Diablo IV (Video Game 2023) - Diablo IV (Video Game 2023) - User Reviews

8/10

faeez_rizwan6 June 2023

It's done well, for the most part. The writing harkens back to Diablo's original two outings; a gothic, low fantasy miasma of hopelessness and intrigue. Most impressively, this version of Diablo's world feels, well, like a world again; a place with history and tension, rather than a collection of maps strung together to facilitate dungeon delving.

Diablo 4 adopts a muted aesthetic and a slow-burn narrative that seems desperate to mimic Game of Thrones or Sony's God of War reboot, but it's constantly in tension with how massively unsubtle the series' worldbuilding has always been. "It was probably demons," would have been an exceptionally useful dialogue choice to have for every person who asked me if I could investigate what happened to their loved ones. And, I'm sorry, I can't take it seriously when a sad quest where I end the life of a tortured man tied to a tree ends by giving me the spear I used as a temporary weapon upgrade.

So far, nothing has convinced me the endgame is so brilliant that it's worth stripping everything out of the initial leveling process. The thin storytelling doesn't help either-thankfully you can skip it on subsequent characters. Diablo 4 is a live service game that puts an insulting amount of effort into trying to convince you it's not. It's backwards; trying to build up to the most robust part of itself instead of starting with it. The moment entering a fresh dungeon feels more like a chore than a ride is the moment Diablo loses me, and I've been worryingly close to that feeling in my time with it so far.

Diablo IV went from a drudge completed only in service to my professional responsibilities to a pleasure I sought. There's something in Diablo IV that will appeal to you, if you know enough about yourself to find it. I don't know what that is yet, but in the coming weeks, I hope to find out and share it with you.

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7/10

Diablo IV is....

volchkovivan2 March 2024

I like this game. I played Diablo III for 6 years. I've been waiting for this game for a long time and recently finally got access to it.

Advantages: +Graphics +Large amount of content +Characters

Neutral: +- Story +- Large map

I don't like:

Gameplay

Why did I write the story in "neutral"? As I said, I played Diablo III for 6 years. I played through this game many times, where at the end Malthael broke the black soul stone, inside of which was Diablo's soul. (I played Reaper of souls) At the end they even say that Diablo is free. This is where the game ends. I thought that Diablo IV would have Diablo himself, but... he just isn't there. He is replaced by a certain Lilith, about whom I am hearing AT ALL for the first time. But I like the plot itself. That's why I wrote the story in "Neutral".

So, what's next? Ah, "Big Map".... Question: "What's wrong with this? This problem is related to the gameplay, which I don't like at all, and the gameplay is the main component of the game. So what's wrong? Lilith infuriates me. No, no, don't get me wrong, the GAMEPLAY with Lilith is terrible. The fact is that we are following in the footsteps of Lilith, but we NEVER MAKE TIME! NEVER! We constantly find bloody petals, and watch wonderful cartoons of Lilith killing someone. This is okay, but we are constantly going from one end of the map to the other. And at this time we are accompanied by small, but damn strong demons, and it becomes boring to beat small demons for the second hour without moving forward in the story. This is precisely the reason for which I abandoned the passage of Diablo IV.

Result: 7/10.

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Sold a beta (alpha even?) as full-priced AAA game

cuem11 December 2023

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.

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10/10

An ARPG Masterpiece

cchenders4013 July 2023

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!

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6/10

Hard to Rate- Turning the Tides towards MMO perhaps.

tiskec19 June 2023

I have been playing RPGs since Final Fantasy original on NES, the Immortal, Lagacy of the Wizard, etc. So, a really long time.

This Diablo was extremely hard to rate. The utilization of the UI is kind of frustrating at first, but has its similarities to previous Diablo entries. This time the inventory uses a slot system measured by a maximum amount of items, where previously it was a grid to measure space and therefore the size of the item would determine your inventory space. There's some changes to navigating the UI as well, which are tedious but soon adaptable.

The gameplay is not bad at all. Controls were precise and easy to use. The graphics were great for an overhead RPG. The cosmetics were excellent all around.

