This review contains spoilers
So, Diablo IV. I feel like I say something to this effect in most of my reviews lately, but I've never really been a HUGE Diablo guy. I enjoyed Diablo III's base campaign and I played a bit of Diablo II Resurrected, but I only occasionally play the games and I don't know much about the lore. I ended up quite enjoying my time with Diablo IV, though, of course, it does have its issues. Overall, its a pretty fun top-down hack and slash style game that loves to throw tons of enemies at you, which I'm usually down for. I've been playing it exclusively when grouped up with some friends, mainly some people that tend to play on and off. I'm engaging in endgame content as of typing this review, doing Helltides, Nightmare Dungeons, and the like.
Before I talk about the real meat and potatoes of the game, I have to be honest here and say I have some complaints with Diablo IV. To be clear, the game has been pretty much nothing but smooth sailing for me as of today and yesterday and it is a fun experience, but I did encounter some frustrating, weird, or just plain funny glitches. For one, the game is...well, let's just say it was a rough launch and could have absolutely used more time in the oven. At launch, there was an annoying issue with the queue being infinite, but thankfully this was quickly fixed. There's a few minor issues, mainly with stuff like the graphics not loading in, which can make the game look like garbage (which is weird considering that the graphics in this game overall are pretty great imo). Had plenty of seemingly random lag spikes, too, but I don't know how much of that was the server's fault or my own internet or PC's fault considering I don't exactly have a top of the line gaming PC. Last minor gripe from me of note is that the power scaling felt a bit off when you're with three players, but I noticed this became a non-issue once my group got the endgame gear and abilities we needed to become very strong. If I only had small issues, though, then I wouldn't be dedicating a whole paragraph to this, so rest assured I saw some bafflingly strange glitches. The most irritating of these is that, very rarely, the game will sometimes just decide that you will not be allowed to attack at all, and I only was able to fix this when I turned the game off and opened it back up. Initially happened to only me, then spread to the person I was playing with as well. We're lucky we were in an area that was easy to escape from; if we were in a boss battle, we would have been screwed. Granted, this hasn't happened to me since, but the fact that it happened at all is truly confusing. We also once went into a dungeon that had a bugged objective, so we couldn't clear it because it acted like we were missing something that wasn't there. We checked the whole dungeon, so we knew we didn't just miss something, and other people have reported the same thing. The real kicker of a glitch - the magnum opus - was, fittingly, saved for the last boss of the game: during the final battle with Lilith, because my other party member skipped the cutscene and started the fight, I was taking damage and quickly died while the cutscene was playing. This caused the game to freak out and the cutscene was playing with no voices or subtitles, with the camera occasionally glitching out and battle effects still showing. Once the cutscene ended, I was treated to my character t-posing for a few seconds before the game showed I was dead by having my character disappear. Also I just had to move and I suddenly reappeared and was able to fight again as if I never died. I wish I recorded it, but it was very funny in the moment and there is a video showing pretty much exactly the same glitch that happened to me out there if you really want proof. I can overlook all of this, but, quite frankly, its just unacceptable for a game to be releasing with such game breaking bugs, especially if its an AAA quality game you're paying $70 for. It really makes me sad that we can't just expect these games from big developers with tons of money behind them (that also charge a lot for their games) to launch as a complete fully polished package like they used to. All that money and you can't make sure your game comes out polished?
Alright, time to talk about the actual content now. How about gameplay? Well, I think its pretty good, though I recommend playing in a party of friends. I was playing a Barbarian, so naturally my play style was simple, but it was still fun bashing my enemies skulls and stunning them a bunch. I felt just fine as far as power goes very early on, not super strong but decently powerful. Although, as I mentioned earlier, I was playing with a party of fluctuating numbers of players, and I always felt considerably weaker than my Sorcerer bro (which I sort of expected since I figured my defenses and decent crowd control made up for it). Then, once I got a little further in the story - around late Act 2 to early Act 3 - I found myself frustrated by how weak I was. That frustration persisted all the way until the end of the story and a tiny bit into the endgame, but I found that, as soon as I swapped from the talent build intended for leveling that I was using to a different build meant for endgame, I was becoming more beefy and dealing more damage just like how I felt like I should have been during the story. Now I have a bunch of very good gear and I plow through everything while barely having to think about my health bar, whereas before I was constantly dying and my damage output felt so low. I think this goes to show just how important it is to fully understand all of this game's systems and to have a guide on you while you play, though I dunno if I'll ever find out why that leveling build felt so pitiful to me. Speaking of which...
