"Diablo IV" falls short due to Blizzard's blatant greed, turning what should have been a great game into a cash grab. The base price is already steep, but that's just the beginning. The relentless push for microtransactions makes it feel more like a predatory free-to-play MMORPG than a premium game. On top of that, the game is unfathomably unoptimized, plagued with performance issues that make it frustrating to play. What was once a beloved franchise now feels like a shallow, money-driven experience, undermining the legacy of the "Diablo" series.

comeplay mylord...They Fixed Everything! no, sorry, they didnot AND WILLNOT add a "knight in shining armor" class who wields a crucifix shield into this "gothic horror medieval fantasy game" about fighting demons, iam sorry if that is what thou art after...REturn2Darkness??? nononono, Return2Diablo3, thats what all the fathers too busy taking care of their wife's sonS were asking for on reddit after all, pop open youre designated giftbag of set items and go2town baby, hunt down those epic reforged phat loots with +damage +vitality +shadow resist that you will constantly cycle thru cuz remedial busywork is Fun as long as the numbers are getting bigger. Blizarsds did it just 4 U, maxlevel cums so fast you will never see other players so noneed to even worry about all the new horse armor on sale (no one would get to see it!).PS does anyoneknow why was the pvp zones empty everytime i play this?

It's hard to really recommend Diablo 4 to people because it sought to "return to the dark fantasy of the first two games" as a reactionary response to Diablo 3, but... Diablo 3 is good! It looks good and with the Altar of Rites they've fixed basically all the problems I had with the game's itemization economy! It's probably a better entry point for the series!

And now Diablo 4 has to go through the same growing pains because we are cursed as an industry to forget the lessons of the past in favor of constantly chasing an imagined ideal which is fundamentally unattainable. Oh well!

The open world is a big plus, as well as bringing back dungeons and giving you items to make them harder in favor of better rewards. I'm glad they tried something relatively new with how a game like this is structured.. Diablo 4 understood one of Destiny's core points: that it's cool to randomly team up with people in the wilderness to do public events. More ARPGs should try this, but they'd have to invest in the complicated networking infrastructure to do so, and that's something I think only the big boys can feasibly do.

Anyway, I like this game and I think it's pretty good, but if you want a fully mature loot grinder experience, Diablo 3 (if you wanna focus on buildmaxxing / grinding) or Grim Dawn (if you want the grim aesthetic and a more "investment" type build experience) will probably do you better.

My barbarian build where I apply huge bleed stacks to an enemy and then shove my polearm into their guts and kill them instantly is VERY satisfying.

Wife’s Reaction:
“It’s just a whole lot of shing shing thunk blarg blerch bleeeeh ya know?”

A Hell of a Time Sink:
Diablo excels at being a game that you don’t have to think too much while playing. You want to stay focused so things don’t get out of hand with all the enemies, but it’s really just a good reason to squad up with friends and dick around while slaying hordes of demons.

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For whatever reason I failed to connect with it, its open world didn't appeal to me and its story didn't interest me. To say it's a bad game would be lying, but I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as the previous one.

Sea por el motivo que sea no he logrado conectar con él, su mundo abierto no me ha gustado y su historia no me ha interesado. Decir que es mal juego sería mentir, pero no lo he disfrutado ni de cerca tanto como el anterior.

Diablo IV is heaps of fun. It's a welcomed return to form after a mixed reception with Diablo III. It mostly takes the best bits of D2 and D3 and mushes 'em together with some new paint and veneer, and it creates the best Diablo experience to date. There are a few things keeping it from being a truly all-time great game though, and while it probably is the best ARPG to-date there are some things missing that other competitors in the genre have.

The storyline is quite fun if not hard to follow and super esoteric. You don't play these sorts of games for story but it'd be a monumental disservice to not highlight the quality of voice acting and the cutscenes. The cutscene for the battle in Hell where Lilith rips off Inarius' wings is insanely cool and one of the coolest cinematographic scenes I've seen in gaming. Again, story isn't the reason why you play this and in some ways the story gets in the way of the actual content (killing shit) but the quality is so high that it needs to be mentioned.

Otherwise, the gameplay itself is pretty smooth. The loop of killing enemies, collecting loot, selling loot, upgrading abilities and gear is generally pleasing. There are some niggles, which I'll talk about later, but the core of the gameplay loop is quite good. Enemies are varied enough that you have to think a little about how to approach each one, at least while levelling anyway, that things don't get too boring too quickly. And while the the meta-farming would have you running similar content, a more casual player can weave through legion events, helltides, grim favors chests and dungeon-crawling interchangeably and still gain meaningful progression and variety.

There are some headscratching decisions, however. And a number of missing Quality of Life type features that make the game feel sloggish once you start creeping past level 70 and reaching World Tier 4 endgame. The decision to scale the world with your player level is a double-edged sword. It keeps content engaging and it allows for world content and co-op content to be done no matter the level spread between players. This is tremendous and makes the game very accessible but it also has the drawback of making leveling feel a little pointless and aimless. What's the point in levelling up if all the enemies will always be within two levels of you? You never get that powercreep hero fantasy where you just start annihilating everything around you. It also makes every task that much more arduous because you can't just smash through them.

The level-scaling wouldn't be the worst if gear didn't also restrict to level. What this means is that most of the gear you pick up can only be used by a character within the same level range that you currently are. If you're level 50 and you pickup an axe, that axe can only be used by characters, probably, within levels 45-50 give or take. This means that even though all your characters share a stash, this axe can only be used by characters around the same level as your current one. So if you go to level up an alt, that alt has to wait till level 45 to use the axe. But as you can guess, when that other character is level 45 it starts seeing loot drops at the same level which probably makes the axe you've been waiting on, useless.

