meal you eat, you don’t want to find bugs in it. Some performance issues and glitches were communicated to reviewers ahead of time, but I ran into a series of technical issues that really took a toll on the entire Diablo IV experience. The worst by far is the Act 3 boss, which causes my game to repeatedly crash. I brute force this boss through about seven crashes, each time running back to the dungeon from a nearby signpost. To say it made me lose my sail is an understatement. It damn nearly ripped the mast off the hull.
While my final boss co-op ran largely without issue, my co-worker Sherif was experiencing severe lag and found himself stuck in a final cutscene with no audio and was able to see me running around in the foreground beating up enemies. By the time he could While playing, the boss is already invisible, and I’ve made decent progress through the fight. That’s not the climactic way to end a story, is it?
I’m also concerned about the existence of the battle pass and in-game store. We weren’t able to see that either, although some screenshots of the store have been provided to the reviewer for clarity. Obviously, when done right, these things are largely non-issues, and whether you love it or hate it, it’s the reality of games today. However, looking at the monetization record of Activision Blizzard games recently has me concerned.
Expensive Battle Pass rewards for Overwatch 2, and the addition of WoW Tokens to Classic WoW are just two recent examples. I’d advise those on the cautious side to wait and see how the company handles this aspect of the game. If it’s just cool horse skin, so be it, but fans of Blizzard games should have learned to be a little skeptical by now.
Diablo 4 is good, but it could have done more. It’s a damn good entry into the series as a whole, and will give the vast majority of players a good time. Bugs and live service issues aside, this is a great package (even for players who find themselves preferring the old way of doing things). The development team went out of their way to bring back the best parts of Diablo from hell, inspiring and enriching. But you’d never come back from the dead without a horrible loot or two to remind you of your time at the bottom, would you?
advantage
- Same great Diablo action, bloodier than ever
- A great story, equally frustrating and amazingly cool
shortcoming
- The open world structure dilutes a little beauty
- Some critical bugs that could affect your time at game launch
Version test: PS5. A copy of the game is provided by the publisher.
