When I say I enjoyed the time I spent in Diablo IV, all I'm really saying is that I enjoyed my girlfriend's company in a goal-oriented digital space. I would have had a tangibly equivalent experience with any of a dozen other polished online multiplayer content hoses. Which isn't a complaint—this game is fine, and I didn't need it to be anything more than that.

From the first moments of actually playing the game, though, it becomes clear that it's buckling under its own massive size. It is bound and determined to be a lifestyle service game, and that colors everything about its design. While the few bespoke pieces can be compelling—the character progression gives a lot of room for experimenting with cool builds—the vast majority is clearly just a content treadmill. The loot curve is precision engineered to give you a better drop for one of your slots every X minutes on average, which means no individual item can ever define your play. There is simply too much writing for any of it to be particularly compelling. The dungeons have to be procedural, which leads to them quickly feeling like repetitive sequences of rooms with guys in them.

The real sin of Diablo IV then is just that it's boring. By shoving so much stuff into it, the whole becomes dilute and flavorless. You can still lose hours to it, to be sure, but unless you're spending them in the company of good friends you'll get very little of value in return.