‘Diablo IV’ heralds a new era of fun and addictive ARPG mayhem
When considering that “Diablo III” came out in 2012 it’s easy to understand why the release of “Diablo IV” has been so highly anticipated. Fans grew concerned when learning that this game would adopt live-service elements and would be online only, but the final product is one that has many of the series’ best ingredients albeit with some new issues.
The story revolves around the demon Lilith who is the mother of humanity and creator of Sanctuary (Diablo’s version of Earth) as her reemergence leads to a great conflict that threatens all humans. The presentation of the campaign has been overhauled compared to previous games as the player’s character is shown more prominently in cutscenes and more effort has been made to properly convey the story to the player. The voice acting, characters and cinematics are all wonderfully done and even though the story has never been the focus of these games it becomes a highlight in “Diablo IV”.
The main appeal of “Diablo” has been the combat and the grind and it’s no different here. The barbarian, rogue, necromancer, sorcerer and druid are the classes that players can choose from and each has a few different builds that can be made as they level up. I mostly played as a barbarian and while it was fun to charge in and fight up close while tanking damage I noticed many boss fights tended to favor ranged characters. That’s not to say that classes like barbarian or druid are bad, but impressions from past betas seem to hold true in that they lag behind sorcerer and rogue in terms of damage output and survivability.
While progression is satisfying and the loot is plentiful it does feel like the skill tree is limited in some ways. Players can only have six active skills equipped at once and it feels like the game is forcing you to only pick one skill from each section of the tree as you level up. While the system does offer some flexibility I hope that the game will allow for more hotkeys to be assigned for the sake of increased build variety.
Boss fights in general feel very different as they are much longer and made to be more engaging. Bosses are often very mobile, have increased health pools, use a lot of area-ofeffect attacks and summon minions at a faster pace as the battle goes on. It feels like the team took some pointers from “Hades” or even “Path of Exile” when designing these bosses. The increased challenge is welcomed as final act bosses feel like great capstones to each act and even some dungeon bosses can be pretty difficult, especially when fighting alone.
The biggest change to the game has been the open world and increased focus on multiplayer. The map is much larger than any space in previous “Diablo” games and Blizzard had done a good job of spreading dungeons, live events and other hidden treasures throughout the open world. The landscapes are detailed and even the more scenic environments retain the game’s dark, horrorinspired art style. Those hoping for the series to return back to its dark roots will be very pleased.
The biggest concerns so far are the game’s online-only nature and liveservice elements. While it can be fun to join public events in the open world with friends and strangers alike the stability of the servers can fluctuate a lot. Even in this early review build with a limited pool of players things like rubberbanding and lag could become so frequent that made the game very annoying to play and it’s something that could get a lot worse when millions of players are on the servers at once.
The endgame involves completing a difficulty capstone dungeon before the player is allowed to challenge themselves with higher world tiers and torment levels. It’s there that the real meat of “Diablo” is found as players fine-tune their builds and relentlessly search for the rarest and most powerful loot drops to make their characters as powerful as possible. It’s an addictive cycle that feels at its best in this game as Blizzard has found a good mix of hardcore and casual to draw people in before the game becomes too complicated or punishing. Time will tell if the jump to live-service was worth it but I give this version of “Diablo IV” four and a half stars out of five.