My loyal followers, I am unsure of my place in the gaming landscape. I stand before you all, having played through Diablo 4, enjoying it but unable to recommend it to you all. What purpose do I serve when I admit I had fun with a game that the community has grown to despise? Am I truly worthy to stand atop my soapbox and rant about a game I played in a way no one else would dare do? I must admit to all of you, that after years of being beaten down by the live-service nature of World of Warcraft, I had no intention of playing through the various seasons of Diablo 4. I thoroughly planned to play the campaign on a few characters before jumping out when I was finished. I haven’t even advanced any of my three campaigns to world tier three, a sin for a seasoned Diablo player. So I stand before you all wondering what purpose does the ranting of this lunatic have for the masses. Maybe as I recall the tales of my journey, I will find the answers.
After a gruesome, haunting, and bloody intro cutscene to introduce our mysterious leading antagonist, Lilith, we enter the character creator. Your standard warrior, rogue, and wizard are here, but why pick them when a druid and necromancer are also available to you? Once you are done giving your character tattoos in blood ink, you’re thrown into the snowy peaks of Sanctuary. On the brink of starvation, you find a village plagued by a beast in a nearby castle. You volunteer to venture to the ruined castle, dispatch the monster, and are rewarded with a feast. The festivities don’t last long as you soon realize you have been poisoned. Just before you are made into a ritual sacrifice, a member of the Horadium, a group that fights the Prime Evils, rescues you.
You soon discover that you have been poisoned with the blood of Lilith. It gives you your power and the ability to see past events involving her. Upon entering the town’s church, we see a flashback of Lilith, the mother of Sanctuary, convincing a group of churchgoers that the heavens have abandoned them and only they can defend themselves against the holy wars between heaven and hell. Her words cause the townfolk to rise up and slaughter the priest trying to sway the people back to the light.
My loyal followers, I just want to take this moment, to confess how much I liked Lilith as an antagonist in Diablo 4. I must admit, I initially wrote her off. I assumed Blizzard saw the internet go into a feeding frenzy over Lady Dimitrescu in Resident Evil 8, but unlike Capcom, they are willing to commit to this character. She is driven and cunning; she knows exactly when to move her piece on the chess board. When to use sweet honey words and when to use force. All in the name of protecting humans. Mother of Sanctuary wasn’t just a fancy title given to her; she and a fallen angel Inarius created Sanctuary as a safe place for humans. She only wishes to protect it as any mother would. So when our playable characters confronted her and turned down an opportunity to side with her, I felt a drastic disconnect. It is a mark of a good villain when you can see the point they are trying to make. After years of being thoroughly disappointed with World of Warcraft’s storytelling, I felt I was beginning to see signs that Blizzard does have some good stories left to tell.
Although we spend most of the plot being two steps behind her, Lilith isn’t the only compelling character in Diablo 4. We have the aging vanguards of the Horadium in Lorath and Doran, who have their will and hearts broken throughout the events of Lilith’s crusade. A young scholar in Neyrelle who questions the futility of all of the fighting. Of course, Inarius, the fallen angel so eager to return to his rightful place in heaven that he will lead armies of soldiers into hell to appease the high heavens. I know many people have said that Diablo 4’s story doesn’t hold a candle to Diablo 2. Alas, my followers, I will admit Diablo 2 sits idly in my pile of shame. Nonetheless, I can’t deny I enjoyed the story of Diablo 4; something I was not expecting as I struggle to recall most events from the middling Diablo 3.
It is not just the main quest that left a lasting impression on me, many of the side quests left a chilling mark upon me. I recall a harrowing tale of a wife looking to find her missing husband. We found him bound in chains in the woods, with his skin completely flayed from his body yet lost in a sea of ecstasy. I was able to find the demon that tempted him into the woods to be tortured, but killing her did not heal the husband’s condition. All the wife and I could do was watch as the husband slowly bled to death crying out to inflict more pain upon him. Such a small but haunting tale that showcases how gruesome and bleak the world of Sanctuary has become.
