Diablo IV

I started with a barbarian and played for like 30 mins or so and then I decided that the barbarian is probably the simplest build and may not be the most fun so I switched it up and went with a rogue build. I usually like bows so this could be good.

Fun start. I’m still only a couple hours in but the progression has been fun so far. I like making my build. I like the world so far although I do hope we get some environmental variety throughout the game. It seems like the gameplay loop is going to be great though.

Wow I binged the first 25 ish levels very fast. Mostly all in one day post Christmas break. It was awesome. I loved it.

I’m playing around with the skill tree lots. It’s practically free to refund skills which is a great idea, so I’ve respec’d a few times when I reach hard boss fights. I’m am finding it challenging to solo some of these bosses. Some feel they were designed with parties in mind. Im liking the challenge though.

My enjoyment dropped off pretty quickly once I got to level 30. I played around with pretty much every skill and ability. I found a few different set ups I like. But then it very quickly felt like it was getting repetitive and I wasn’t working towards much. The loot grind doesn’t interest me much. Numbers go up but none of it really makes an impact. I’ve decided I’m going to golden path the main quest because I’ll never get close to clearing out the whole map with the rogue.

I started a new character. Went necromancer and skipped the campaign. I’ll still go back and beat the campaign with my rogue eventually but I want to see what the other characters can do. I feel like I’d enjoy leveling up 4 different character to 30 a lot more than grinding 1 character to a super high level.

I think the early leveling is a bit too fast and then it over corrects and becomes a bit too slow later on. I think if it was a bit slower at first and but the xp bump for each level wasn’t as big it would be perfect.

Necrom is cool. Im only a few hours in but im going to keep using him till at least level 30 I think. I am getting Diablo fatigue though so I might take a mini break. 

I’m liking the seasonal stuff which I’m shocked by. I rarely ever do but it’s working for me for whatever reason.

I started a sorcerer. It’s pretty fun. Might end up being my fave. I’m not sure. I’ve liked all 3 so far. 

I’ve played a few more main campaign missions for the rogue and a few more necromancer sessions. Necromancer just got to level 31. I think the necromancer is my favourite. He’s awesome. I love the skeletal army. I love exploding corpses leaving behind a shadowy poison. The grim reaper vibes work. Second place is currently close but maybe the sorcerer? The rogue I enjoy. And it might just be because I’ve played him the most but I’m finding him to be both the worst and the most boring at the moment. I think it’s an unfair comparison though. 

The sorcerer might actually be my favourite. I’m level 30 now. I tried out a lot of different combos. Fire, lightening and ice. Fire was so so. Lighting was awesome and then ice was even better. The exploding ice build is very fun. I spam blizzards. It’s awesome. Fuck it I’m starting a new barbarian character. Diablo IV is awesome.

Barbarian is also sick! 

Okay I’m maybe starting to slow down a bit again. I might be getting to close to calling it for a bit. 

I tried to power through the main campaign and I thought I was getting close but then I googled and it looked like I was barely over halfway. Probably like 2/3 of the way done. That’s a lot more than I’m feeling so I’m calling it now. I played 4 different character so I don’t feel the need to finish the campaign. Although maybe some point down the line I’ll return. I doubt it though.

Final Score: B+

Diablo IV has hugely improved the formula in some ways. Controller support is a big one -- Diablo used to have an atrocious point-and-click user interface with a tedious Tetris mini-game embedded into its inventory management. It's also visually vastly superior to Diablo III, which apart from the cutscenes looked like a free-to-play mobile Diablo clone outsourced to some sweat shop development studio in a third-world country.

Unfortunately, music in this entry was really lame. The cool folk music with fast paced guitar riffs has been replaced by slow and dreary orchestral scores. But the biggest downgrade is in its mechanics.

Diablo, as a genre, used to mean 2.5D real-time dungeon crawler. In that sense, Diablo IV is not even a Diablo game. Due to ubiquitous potions and level scaling, there is no longer any concept of walking into a dungeon not knowing what danger might be hiding inside or whether you will be able to make it out alive. It has devolved into a clicker/idle game at this point. And there is so much gold that the game's entire economy feels pointless, they might as well just give everything away for free with how rich my character got.

The only thing worth experiencing in this game are the cutscenes. Cutscenes are basically the only thing Blizzard knows how to do at this point; they haven't made a good game in 23 years.

