Diablo IV

The game is not worth the 70 price tag.

The positive: The design is awesome, Lilith is perfect, the game feels great to play, it is responsive and the attacks have weight behind them. The cinematics.

The negative: The history could have been epic and it really felt epic until almost the end... then it just felt like they missed the mark, or were eager to end it.

The builds, the way the skill tree is made there is like 5 builds possible max per classes which is very very disappointing.

The constant stuttering is something unbearable.

The "AI generated fetch quests"... most side quests feel like they were made by AI.... go fetch this and go to the other side of the map and come back, which never was the point of a diablo game.

The gear system is so basic it's disappointing, stripped of everything that makes a Diablo game with the excuse of "we will bring stuff later" but still charging full price for an incomplete game.

This is a hard review because on one hand the graphics, controls, gameplay, music, and story is great. The game just feels good to play.

The main issue is the "always online" requirement that Blizzard implemented. The issue with this is that for some reason your character will suddenly get stuck in invisible walls, you literally cannot move, suddenly you either get teleported all over the map of if there are enemies around you, your hit detection doesn't work and they just stand there. Eventually when the server is finally able to catch up to you, you are DEAD, DEAD, DEAD!!!

Blizzards explanation is somewhere along the lines of "the server is trying to catch up with you that is why there are invisible walls." They basically said to fix this teleport out and re-teleport back in. Seriously? Is this how we can fix this issue?

I hope one day there is enough demands that Blizzard releases an off-line mode. There is literally no reason as to why you must absolutely remain online at all times except for Blizzard to spy on you like the Chinese Government.

Anyways at this state with the servers and the invisible walls and the no hit detection issues, this game is pretty much borderline unplayable. I don't what to give this but when the game is working, it is a 10/10, but because of the issues with server and stuff I just mentioned, I don't know, maybe a 1/10 cus it is unplayable at this STATE.

Wasted potential. ~15 years of Diablo 3 development & maintenance, and a few years of Diablo Immortal, yet they learned nothing about what makes a good Diablo game in the 21st century.

Instead they tried to cater to the Diablo 2 fossils by copy/pasting all the classes & skills from it, and then charged us full price for the same old cr@p that everyone and their granny has already played for 1000 hours 10-20 years ago.

No new classes, hardly any new skills, terrible legendary powers, zero innovation or originality. Tries to be MMO-lite but provides zero incentive for grouping up, and doesn't even have a Group Finder or Lobby Creator, or even a decent chat system.

Result: a stale-from-the-start mess with zero replayability, terrible class design and no real endgame to speak of, with players abandoning it in droves.

I've dragged Diablo 3 over the coals plenty in my lifetime, but it still kept me playing for ~10 years despite having no mod support - mods being the only reason Diablo 2 stayed popular enough. Diablo 3 gave us vastly improved classes to the point where you felt like you were playing something completely new. That is what Diablo 4 is missing - something new to play.

The game director's only skill is copy/pasting & cutting corners from top to bottom. Diablo 3 has no less than 8 fully professionally rendered Cinematics. Diablo 4 only has 2, the rest are rendered in-game in much lower quality.

The Bestiary is the same 5-6 boring enemy groups copy/pasted across the entire game. Lycans, Skeletons/Ghouls, Ghosts, Goatmen, human Bandits, Fallen, with the occasional cameo of Wasps, Scorpions, Spiders, Bears/Boars and some varied Hellspawn during timed events. As soon as I heard the phrase "monster families" I had a sinking feeling in my gut, but I never imagined how bad it was really gonna be.

The Endgame...what endgame? They took the worst of Diablo 3 and somehow made it even more tedious, with the same 4-5 variations of Dungeons being considered "the endgame" while you grind your way to max level 100 at a snail's pace.

Add on top a bunch of one-time irritating side quests with mostly unskippable dialogue, the same 4-5 copy/pasted random events across the game world, a poor excuse for a timed event called Helltide, and a couple of terribly designed "world bosses" that appear without any warning so you never know they're there. Because there's no decent chat function or group finder.

The Cosmetic shop is a complete fail because in-game colors are terribly washed out to the point where it doesn't even matter what your toon looks like.

The game itself has been completely outdone by a mobile game built around Pay2Win. When a P2W mobile game is more fun than D4, then you know it has failed miserably.

You would think it was created by Kathleen Kennedy.

This is the best diablo. Not only that but it may be the best top down ARPG ever!

Let me give you the rundown of positives and negatives.

Positives

• You don't play diablo for the story, but this diablo has an awesome story that I did not expect to be this good. The cutscenes go HARD. I was very impressed with the story this time around.

• The voice acting. It is superb especially Lilith and Lorath.

• Map: the map is massive and diverse. Many different Biomes. The over world events are all diverse and different, never repetitive. The strongholds are a blast and each have their own mechanics and stories. So much to find and do.

• Runs at a smooth 60fps on series X, and the graphics look stellar. Very next gen feeling game despite being top down.

