Diablo 4 Review
There are shitty-but-fun cash-grab mobile MMO games which capitalize on already successful series, and there are painfully well-designed small-party experiences which transport players to an immersive world of destiny and imagination, and then there's Diablo 4 which attempts to somehow walk a line between them close enough to stuff Blizzard's pockets without completely sinking the 27-year-old series.
Open Beta
As I spend hours downloading the Diablo 4 Open Beta and waiting an hour in the login queue on release day—classic Blizzard—I'm excited but worried; the skill tree looks amazing in theory, but the map looks surprisingly a lot like Diablo Immortal… The Open Beta download size and launch-day queues bring back fond memories of the Diablo 3 release—and Diablo 2 every time a patch went live—foreshadowing the same will happen when Diablo 4 sees a full release in June… ish.
One small thing I noticed right away is Diablo 4 includes a great feature popularized by the Souls genre: social-gesture triggers. Certain quests or events require the use of specific gestures to trigger actions or satisfy the quest; instead of a simple click, the player may need to act out a gesture relevant to the context. Personally, I think it adds depth to the gameplay, and I'm excited to see gestures used more throughout the game.
The new skill tree is very exciting indeed, but it's hard to say how deep the rabbit hole goes towards Diablo Immortal; it's not that Diablo Immortal is a bad game—sure, it's fun with lots of flashy things and legendaries dropping every time you blink—it's just that Diablo Immortal has no immersion value; you play it because it's lightweight RPG fun with your friends on the go, not because it's a great game.
Exciting Play Styles
The uniqueness of each class and variety of play styles are incredible. Each class gets a specialization which makes the class fundamentally different from any other class: passive spell casting, combo attacks, per-weapon experience, summoning undead, and more. The rogue class can equip melee and ranged weapons at the same time, and the barbarian can equip three sets of weapons at the same time; swapping weapons does not require toggling—weapons simply switch to perform the action pressed.
Skills live in one big tree now in Diablo 4. There are way too many skills than you could possibly choose, and I love it. Each major node has a set of skills with a similar purpose—like basic skills, core skills, etc.—and each skill has augmentations which may exclude other choices. Customization of play style within each class is a huge win, and I'm excited to explore it. Diablo 3 oversimplified the skills a bit too much, but Diablo 4 reopens a huge realm of possibility with play style exploration.
Blizzard still hasn't fixed the fact that the item graphics are too small to care about. You know, in Diablo 1 and 2, the item graphics were quite large and impressionable relative to the text blob; since Diablo 3, Blizzard seems to not care much about the item thumbnails, and Diablo 4 seems to follow suit.
World Design
The huge open world map seems to be static and set in stone, which is a bit disappointing, frankly; the procedurally generated world is a longstanding hallmark of the Diablo series, and I'd rather not see that taken out to make way for the MMO parade. If I need to start grinding dailies to progress, I'm throwing in the towel—their only purpose is to nauseatingly drag out the existing content until the artists have enough time to churn out more. The backbone of the Diablo series is that it's difficult—it's grindy because item drops are random and you don't understand the mechanics, not because Blizzard needs you to spend money on the Halloween outfits they're launching in a few months.
The MMO-style world map brings about some inconsistencies with the previous games of the series. Monsters respawn on top of you while you've stopped to examine that legendary axe that just dropped; you can't even walk away to take a piss without being bludgeoned to death by brutish hellbeings. Everything is in the same goddamn place all the time, so I expect the game to get boring rather quickly—which is honestly why I didn't put down extra coin for the deluxe or ultimate deluxe legendary edition (or whatever other adjectives their marketing team can throw at it). Diablo 4 is the first (real) game in the series to break the entirely-procedurally-generated bit, and frankly that's upsetting.
Diablo 4's deep world building could honestly use a bit… less. Sure, there are lots of fun storylines and side quests and some good voice acting and personalities, but none of it is very memorable—save for the main quest with hours of cinematics streamed straight through your eyeballs. Half the NPCs in the game do nothing, the interactable ones are there for maybe one quest or a half-hearted joke, and the important ones seem like reshahes from Diablo 3 with new names. Anyway, my point is there are too many damn NPCs to really care about any of them; I'm not saying Diablo 4 should resurrect Deckard Cain for the third time, but an iconic supporting character or two could go a long way.
Conclusion
On one hand, the solo leveling experience in Diablo 4 is full of choice, challenge, and purpose: tons of action skills, passives, and specializations with a high degree of play-style customization. On the other hand, ripping out the spine of the series to make room for more MMO features is like transforming my local coffee shop into a Starbucks—sure, there's more people around, ordering all their sugary drinks, but the coffee fucking sucks now.
While the verdict is still on on whether Diablo 4 will eventually become the unfortunate death of a legacy, the impressive new features brought to the genre really do deserve some attention. Obviously, the trend toward Diablo Immortal is a step in the wrong direction for long-time fans of the series, but at least MMO chat channels are back in the front seat—nothing quite like Barrens Chat at three in the morning, if I'm to be honest. Exploring the substantial newness Diablo 4 brings to the series is incredibly fun, though, and I'm looking forward to playing a lot more when it releases June 6, 2023 (or whenever it inevitably gets pushed).
Feedback? Send queries to reviews@chaotyc.com