All this being said, let's talk about the logistics of the game. Previously, the Diablo franchise had used chapters or "ACTS" to maintain and divide segments within the Diablo world. Here in Diablo IV, they use one gigantic map. I said, "okay, I'll go with that." However, the enemies are packed everywhere. I know that no one likes an empty map, but they should've dialed it back a notch. You were blessed to catch a break sometimes, especially if you were a Necromancer and had skeletons that would constantly run after far away enemies. Furthermore, the dungeons are no longer randomized. You do them once, get the accolade for it, and that's all. You can redo the dungeon, but it isn't any different.

The storyline was ookkaayy. The ending was confusing and left you wondering if the whole thing was a setup by "someone else," to not spoil it. The concept of Lillith was great and so was the art. There was one part of the story that I deemed to myself- unnecessary. It involves a snake. I will not go into further detail due to spoilers.

I am convinced that Diablo may be turning towards an MMO platform.

--To Blizzard--

Change takes time. You have a great game here but this is the first MMOish type Diablo release. Let's try convincing players, both veterans and casual, that Diablo is a fit franchise for this. ESPECIALLY since the studio implemented microtransactions now. Anybody can say what they will, but this was a risky decision. Other games like the Elder Scrolls, Final Fantasy, etc, have enough material to create their own universes, due to length of existence and story development. I guarantee you made some previous Diablo players look at it as a "really?" I know, because I was one of them. However, I do think you may have pulled it off. You were extremely lucky. Now you just have to merge previous and new generation Diablo players that this is equally acceptable amongst both.

All-in-all I think the game made some drastic changes. Were they bad? I don't think so. They're just different.

Final Conclusion: You'll be playing a great game, but is it a Diablo game?

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6/10

Great gameplay.... "safe" writing

tcwaldropfam11 June 2023

I've taken my time exploring every area, going through the full campaign (and starting Tier III), and doing just about each piece of content. The gameplay itself is well done. The game is fun to play. Story story, though, is not that amazing. It doesn't try anything new, and uses the same tropes from every single "safe" fantasy story. It is clear that love and care were taken to make a game that plays well, but the time that could have been spent on more story, doing something new and memorable, etc, was instead spent on making sure there was room for a live service component. I've spent my entire life playing D&D, MMO's, reading fantasy novels, etc and a couple of the characters were decent, but most of the game is just simple tropes to get you from point A to point B so you can start the live service part of the game. Honestly, I took my time leveling, doing the story, watching all cutscenes, and trying to experience everything the first playthrough but I'm not sure how much longer I'll play it after finishing the main story. I've started the "repeatable stuff" at the end and it feels hollow. I was in a drought of games to play, with over 10k hours in heavily modded Skyrim in the last 5 yrs, and I don't regret buying it but this isn't going to be that memorable to me in a few months, I have a feeling. Unfortunately, it appears that Activision (I don't call them Blizz anymore) had the story writers spend more time in their formula and making sure there is nothing memorable, funny, or possibly offensive to a single person, rather than writing something truly memorable. The story is just.... meh.

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4/10

They learned nothing.

Jim_E_Cornette3 July 2023

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.

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5/10

Disappointing, overpriced, basic game

naldric11 June 2023

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.

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5/10

Conflicted

RaidersOfTheLostCommunist8 June 2023

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.

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5/10

Diablo Bore - The tedious march through checkboxes in search of fun

nodlimax4 April 2024

Warning: Spoilers

If you don't want to read through my (probably longer) review of the game here are the various points narrowed down to numbers:

Story: 4/10 Gameplay: 6/10 User Interface: 5/10 Visuals: 7/10 Sound: 7/10 Items & Loot: 2/10 World: 5/10 Dungeons: 4/10

Diablo 4 was released less than a year ago for a premium price. I used the chance to play it in March 2023 during the open beta and was not impressed and therefore refused to buy it at that price. Now that the game was added to the Microsoft Gamepass which you can try out during the first month for 1 Euro I though I could spend that much to give it another chance and as you can see with the numbers it didn't turn out that well.

My goal was somewhat to go through the various acts and finish them one by one in order focusing on side missions first before completing the main story line and hopefully getting a somewhat complete picture of story and lore in the game.

Unfortunately most of the side missions early on already are so benign in terms of story and repetitive in nature that I grew tired of them quickly. It's just filler that doesn't really add much to the main story. Also I reached level 50 halfway through act 2 which is somewhat the barrier of what enemies will reach while you're playing through the main campaign on difficulty 1 or 2. Higher difficulties with higher enemy levels and better items only unlock once you complete the campaign (or skip it through the menu) and complete a specific dungeon. I had somewhat useful equipment to make my build work by towards the end of act 1 and afterwards for the next 20+ hours while I focused on completing the campaign barely got any upgrades for my character.