• Gameplay: this is why you are here and let me tell you it is the best it has ever been in a ARPG. Addictive, fun, satisfying, and challenging!

• Character progression and builds: its amazing. I am addicted. It is such a deep rpg. Each class is so different I will never hit the bottom. So mucch depth. Build lovers this is your safe space.

• quality of life stuff: you can respec whenever with little to no penalty, you can teleport in and out of any place including dungeons to sell loot etc with ease, short load times, and without losing progress.

• co-op is a blast. I played about half the campaign with a friend and it is seamless and a blast!

Negatives The quest markers mess up sometimes. Thats pretty much it.

I know many had connection issues but I have never had a single connectivity issue. I get into the game immediately, and have never disconnected or even had much lag. I think its a wifi issue not a diablo issue people are having.

So far this is my game of the year for 2023! Get it now!

According to D4 Armory website I got over 600h of playtime. Now that out of the way.

It is no secret the original producers of the game have left the project some time ago, and despite multiple closed & open betas, early tests, etc. We got an undercooked game. At launch we received:

GOOD: * Super fluid combat

* Amazing graphics and sound effects. When you hit or cast a spell, the timing and sound just feel right

* Good old Blizzard-level top notch cutscenes

NEUTRAL: * Soundtrack was overly meh IMO, nothing stuck in my mind, except a single overly eerie WB fight music which is great. But it's a subjective topic, so...

* Unlike most people, I'm kinda ok with the lack of trading of leggos & uniques. If done right, this could've been acceptable. I don't have a strong opinion for or against it, yet.

* Abattoir of Zir is a nice touch, and kinda brings the Uber-Tristram/torch farming type of grind to endgame

BAD:

* Overly mediocre but unnecessarily complicated itemization

* No resistances... in an ARPG... in 2023!

* No ladder-system, again in a live-service ARPG... which relies on seasons!

* The horse, oh the horse! Before they fixed it, the horse could drive any sane person crazy with its quirks and bugs and artificial limitations, like cooldown; the horse should have NEVER EVER left the devs' computers in this state to production, it was an abomination.

* The end game loop was boring, and still is. Crafting is basically non-existant, "grailing" would be a joke. When they make Helltides, Legion Events, ToW stuff attractive, they make them redundant again with the next NMD XP buff or whatever.

* Dependence on external websites & apps; yeah, we all want to track mystery helltide chests via a 3rd party site

* A backwards step in social features, trading & LFGs via Discord, because in-game would be too comfortable

* Boring endgame loop, and with every update they make either the Overworld redundant then fix it and then make it redundant again, in favor of NMDs or lately Uber-Bosses

* Sidequests are only for masochistic completionists. You will do the "same" cellar prob 100 times; there were a lot of copy-paste there.

* Inventory management, stash space, and character limitation. Oh come on, we don't need an infintite stash space as in some other games, or 50 char slots for mules, but 4 stash tabs? For a total of 10 chars? And all of it shared so no muling? What's the point of an ARPG whose core is *items* if you cant store them?

* That major facepalm "we load everybody else's stash into your memory when they're nearby" tweet; it might have its reasons, but still unacceptable to any developer - and I mean any developer, not just game developers because it's basic data structure and memory management - to release it as it is. Imagine WoW, POE, any MMO or ARPG doing that.

* and a ton of other missing usability features: codex & aspect management, missing search features, lootfilter in many places, random max limits on mats.

This was mostly the launch state of the game and some problems still remain after 5+ months. I am 100% convinced that if the devs & testers had done more end-to-end leveling tests instead of point tests, they would have realized many, many, many problems and fixed them.

The itemization & end-game loop are by far the biggest offenders, IMO in that order.

The affixes are very similar to each other and redundant; the DiabLol video hit the nail on its head "Damage on Thursdays" meme. First crit & vuln were necessary, then they were supposedly not anymore... but guess what they are still necessary and most other affixes are just there, in a giant vague blur.

And second, the white & blue items have absolutely zero use in the game, except until level 2 :P In D2R for example at least white, grey or blue items have a contextual use, as a runeword base, or BIS PVP item or whatever. In D4 they're just litter. The lack of an even the simplest loot-filter makes this worse. I'm still hopeful that they will find a use for these.

Yes, yes, they are still working on those, but my main critic point is NOT if current D4 deserves a full AAA price-tag (I paid for the ultimate edition mind you) after so much broad testing, feedback and numerous hotfixes, but IF it deserved the price at launch. If you tell me "yes, it did" you're either lying to me or to yourself. So I lost interest and moved on to more polished games. As the saying goes, this is literally more live development than live service: Missing features are brought in after the launch.

Tl;dr: Too early, too undercooked. Full AAA price tag completely undeserved, was so at launch and still is IMHO. If Blizzard had taken their time, say 1-1.5 years, this could have been an amazing game. As it stands it's lost many players. Regardless, I'm still full of hopium, instead of copium.