I think its very worth mentioning that, for me, Diablo 4's sense of progression was a little odd and honestly pretty overly complicated at times. There's plenty of systems to engage with, like the typical ARPG talent tree where you get points every level to sink into new abilities or bonuses to stats, some light crafting systems using the tons of materials you find through exploration, the Aspects system (Aspects are specialized effects that are either randomly added to gear as soon as you find it or can be imprinted on gear yourself once you earn some from completing dungeons or extracting the Aspects from gear you already have)...the rest of the systems are endgame stuff, but are also a little perplexing, like how you stop getting talent points after about Level 50 and instead get another separate tree called the Paragon Board, which contains little bonuses to sink your points into (think stuff like "+2.50% total health") that can also have slots for special effects called Glyphs that you throw XP into during Nightmare dungeons to then toss into this board's slots once you work your way far enough into the tree to reach the glyph slot. If you want more talent points, you need to go out and explore or finish side quests to finish certain Challenges. Even just getting rid of your old gear is something to contemplate on; do you sell them, or do you salvage them for important materials used to upgrade your weapons and armor? For me, the answer was usually to salvage everything until I reached endgame (I started selling every piece of gear I didn't need that wasn't a Legendary or Sacred item then), but some players might find the money more immediately useful. There's a ton of gems you can socket into your gear for bonus effects; how will you know which ones you need without a guide? Which of the metric tons of possible Aspects do you need for your class + build, and will you extract your Aspects from gear or go complete dungeons to have them permanently for imprinting on any gear you find? And, when you decide to do one of the main endgame content activities - Nightmare dungeons - you have to collect Sigils, which are one time use consumables that activate the Nightmare dungeons. If you want to do a specific Nightmare dungeon, you need the right Sigil to unlock it. Nightmare dungeons also have varying tiers of difficulty that different Sigils correspond to. Oh, and this isn't even getting into how there's a whole bunch of stats to consider, so finding which ones are best for your class can be a little rough (again without a guide). Sometimes RNG gives you gear with stats that aren't all perfect fits for your build, like ranks in an ability you will never use or unimportant stats. In the endgame content I was playing through last night, my Sorcerer buddy was very annoyed by the lack of gear with stats he actually needs, though maybe he was just very unlucky. I think all of this sheer amount of stuff really went over my head early on, and, while I understand it all pretty well now, quite frankly there's a lot of shit here. Maybe I'm overestimating how convoluted others may find it, though. Either way, if you're a new player, you got quite a bit to learn here.