Some savvy listeners might have noticed I used the word side quest to imply Diablo 4 might be some sort of open-world affair. Steel your pitchforks and torches, my followers. Yes, Diablo 4 is an open-world title, but it does not resemble the mockery of an open-world game that causes us to throw rotten fruit at Ubisoft. After the opening set of quests, Diablo 4 allows you to complete Acts 1, 2, and 3 in any order. You are free to venture out into the world and fight any roaming packs of demons you may find. As mentioned above there are unique side quests littered throughout the world as well as live events you can join in. Unlike many of the side quests that I chose to experience on other characters, I soon found myself skipping these live events as I had already seen all they had to offer after hours of play. Thankfully, the live event, along with the various Alters of Lilith that give you permanent stats, are completely optional. After completing those three acts, you are also able to gain access to a horse across all characters. A horse that frequently gets stuck on terrain for no reason, but one that can help you traverse the expansive map. Overall, I say the transition to an open world has been a success.
I must profess there is one change to the open world that I am conflicted over. I miss the days when Blizzard would carefully craft a zone to a specific level as in the olden World of Warcraft days. Right now, both World of Warcraft and Diablo 4 simply scale the monsters up to the player’s level rather than have zones with enemies twenty levels above you. Yes, this allows the game to be flexible in how you want to approach this content, but I miss the days of saying an enemy twenty levels above me and coming back later to wipe the floor with them. Fortunately, this system means you can seamlessly play with friends without trying to match characters that were close in level. I was easily able to play co-op with a friend who exclusively played a barbarian. He was able to out-level me as I played multiple characters, but the level scaling system allowed me to keep playing my necromancer with a legion of minions that he could buff with the Barbarian’s different shouts. We called the pair the mosh pit bros.
As you venture through Sanctuary, you will begin to level up and receive points you can spend in a skill tree. You might be expecting me to roll my eyes and complain about how bland these trees are, but it is quite the opposite. They may seem standard, consisting of a basic ability that generates your class’s resource, a core skill that spends said resources, offense and defensive cooldowns, and an ultimate ability. However, the tree allows you to be flexible in how you spend your points. A plethora of options await you. I have seen builds that forgo their ultimates or even core skills. My eyes lit up in excitement as I researched the various builds for druids, sorcerers, and necromancers. I could spend an eternity mixing and matching abilities to the perfect combinations.
Your skills will work in tandem with the stats on your gear to give you the damage you are looking for. I must warn you, my loyal followers, do not look at the end list of stats that can end up on your gear as it will drive you mad. I have witnessed it and am completely dumbfounded by how all these stats could be used to calculate your damage. One could drive themselves to the brink of insanity trying to calculate how much damage they get with a +5% to frozen enemies versus a +5% to crowd-controlled enemies. I can see your mind fracture as you wonder why Blizzard has two separate calculations for these effects. However fear not, I found the perfect solution to knowing if a piece of gear is good for you or not. Simply, look at the skill you use the most and if a piece of gear makes that number go up, then use it. Some Diablo 4 purists might be gasping in disbelief at that notation, but I will not waste countless hours staring at a spreadsheet instead of playing the game. This is Diablo, not Eve Online.
To add to this madness is the amount of different legendary effects known as aspects. So many games fail to give us legendaries that feel impactful, but not anymore. Many of these effects reminded me of the endless list of Ashes of War, spells, and incantations you could find in Elden Ring. Many of these aspects will come from simply completing a dungeon and others will come from legendary drops. These do range from pretty strong, like the Aspect of Inner Calm that increases your damage when you stand still, an aspect I got early on my druid who did most of his damage channeling lightning storm. Other aspects feel mandatory like the Aspect of Shattering Stars that turn the Sorcerer’s wimpy meteor into a shower of meteors that would blanket my screen in fire. I must admit, my loyal followers, my hunt for every legendary aspect kept me playing Diablo 4 into the wee hours of the night.
Once you reach level fifty, you unlock a paragon board, a system to help deepen your character’s skills. I was initially unimpressed with this system as selecting a piece on the board only gives minor stat increases, but soon began to see the depth once I got some node spaces unlocked. I learned I was able to slot glyphs into these nodes that can improve your character. I was able to slot an Earth and Sky glyph that buffed all the stats on my board but also increased my nature damage versus crowd-controlled or vulnerable targets if I unlocked enough surrounding nodes to get a specific amount of a required stat. Soon I was able to access an additional board with new bonuses that I would have to unlock. Much like the skill trees and legendaries, there has been a lot of care put into making your character feel strong enough to take on heaven and hell.