And this is a piece of a fundamental issue. A core part of the ARPG experience is loot. And most of the loot in Diablo IV sucks. More than even the typical ARPG. You pick up absolute mountains of loot, more than most games besides maybe Lost Ark. But as such, 95% of it or more is completely useless not just for your current character or build, but even for any alt you'd want to build. Inventory space and stash space is quite limited to. So you spend a very large amount of time selling and salvaging just about every thing you pick up. And you're doing this live every 10-20 minutes. Because you swell your inventory in each dungeon that if you're determined to pick up all of the loot in a dungeon you're likely teleporting at least once back to town in the middle of it. Slowing the game down even more.

It also just continues making things feel a little aimless. Everytime you level, so does the world around you. At a certain point the vast majority of the gear is completely useless and most of your skills and attributes are already statted out. So there's just not much new to see. Not much reason to play. And this isn't ultra endgame super sweaty tryhard. This is playing at a fairly normal casual cadence without even using min-maxed meta guides to build your character. Play long enough to try and see all the regular content and you're gonna smash directly into this wall.

So let's just start another character! After all, ARPGs are meant to have many characters and classes, that's part of the charm! Well, when you start another character you start at level one and can't use any of the gear you've found before. No biggie, we leveled once we can do it again. Except now almost all of your previous progression doesn't carry over. You have to even uncover the entire map again. This means the most tedious parts of the game have to be completely redone for a second character, like the Altars of Lilith. And these aren't optional, these things give direct stat increases and attribute points that are crucial for progression. There's nothing interesting about uncovering the map a second time. Nothing engaging. But you have to do it. And each new character shares the same stash so you're eating into your already limited inventory space. Rolling new characters feels oppressive right now.

So fine. What if we respec? There's a ton of viable builds in any ARPG for any given class, let's shake things up by trying a new playstyle with our existing character. Well that's a massive pain in the ass too. Respeccing is very expensive and the only real method of acquiring gold in the game is to sell all the loot that falls of the loot treadmill in these neverending dungeons. Many, many builds are also significantly dependent on very specific and rare-dropping aspects. So without them some builds just don't function meaning you have to plan way in advance to convert to a given build. So you may be able to build it half-assed and drop a world tier or two until you get lucky but that also means your drops will be even lower quality. And of course, what happens if you do have all you need and you respec into something you end up not liking? It's wildly expensive, serving as a strong deterrent to even bothering. Respeccing is basically only worth it if you find your build is completely broken or ill-suited to the difficulty level you're playing. Experimentation is pretty strongly discouraged.

Well at least the content is fun? Yes and no. It is fun. But it is also highly repetitive. Which is absolutely the nature of ARPGs. But Diablo IV's feels even more grating. Helltides are fun, legion events are very fun, grim favors is entertaining. Dungeons? Dungeons can be occasionally fun but the real problem is that Nightmare Dungeons are by far the best way to level, farm gold and farm loot. There's no better endgame content. So you're strongly encouraged to spam them or you'll feel noticeably suboptimal. Dungeons aren't unfun but they are the least fun content in the game and so them being the only really viable piece of content for late game farming sucks the life out of the game. Especially when the vast majority of loot is useless in every form.

Why aren't dungeons fun? Dungeon design is pretty miserable. Dungeons are windy and circular have lots of backtracking. There are lots of quests that require you to bring an object to a pedestal but you can only carry one object at a time and there can be three or even five such objects and pedestals. Meaning tons of backtracking. Mob density in most dungeons is also fairly poor so there's an ample amount of time spent jogging through nothing. When you do find enemies most of them die in one hit unless they're 'increased health' or elite enemies who don't really provide any difficulty but take longer to kill. So it all serves to slow the game down. These dungeon tasks are also mandatory to advance in the dungeon towards the final boss so you can't even elect to skip past them. There's only about six or so flavors of dungeon task and dungeons can have two or three of them. So it will get highly repetitive in addition to the backtracking and monotonous nature of a dungeon even when its 'fresh'.

This seems like a harsh critique for a game I've scored so highly. In reality, Diablo IV is absolutely great fun for about 100 hours before decaying into something a good bit more slogging. And 100 hours of great fun deserves high praise. The addition of couch co-op is also phenomenal considering most games have abandoned this. Being able to have two people play through all this content but only having to purchase one copy of the game is fantastically pro-consumer and that alone deserves four stars. The truth is Diablo IV is a really fun game with fantastic bones to it. The current state leaves the endgame dull and messy and a bit soul-sucking. But it is plenty fixable. The core game is great. It's some of the accoutrement that is currently lacking. Season 1 is on the way in <two weeks and promises some shake up. Future seasons in future years may also continue to evolve the end game in really meaningful and fun ways that help re-engage the playerbase. It's going to need it. But as long as the core of the game remains so much fun to play, they can fix up the endgame by pulling the right levers and I'll look forward to seeing if they do so.

(Veteran playthrough, then Nightmare, all strongholds completed, map fully discovered, Blood Lance Minions Necromancer Level 54)

Well, I think I will stop with this game for now, but I can see myself coming back to play future expansions or seasons. It wasn’t quite enough to hook me and make it my main game or anything, but I get the appeal now. Although, it was far too easy until I was able to raise my world tier. Game was instantly more fun and challenging when I raised the difficulty, I wish I could have been playing on Nightmare from the beginning. Campaign was alright. I did know some lore from videos and stuff, but I surely would have benefited more if I had played the previous games. Wonderful art direction and design. All the environments were incredible.