So a while back I just randomly got into playing through the Diablo games on a whim and was kinda of seeing where it was leading me- finding out if ARPGs were going to become my new thing. As it turns out the grind curve of those games tends to start feeling like Mobile games after a while, where you're dedicating far too much time to move forward a single decimal point, and thus I never quite reach the pinnacle in any of these titles- both 2 and 3 were still fun times for what they were and I was interested to try 4 one day. Well as it turns out that one day was actually a few weeks ago and I've been hanging around with Diablo IV (courtesy of Gamepass) and seeing where that journey ends up leading me. And so far I think I've spent the most time grinding this one out yet- so what does that mean for my experience?
Well first off I have to admit that from a gameplay standpoint I certainly like building my character in Diablo IV a lot more than I did for 2 and even for 3- although that might be because I actually have an idea of how to build one of these characters now and so I knew how to play- as opposed to back in Diablo III where I was playing it by ear until everything clicked late game. But all that being said I have to extol how much fun I had with itemisation, getting crazy powers from my Unique helmet which turned my meteor attack into an absolute rain of splash damage, or melting my way through pretty much everything in the game with tri-flamethrower beams courtesy of an aspect that I've been shopping around into every new armour set I cook up. I'm really eating well of the labours of Diablo IV's latest patch being all around fixing the apparently weak itemisation of the launch version.
But those are only ever the juicy addendums to my Diablo journeys- they all start with delves into the inner workings of the narrative and seeing what the team have been cooking up in creating, within the devs own words, 'the darkest adventure since Diablo II'. So having played Diablo 2 I would probably say that whilst this doesn't quite delve into those realms of darkly fantastical despair- it does feel more like a continuation of that world than Diablo III did. There's less babbling about how you're some sort of deific chosen one destined to bat back the gods in a blink of an eye, and more harrowing journeys of loss and mourning in a world that, truth be told, doesn't really seem worth saving. I mean you get mobbed by a thousand demons on your way to get milk from the next village over- at that point I'd say the world's a wash!
Ah yes, because of course Diablo IV is the first game in the series to bring in an open world for you to explore between adventures and with that comes a certain degree of cohesiveness to the world layout to absorb. Something does have to be said for the way that grinding can be done across different environments instead of along the same levels of the original three games- but apart from that the open world is largely perfunctory. The promise of dozens of dungeons strewn across the world loses it's lustre once you learn that most of those dungeons are built using three or four tilesets with three or four end bosses to pick between. Still, nothing is lost in the experience of the open world aside from a supposed sense of 'intimacy' with your close vendors but to be honest- I always found that a bit ham-fisted in previous games. Particularly 3- those guys never shut up.
Diablo IV drags Lilith into the forefront as the daughter of Hatred (literally the Prime Evil of Hatred; Mephisto) and Mother of Sanctuary, the world within which the game is set, and does an absolutely abysmal job telling the rather important story of her and Inarius. (The father of Sanctuary, also an angel)
I know the story had technically already been touched on in documents strewn about previous games, but this was the first to feature both characters as supposedly core parts of the plot and we don't even have the history of why these two are destined to war played out? Even as a mere refresher? Inarius is laughably absent from the story, and Lilith is played more as a sympathetic character than some supremely terrifying and unknowable evil like the Prime Evils were usually made out to be. Which I guess fits her position as a supposed tyrannical 'saviour'.
Our cast of co-stars are actually fine this time around, if slightly close to the Diablo 3 cast. Maybe I like these guys more because they all undergo fittingly horrific hardships to be considered worthy of being a Diablo cast member. We even have a stand in for Leah in the form of Neyrelle- although Ney feels a lot more like a kid trying to survive in a grim world gone evil rather than Leah who sort of felt like a princess from a storybook. My only real complaint for this cast is the same reason why I took to dubbing them all 'the toddler squad' by the final few acts- they all can't keep themselves out of trouble when out of your sight. I am serious- every member of the cast undergoes some horrific mutilation or kidnapping in moments when they leave your direct supervision for literally 10 seconds. Every single cast mate. Aside from Lorath but we have DLC coming up- plenty of time for him to accidentally trip into a crocodile's open mouth whilst we're hitching our mounts, or something.
Diablo feels pretty fluid and fun in it's latest iteration, and mowing down even the smallest mobs tickles the right dopamine channels you need in a game about killing dozens of hoards. It's a refined point, sharpened over a series of revisions, and that's what makes it so effective. I would say there's a bit of a 'too easy' problem in the early game. The first two world tiers make it nearly impossible to lose unless you're literally trying to die and the latter two world tiers only really manage to make a challenge by throwing you against enemies that hopelessly outlevel you. The major challenges of each season are literally bosses that rank 100 levels above the max and exist as endurance challenges- I don't really consider that 'great endgame boss' material. Plus, the 'time to kill' situation is pretty wild. You are literally alive or you're dead- nothing inbetween. It can get frustrating.
In the end as someone who isn't exactly a giant fan of this genre of games, in style or substance, Diablo IV had everything I wanted for a casual experience and enough to hook me in to play a lot more than I originally wanted to. Would I call it better than previous games? Honestly it's offerings are so thematically and tacitly distinct that I'd have to take the easy way out and call it a 'matter of taste'. Certainly if you want the most polished feeling ARPG on the market right now, you're in the right place- at least until the beta for Path of Exile 2 launches- which actually does look pretty fire- I wonder if Diablo will have the backbone to stand up to PoE2 when the time comes...
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