Alas, this system is not as perfect as it may seem. Once you have locked in a build, you better pray to the high heavens you do not become bored of it as trying to pivot your build is incredibly expensive. Simply refunding all your skills points will completely drain your wallet. Recrafting your legendaries isn’t cheap either. You do have the ability to take legendary aspects off items and imprint them in another item, but again this is incredibly costly and you can extract an aspect once. Personally, I wish the random legendary aspect that you found in the wild could be added to your codex of power, a list of aspects you received from the dungeons, as that would allow you to imprint them onto your gear as many times as you want. Unfortunately, it would seem Blizzard would want you to be constantly hunting for these aspects, every moment of your waking days. The cracks are beginning to show.
Right now I can hear you whispering to yourselves in disbelief: Is the Doomsayer going to recommend Diablo 4? In its current state? Alas, my dear followers, it is more complicated than that. If you are simply looking to play through the campaign on a handful of characters, then I believe you will have a good time with Diablo 4. However, if you are looking for more of a challenge or something with a longer life span, then I recommend you turn away. As you reach the end of Diablo 4, the game will invite you to try world tier three, a higher level of difficulty. I have rejected those calls as I don’t believe it is worth it. The game gives you so much power, that you are able to slaughter waves of demons without a thought. The only way the game has any chance of killing you is by crowd-controlling you through fears, knockdowns, or freezing you. I am sure many of you have witnessed streamers and YouTubers losing characters to enemies that can freeze you over and over, and I just can’t summon the energy to tackle those difficulties.
To add insult to injury, Blizzard has completely botched making Diablo 4 a live service. Disaster is too kind of a word to describe the first season. I am sure nobody is shocked to learn that the battle pass is easily one of the most anti-consumer battle passes out there. It doesn’t reward enough currency and it forces you into the bland tiresome store to buy real rewards. Blizzard was also shocked to learn that players don’t want to reacquire all their fast travel points and buffs from the Alters of Lilith. Blizzard also attempted to solve the lack of bag space by introducing a currency that clogged up players’ bags. I would say I am surprised by this, but they pulled the same move in World of Warcraft with the Dragonflight expansion; my warlock’s bags still weigh heavy from carrying worthless slimes and clamshells. I can never trust Blizzard again when they say they respect players’ bagspace. Worst of all, there is no real additional content besides grinding the same dungeons over and over again. It is a sad state of affairs.
The season model blunders and inflexibility in builds have opened my eyes to the truth: Diablo 4 may be a good game, but it has been warped and twisted into something trying to monopolize your time. It wants you staring at an endless list of stat sheets trying to squeeze out damage. It wants you to create alternative characters to house gems and malignant hearts in their inventories. It wants you to run the rat race of repeating dungeons over and over. There was a good game in here, but like many of its characters, it has been corrupted by sweet honey lies and false promises. If you still have your heart set on Diablo 4, I can only recommend you get in, get out, and move on quickly.
Inarius, the fallen angel, is a great representation of what Blizzard has become. Much like how the fallen angel created Sanctuary, the company used to create beautiful games. However, these days they are so desperate to appease the high heaven, aka Bobby and the shareholders, that they will gladly march their developers down a bloody and dark road to hell. Blizzard can sacrifice all the community managers they want, but they will never appease their vile masters. Much like how Inarius will only receive silent judgment from the heavens, Blizzard will only hear a deafening cry for more profits. Blizzard can cry and plead for Activision or Microsoft to save them, but we know the truth: they belong in hell.
I, the video game Doomsayer, sit here, much like the young scholar Neyrelle, wondering what is the point in standing atop my soapbox. Despite a story that I really enjoyed, this game has been tarred and feathered to the point where nobody will touch it. It often feels like I am yelling into the void. I am sure that’s the goal of companies like Activision-Blizzard, yet I can only hope someone might hear me. Some developers might understand what I am saying. Someone might try to learn from the successes and failures of Diablo 4. I can only hold on to the small shard of hope we cling to. There has to be a way to show there is a better answer than the monstrosity that Diablo 4 has become, and I must keep searching for it.