Let's finally talk about the story. I said this before, but I'm far from a Diablo lore buff. Nonetheless, there was still some great stuff to enjoy about this story in my opinion. There's a big focus on characters here, with the idea seemingly being to have you get attached to them by seeing the sacrifices and struggles of these allies you've gathered as well as the motivations of the villains. The main villain - Lilith - is one of the Lesser Evils, the second strongest rank in the hierarchy of demons, who manages to get summoned to Sanctuary (basically the human realm) and immediately starts corrupting everyone in her path. As the main character, of course, your goal is to try and stop her. The game starts you off in a tundra with no explanation, where you nearly freeze and die until a wolf saves you. Then you find a village of Lilith cultists who seem like a helpful bunch at first, but immediately turn on you as soon as you fall unconscious from drinking whatever they put in your drink. A villager drags you out into a hut to try and corrupt you too through a common magical item of Lilith: the blood petals. A monk named Iosef that you met earlier saves you right then and there. From there, you follow him to Kyovashad, which is pretty much the main city of the game. To summarize, the story takes you on a journey all around Sanctuary, where you slowly learn more about Lilith, gain allies, and encounter some twists along the way, like how you stumble upon the mysterious Tree of Whispers in the heart of a dark swamp after taking psychedelic drugs, or how Elias was the pupil of Lorath gone rogue that managed to achieve immortality (and you also get to fight him like five times throughout the story which got annoying real fast). Perhaps the most interesting story parts of this game imo have to do with Lilith and especially the brief bit that explores her relationship with the angel Inarius. They are actually the reason humanity exists, since the Nephilim were born out of their relationship. It makes for a neat dynamic in that, despite Lilith being the Daughter of Hatred, she is still portrayed as closer to a benign figure than Inarius, who is a prideful arrogant warrior who almost seems to spit on his followers despite the immense faith they have for him. It also sort of shows why humans were so close to follow her without hesitation: Lilith's goal - or so she claims - is to stop the Eternal Conflict (infinite war between angels and demons) for good so that humans can reach their true potential. As for the best character, I liked Donan the most. He's a mage that once traveled with a group of adventurers to fight the powerful demon Astaroth, though they could not kill him and could only seal him away in a Soulstone. Everyone goes through some terrible events and has to make heavy sacrifices in this game, but Donan's is probably the most easy to sympathize with, considering that his adventurer companions are mostly dead and his son is turned into the host for that same demon he fought long ago (and we unfortunately have to kill him). The grief he feels for his son's death gets a good amount of emphasis and for good reason. From what I've seen, one of the most hated parts of this story is Donan's death, not because he died but because the way he went out was the stupidest most uninteresting way possible. When you're exploring Hell with your allies, they seem to be fighting back just fine, but Donan gets caught off-guard by a random demon tree in the background once and almost instantly dies from it. It actually made me do a double take on if that even happened; this character they built up an attachment with dies that easily? Well, regardless, I thought this story was pretty good and I had no major complaints about it other than maybe the pacing dragging out too long at times. It can sometimes feel like the narrative isn't actually progressing and you're just wasting your time.
Overall, despite the utterly bizarre but admittedly rare bugs, I found Diablo IV to be an enjoyable game. Cool story, fun gameplay, decent graphics...although its not really above a 3.5 stars for me. Keep in mind, that's not a bad score in my book. For me, 3.5 stars means I like the game but it has various problems in there that prevents me from ranking it much higher.
Before I talk about the real meat and potatoes of the game, I have to be honest here and say I have some complaints with Diablo IV. To be clear, the game has been pretty much nothing but smooth sailing for me as of today and yesterday and it is a fun experience, but I did encounter some frustrating, weird, or just plain funny glitches. For one, the game is...well, let's just say it was a rough launch and could have absolutely used more time in the oven. At launch, there was an annoying issue with the queue being infinite, but thankfully this was quickly fixed. There's a few minor issues, mainly with stuff like the graphics not loading in, which can make the game look like garbage (which is weird considering that the graphics in this game overall are pretty great imo). Had plenty of seemingly random lag spikes, too, but I don't know how much of that was the server's fault or my own internet or PC's fault considering I don't exactly have a top of the line gaming PC. Last minor gripe from me of note is that the power scaling felt a bit off when you're with three players, but I noticed this became a non-issue once my group got the endgame gear and abilities we needed to become very strong. If I only had small issues, though, then I wouldn't be dedicating a whole paragraph to this, so rest assured I saw some bafflingly strange glitches. The most irritating of these is that, very rarely, the game will sometimes just decide that you will not be allowed to attack at all, and I only was able to fix this when I turned the game off and opened it back up. Initially happened to only me, then spread to the person I was playing with as well. We're lucky we were in an area that was easy to escape from; if we were in a boss battle, we would have been screwed. Granted, this hasn't happened to me since, but the fact that it happened at all is truly confusing. We also once went into a dungeon that had a bugged objective, so we couldn't clear it because it acted like we were missing something that wasn't there. We checked the whole dungeon, so we knew we didn't just miss something, and other people have reported the same thing. The real kicker of a glitch - the magnum opus - was, fittingly, saved for the last boss of the game: during the final battle with Lilith, because my other party member skipped the cutscene and started the fight, I was taking damage and quickly died while the cutscene was playing. This caused the game to freak out and the cutscene was playing with no voices or subtitles, with the camera occasionally glitching out and battle effects still showing. Once the cutscene ended, I was treated to my character t-posing for a few seconds before the game showed I was dead by having my character disappear. Also I just had to move and I suddenly reappeared and was able to fight again as if I never died. I wish I recorded it, but it was very funny in the moment and there is a video showing pretty much exactly the same glitch that happened to me out there if you really want proof. I can overlook all of this, but, quite frankly, its just unacceptable for a game to be releasing with such game breaking bugs, especially if its an AAA quality game you're paying $70 for. It really makes me sad that we can't just expect these games from big developers with tons of money behind them (that also charge a lot for their games) to launch as a complete fully polished package like they used to. All that money and you can't make sure your game comes out polished?
