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'Diablo IV' Is Being Called The Best In Series History. Is It? Here's What The Reviews Say
Blizzard Entertainment has only a small handful of very gigantic IPs. The longest running franchises are "Starcraft" and "Warcraft" but we haven't seen a new game in those series in forever. "Diablo" is the marquee game that actively sees new titles and now we're close to the final release of "Diablo IV."
The gist of a Diablo game is simple: you point and click through hell, hacking and slashing demons, and randomly generated loot pops out of enemy corpses. That's the simplest way to explain the decades of Diablo games, and this latest entry comes out officially on June 5, 2023. Here's what the reviews say:
The premise
Like previous installments of the series, "Diablo 4" is a dark dungeon-crawling RPG where players hack through hundreds of enemies and collect valuable loot for doing it. Several tweaks have been made to the formula this time around, making it more of a modern MMO meant to keep players logging in longer. To accomplish that task, the RPG has taken what the series has always done well and buffed those aspects up even more, much like equipping a better set of gear on a character.
In the game's gory introduction, ritualistic shenanigans set Lilith — the demon mother of Sanctuary — loose upon the realm. As humanity's latest hero, players spend much of "Diablo 4's" story triaging the carnage Lilith leaves in her wake, pulling at the threads of her machinations until her grand scheme is revealed.
"Diablo 4" is the latest in a demon-centric series quickly approaching its 30th birthday, and it largely succeeds at modernizing the depths of Hell enough to finally match its more recent ARPG peers. You're once again sent on an endless string of dungeon crawls where mastering your hotkey-bound abilities, optimizing your DPS, and improving your survivability are generally more important than things like an engaging story or explaining the insane diarrhea of flickering lights and elemental effects that typically occupy the screen — and practically every moment of that is really, really enjoyable whether you're playing alone or with up to three friends. Running dungeons captures that familiar but just as compelling loop of killing hordes of enemies, completing objectives, and downing bosses, and running sidequests to learn more about the world's lore and characters is usually a very good time even while the main plot meanders.
This is now an open world game
"Diablo 4" is an open-world game, and the story unfolds in a not-quite-linear fashion, letting you focus on different main and side quests as you please. You can also always jump into one of the game's 120 dungeons or engage in other various side content, but the main story will eventually guide you through the game’s five zones. The map is massive, and it is indeed an "open world," but it's open in the sense of "you can seamlessly traverse the entire map" (sometimes through corridors), not "you can climb any mountain you see." This is, after all, still a "Diablo" game. You're given a horse around two-thirds of the way through the campaign to help you get around quickly.
The open-world nature of "Diablo 4" is equal parts satisfying and overwhelming. With so many different directions a player can go, and the abundance of quests available, it can be a bit chaotic at times. It works overall, but it can be jarring at first, especially for those expecting a refined, streamlined experience in exploration. The trade-off is worth it, though, and it just requires some patience to get bearings before the world makes sense and is teeming with possibility, however gloomy they all seem.
The new legendary system sure is different, but everything else is familiar
The new legendary system is also an acquired taste — in "Diablo 3", legendaries were basically collectible items with powerful aspects that could be extracted using Kanai’s Cube. Most seasonal meta builds revolve around specific synergies between legendaries and other gear that define the endgame experience. In "Diablo 4", you can still extract their aspects and imprint them onto rare items with better stats. But instead of being stored in a permanent "library," these aspects now reside in a special inventory tab as one-time consumables.
"Diablo IV" does exactly what it sets out to do: to trap you in a dangerously addictive farming loop, whether it’s trying to rack up experience points to level up quickly, or to farm dungeons and events for even better gear. Everything about the game feeds into that loop, from the satisfying crunchiness of the combat to the interesting decisions you’re making each moment as you watch that delicious orange glow pop up on your screen when the latest boss you’ve killed drops a new piece of Legendary gear.
The only faults are the story and live service aspects
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.
TL;DR
"Diablo IV" confidently delivers gameplay that has been carried forward and refined from both "Diablo II" and "Diablo III", while also establishing a strong foundation for the franchise's future.
For everyone else, the specter of cosmetic microtransactions and live service elements hang heavy over this refined action-RPG formula.
After sacrificing nearly 100 hours of my life to "Diablo 4," I've barely scratched the surface of what it has to offer.
Blizzard opts for refinement over innovation with "Diablo 4," but it's still a devilishly good time.