Here is already the main problem with the game. The current item system is awful. It feels like I'm digging through piles of trash to find something that is not complete garbage. Once I have a build completed with a couple of items that actually have somewhat useful stats on them (somewhere around level 30) and usable legendary bonuses I'm basically stuck with these items for ages because 99.9999% of what I find is useless and just makes it frustrating to even spend time looking at the inventory. I started collecting legendary items (usually 3-4 per full inventory from level 40 onward) and just put them into my storage after looking at them initially and rating them as useless. I stored them just in case I might need the legendary bonus to transfer it to rare items with better stats. It some point I filled my storage and required crafting items from dismantling legendary items to upgrade others or transfer legendary aspects to them. Just looking through these items to decide what should go into the shredder was giving me a headache because I basically wanted shred everything and not even look at the items with these completely goofy stats on them. It's like imagine pulling a slot machine in a casino and every wheel has hundreds of completely randomized stat types and numbers on them and out of a thousand times you pull the level you're not even winning a single cent. That's how D4 feels. You're just picking up turd after turd.

Then you have the main story which early on sets some things up where you think they could be cool. You have the father of the world, you're traveling through - the angel Inarius who hates his former lover Lilith who is the mother of that world. He's being set up as arrogant and pretty vile hidden behind an angelic facade protected by a fanatic religious cult who worships him. All that happens in the first act. What are they doing with it in the story? Nothing really. The character ends up being completely wasted and just killed off in a video sequence. It looks pretty but is completely wasting the character that could be turned into a nice boss battle. His worshippers as well are mostly ignored during the later parts of the story and are also just killed off in some video sequences and minor battles.

In terms of characters as well there are to many minor ones that are useless within the story but get unnecessary screentime to get an introduction and after they've fulfilled some minor task they just get thrown to the side never to be seen again or simply killed off. In addition the main side characters that are supposed to lead you through the narrative area also mostly either useless or are handled poorly. Donan who is a pretty important character through various sections of the story towards the end gets killed off in an absolutely hilariously bad way. It was so obvious at that point that they only did it because they didn't have any further use for him and wanted to turn his funeral into some kind of emotional moment. But it was such a stupid meaningless death that nothing afterwards related to him could be taken seriously.

The girl Neyrelle who is introduced in the first act has basically nothing to do after her initial part outside of yelling at some of the other characters about not being a child and then setting up the expansion. If she wasn't in the story nothing would be lost and her parts could've been easily replaced with other characters. Lorath is the only character that I somewhat had sympathy for but even he couldn't save the story overall. The antagonists also after getting a strong start ended on extremely weak notes. Elias turned out to be more of cockroach than a serious threat. You kill him various times (easily) but he just doesn't die and the killing blow then is being done by another character in a video sequence.

Lilith gets a single two-stage fight that also is the only remotely interesting boss I've seen throughout the campaign btw. And then just dies without having to do any extra steps. If anyone remembers there was a whole thing about prime evils not actually dying in the previous games but having to be captured into soul stones to guard them and just hope you can keep them away for a while until they break free again. This also mentioned various times here related to Diablo, Mephisto and Baal. Lilith on the other hand? Apparently she can easily be killed by a mere mortal that my character is supposed to be. That makes her a less threatening antagonist than the ones from the previous game.

Anyway the game has very lacking story.

When I look at the various features outside of that which are supposed to keep you playing it's just a bunch of check boxes to go through. The open world has similar issues compared to other open world games. It's just a large map where you're supposed to run to the "unexplored" sections to find mostly useless stuff and fill some statistics. There's a bunch of repeatable events at every corner to farm items to then farm more items which though then goes back to the initial problem with awful itemizations...

Most people will likely just look for guides to find the "hidden" collectible stuff (altars and side missions) to get enough renown and unlock skill points and potion charges. After the campaign you then have some seasonal content which is just centered around one mechanic plus some repeatable farm content and then to get to level 100 and defeat the final version of (Uber-)Lilith. For me I'm not even sure I will make it that far as I'm losing the will to even log in rapidly.

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