Alright, time to talk about the actual content now. How about gameplay? Well, I think its pretty good, though I recommend playing in a party of friends. I was playing a Barbarian, so naturally my play style was simple, but it was still fun bashing my enemies skulls and stunning them a bunch. I felt just fine as far as power goes very early on, not super strong but decently powerful. Although, as I mentioned earlier, I was playing with a party of fluctuating numbers of players, and I always felt considerably weaker than my Sorcerer bro (which I sort of expected since I figured my defenses and decent crowd control made up for it). Then, once I got a little further in the story - around late Act 2 to early Act 3 - I found myself frustrated by how weak I was. That frustration persisted all the way until the end of the story and a tiny bit into the endgame, but I found that, as soon as I swapped from the talent build intended for leveling that I was using to a different build meant for endgame, I was becoming more beefy and dealing more damage just like how I felt like I should have been during the story. Now I have a bunch of very good gear and I plow through everything while barely having to think about my health bar, whereas before I was constantly dying and my damage output felt so low. I think this goes to show just how important it is to fully understand all of this game's systems and to have a guide on you while you play, though I dunno if I'll ever find out why that leveling build felt so pitiful to me. Speaking of which...
I think its very worth mentioning that, for me, Diablo 4's sense of progression was a little odd and honestly pretty overly complicated at times. There's plenty of systems to engage with, like the typical ARPG talent tree where you get points every level to sink into new abilities or bonuses to stats, some light crafting systems using the tons of materials you find through exploration, the Aspects system (Aspects are specialized effects that are either randomly added to gear as soon as you find it or can be imprinted on gear yourself once you earn some from completing dungeons or extracting the Aspects from gear you already have)...the rest of the systems are endgame stuff, but are also a little perplexing, like how you stop getting talent points after about Level 50 and instead get another separate tree called the Paragon Board, which contains little bonuses to sink your points into (think stuff like "+2.50% total health") that can also have slots for special effects called Glyphs that you throw XP into during Nightmare dungeons to then toss into this board's slots once you work your way far enough into the tree to reach the glyph slot. If you want more talent points, you need to go out and explore or finish side quests to finish certain Challenges. Even just getting rid of your old gear is something to contemplate on; do you sell them, or do you salvage them for important materials used to upgrade your weapons and armor? For me, the answer was usually to salvage everything until I reached endgame (I started selling every piece of gear I didn't need that wasn't a Legendary or Sacred item then), but some players might find the money more immediately useful. There's a ton of gems you can socket into your gear for bonus effects; how will you know which ones you need without a guide? Which of the metric tons of possible Aspects do you need for your class + build, and will you extract your Aspects from gear or go complete dungeons to have them permanently for imprinting on any gear you find? And, when you decide to do one of the main endgame content activities - Nightmare dungeons - you have to collect Sigils, which are one time use consumables that activate the Nightmare dungeons. If you want to do a specific Nightmare dungeon, you need the right Sigil to unlock it. Nightmare dungeons also have varying tiers of difficulty that different Sigils correspond to. Oh, and this isn't even getting into how there's a whole bunch of stats to consider, so finding which ones are best for your class can be a little rough (again without a guide). Sometimes RNG gives you gear with stats that aren't all perfect fits for your build, like ranks in an ability you will never use or unimportant stats. In the endgame content I was playing through last night, my Sorcerer buddy was very annoyed by the lack of gear with stats he actually needs, though maybe he was just very unlucky. I think all of this sheer amount of stuff really went over my head early on, and, while I understand it all pretty well now, quite frankly there's a lot of shit here. Maybe I'm overestimating how convoluted others may find it, though. Either way, if you're a new player, you got quite a bit to learn here.