Diablo 4 has a lot of potential. The groundwork is laid for a solid RPG, but all the actual features are missing. Compared to something like Path of Exile (which is free, mind you), Diablo 4 is barebones.

Balance is off. During the leveling experience, enemies scale to your level. This means that if you level up, everything gets stronger and your gear very quickly becomes obsolete. This cycle continues for the first 70 levels before you reach the game's iLvl cap. Act Bosses are extremely well done with appropriate health pools, appropriate damage, and raid-like mechanics. World Bosses are somehow a downgrade to this, with some mechanical complexity but not much. Dungeon bosses the most disappointing, especially for how often you will see them in the post-game. They feature almost no mechanical complexity, and usually die in seconds. 

The story pacing is also severely lacking. The first three acts are rough. They're non-linear and can be tackled in any order, and the story suffers as a result. You end up walking through a fairly empty world peppered with monster packs most of your playtime. Acts 4-6 are much stronger, mainly because you have a horse to ride. The story becomes linear and the main plot finally progresses. It ends with very little fanfare, obviously setting up for continued story in Season 1 or DLC down the road. I also disliked how there's only 2 pre-rendered cutscenes in the entire game. The rest of the cutscenes occur in-engine, which look pretty bad on my limited hardware. 

The post-game loop is the worst offender here. After beating the game, you have a few options for continuing: You can complete the 216 side-quests, but there's only a couple with stories worth following. You can track down Lilith altars and reveal the map for renown points, but that activity is so mindless that it is best saved for watching a movie on the side. You can run dungeons to unlock aspects, but after 50 of the 115 dungeons, you get tired of their objectives and same-y looks. The objectives range from "slay all enemies" to "find the totem and bring it back" and they ALL require backtracking. It's awful and ruins the pacing of the game. You can do events on a rotation: Helltide, Legion, and World Bosses. Rewards for each of these are severely lacking, and if it weren't for the unique crafting resource that Helltides provide, I wouldn't have done them. You could attempts the Uber Lilith lvl 100 boss, which is just a DPS check for the few builds Blizzard favors with Legendary and Unique items. The real post-game lies in running Nightmare Dungeons. These feature multiple affixes that increase enemy damage, durability, and behavior. Most builds can't make it past Tier 60, but they go up to Tier 100 for the try-hards. They upgrade your "glyphs" very incrementally, just like Greater Rifts upgraded your Gems in Diablo 3. 

Which brings us to our last, and arguably most important part of RPG's: builds, progression, and gear. The 5 classes have unique identities and mechanics, but they could have done more with each class's bonus mechanic. Druid's, for example, is just "pick a stat boost" with extra steps. I played a Druid to level 90, so my experience is colored by that. Levels 1-50 you unlock skills, choose an ultimate ability and a keystone ability, and unlock Legendary Aspects that you can put onto any rare piece of gear. These effects can be powerful, but are generally pretty boring. Only a few are game changing, and the rest are just "Deal more damage" or "Take less damage." Once you complete the game and unlock World Tier III, you begin getting "Sacred" gear, which is just gear with higher stats for no good reason. Tier IV unlocks "Ancestral Gear" which outclasses everything else. These two gear categories are parallel to the item rarity system, and without any other gear crafting features it serves no purpose. Gear is dropped with a level requirement on it that matches your character's level. This makes it much harder to trade rare gear, as if there was any in-game support for trading anyways. This is also when you unlock your Paragon Board, which is a riff on Path of Exile's skill tree. You get 4 points per level to connect nodes together and unlock powerful effects. There's a surprising amount of power available here, and I actually really enjoyed this part of the progression. Unique items begin dropping in World Tier 3 and 4, but they're all exceedingly boring for Druids. There are no set items, there are no runes/runewords, and some these very rare unique drops amount to "+2 to all skills". The amount of unique items is also pitifully low: there are only 2 Druid unique weapons, 1 ring, 2 helmets, 2 chest armors, and 1 pair of pants. Stash/Build management becomes and issue here. You're only given 4 stash tabs, and no ability to save/load builds. With gems and aspects taking up a full page each, you don't have much room for gear. 

There are many minor bugs, and I crash a lot, but those really aren't an issue. When compared to its competitors, Diablo IV is severely lacking in content, gear crafting, and features. Hopefully they adopt a good model with their Seasons and improve the game over time, because Diablo IV could be so much more than it is.