Review Day: Diablo IV (PC)

My first impressions of this game held pretty true throughout my playtime. The game kept me entertained for about two months before I lost interest and moved on.

The Good

The graphics, music, and sound (even beyond the obligatory high-quality cutscenes that Blizzard is known for) are excellent, creating a brooding, ominous atmosphere for slaughtering demons. The gameplay loop is solid and addictive, with spells that are satisfying to cast and a reasonable number of options for builds. The story is 200% better than the middle-school play that was Diablo III's story, even though it eventually devolves into plot holes.

The Bad

Like Starcraft II and Overwatch, the user interface suffers from "built by committee" syndrome, where every part of the screen is flawless, but designed in a vacuum by teams that never talk to each other. Critical information is buried in mouse-over tooltips and some spells, aspects, and icons are impenetrably obscure unless you stop and examine each one in-depth. It's hard to keep your entire character build in mind because the skill tree spans multiple scrolling panes and the late-game Paragon Board is great in concept but a visual mess.

The open world is vast but sterile -- you'll enjoy it while you're in it but rarely remember the names of different places or have a reason to care about specific locations. There's WAY too much walking involved, and you don't get a horse until about 65% through the main story. Having other players in the world is irrelevant -- no one plays together and all it does is introduce lag. Even without lag, the pathing of your character and horse get pretty rubber-bandy all the time, especially around corners.

The Ugly

Itemization after level 70 is just plain awful. There are too many useless item affixes diluting the pool of items, so most of the treasure drops are trash gear (that you still have to spend an extra minute evaluating just in case!). After level 50, upgrading items is less about equipping something 10% better and more about waffling over something 4% better in one area and 1% worse in another area.

I got to Level 100 on my Sorcerer, have a lot of fun playing the character, and want to keep playing it, but there are no rewards worth grinding for even though my gear still isn't the absolute best. A slot machine game like this needs the right rewards to make the endgame entertaining and long-lasting, and that critical piece just isn't there yet.

Bottom Line

Diablo IV starts out as a solid B game buts lacks the longevity needed for me to play it as long as I played Diablo II or Diablo III with its expansion pack. As you gain levels, it drops down to a B-. Still, the foundation is solid, and I'd definitely check back on this in a year or so when the development team has had time to improve its flaws.

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