Let's finally talk about the story. I said this before, but I'm far from a Diablo lore buff. Nonetheless, there was still some great stuff to enjoy about this story in my opinion. There's a big focus on characters here, with the idea seemingly being to have you get attached to them by seeing the sacrifices and struggles of these allies you've gathered as well as the motivations of the villains. The main villain - Lilith - is one of the Lesser Evils, the second strongest rank in the hierarchy of demons, who manages to get summoned to Sanctuary (basically the human realm) and immediately starts corrupting everyone in her path. As the main character, of course, your goal is to try and stop her. The game starts you off in a tundra with no explanation, where you nearly freeze and die until a wolf saves you. Then you find a village of Lilith cultists who seem like a helpful bunch at first, but immediately turn on you as soon as you fall unconscious from drinking whatever they put in your drink. A villager drags you out into a hut to try and corrupt you too through a common magical item of Lilith: the blood petals. A monk named Iosef that you met earlier saves you right then and there. From there, you follow him to Kyovashad, which is pretty much the main city of the game. To summarize, the story takes you on a journey all around Sanctuary, where you slowly learn more about Lilith, gain allies, and encounter some twists along the way, like how you stumble upon the mysterious Tree of Whispers in the heart of a dark swamp after taking psychedelic drugs, or how Elias was the pupil of Lorath gone rogue that managed to achieve immortality (and you also get to fight him like five times throughout the story which got annoying real fast). Perhaps the most interesting story parts of this game imo have to do with Lilith and especially the brief bit that explores her relationship with the angel Inarius. They are actually the reason humanity exists, since the Nephilim were born out of their relationship. It makes for a neat dynamic in that, despite Lilith being the Daughter of Hatred, she is still portrayed as closer to a benign figure than Inarius, who is a prideful arrogant warrior who almost seems to spit on his followers despite the immense faith they have for him. It also sort of shows why humans were so close to follow her without hesitation: Lilith's goal - or so she claims - is to stop the Eternal Conflict (infinite war between angels and demons) for good so that humans can reach their true potential. As for the best character, I liked Donan the most. He's a mage that once traveled with a group of adventurers to fight the powerful demon Astaroth, though they could not kill him and could only seal him away in a Soulstone. Everyone goes through some terrible events and has to make heavy sacrifices in this game, but Donan's is probably the most easy to sympathize with, considering that his adventurer companions are mostly dead and his son is turned into the host for that same demon he fought long ago (and we unfortunately have to kill him). The grief he feels for his son's death gets a good amount of emphasis and for good reason. From what I've seen, one of the most hated parts of this story is Donan's death, not because he died but because the way he went out was the stupidest most uninteresting way possible. When you're exploring Hell with your allies, they seem to be fighting back just fine, but Donan gets caught off-guard by a random demon tree in the background once and almost instantly dies from it. It actually made me do a double take on if that even happened; this character they built up an attachment with dies that easily? Well, regardless, I thought this story was pretty good and I had no major complaints about it other than maybe the pacing dragging out too long at times. It can sometimes feel like the narrative isn't actually progressing and you're just wasting your time.
Overall, despite the utterly bizarre but admittedly rare bugs, I found Diablo IV to be an enjoyable game. Cool story, fun gameplay, decent graphics...although its not really above a 3.5 stars for me. Keep in mind, that's not a bad score in my book. For me, 3.5 stars means I like the game but it has various problems in there that prevents me from ranking it much higher.