Sometimes it seems to me that there are only two types of people in the world: those who have played Diablo and those who have never had a computer. Almost everyone has touched or seen one of the parts of this series at least once, so the release of Diablo 4 is a very high-profile event. This is our PC review of one hellishly good time.
Everyone has already seen the preview from early access and maybe even played. Many watched the streams of those who managed to pre-order the special edition and got access to the game on June 2, so there will be no preface and introduction part for a long time – straight to the point.
Under the wing of the publishing house Activision, Blizzard is going through hard times. Almost all of her franchises are in stagnation or oblivion, and she does not get out of numerous scandals. These include aggressive monetization, technical issues, promised content cuts (like the recently canceled story mode for Overwatch 2), and internal issues that don’t build on the company’s image. Blizzard has been regularly accused of violating employee rights, driving employees to suicide, and fighting unions.
Perhaps 2023 is the worst time for a fan of Blizzard, which has long ceased to be the “same” studio that gave us Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo. However, it is the last series that refuses to die and still gloriously bears the name of the once-great studio on its shoulders. Still, even after the successful release of Diablo 4, some already portend that this is the last successful game of this studio.
Let’s not beat around the bush and say immediately: Diablo 4 turned out. No wonder it is praised by journalists, bloggers, and ordinary players who managed to play early access. The new part of the famous action RPG looks particularly advantageous against the background of other major games of recent months, which at the start, do not work as intended. And what was a very pleasant surprise Diablo 4 flies even on old PCs. It has few bugs and starts up immediately, unlike Diablo 3 on release.
Diablo 4 plot
Diablo 4 takes place 53 years after the finale of Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls. Sanctuary survived the war between Heaven and Hell, but not without loss, the brutal carnage took both heroes and ordinary people. It would seem that the war ended, and life began to improve, but great evil again came into the world.
With the help of a bloody rite, Lilith returns to Sanctuary – the daughter of Mephisto and the mother of all mankind. The owner of unlimited power over mortals, she kills the hope for a brighter future in their hearts, plunging the world into darkness and despair. The demoness craves power and intends to conquer the Underworld and the Sanctuary.
Players are waiting for a long and interesting adventure, during which they will have to thwart the cunning plans of Lilith and prevent another catastrophe.
The devil is in the details
Each part of the series brought something new and revolutionary to the genre it created. The first Diablo set the primary vector for developing another type of roguelike RPG. Diablo 2 brought a talent tree, a standardized color grading of item rarity, a structure of story acts, and several other little things to the new-found genre. Diablo 3 went further in terms of end-game activities, made the combat system more dynamic and “meaty”, and also made friends with the console series. Before that, Diablo was predominantly a PC game, although the first part had a port on the PlayStation.
Against the background of the previous advantages of the series, Diablo 4 cannot boast of something radically new. Classes have become more interesting, but this is just an improvement on what was. New classes did not appear at all: all five available – Barbarian, Necromancer, Druid, Rogue and Wizard – migrated from previous parts in one form or another. The combat system has become even more dynamic and cool, but has not received any radical changes.
The only thing that can be considered an innovation, at least within the framework of the series, is the open world, and it looks great. What is most interesting, it is interesting even to consider it. Instead of randomly generated levels, all the fighters from the Underworld have a substantial common location, which consists of several cities with dozens of tasks, hundreds of additional dungeons, and a set of activities: statues of Lilith that give a bonus to characteristics, random events like caravans and altars, resources for crafting, rare wandering bosses, global battles for several players. This is an innovation for Diablo, but not for the genre: the big and adventurous world was already in Grim Dawn (2016). In addition, the open world of Diablo 4 is limited by the difficulty level: until you open the third, Nightmare, there is no point in exploring Sanctuary. Without it, you will not be given all the bonuses for opening the card.
This decision makes it most effective to ignore all the additional activities advertised by the huge open world and run through the story. After him and more cases, secret orders of the magic tree will appear, attacks by the army of the Underworld on Sanctuary, new resources, etc., and all characters will be given a horse for fast movement. Even the plot can be skipped when loading a new hero.
Diablo 4 Gameplay
The core gameplay of Diablo 4 is the same as previous games in the series. This game is an isometric action game with RPG elements. The player’s task is to clear locations and dungeons from monsters, collect more powerful equipment that lies in chests and falls from defeated enemies, upgrade your character, and repeat everything in a circle until the end. The idea has not changed from the very beginning. The main thing before us is the same diablo in all the bad and good senses of the word. The desire of the four will appeal to fans of any part of the series noticeably from the first trailer to the small details of the gameplay, here is an example and the very beginning of the game at the entrance we are waiting for the good old fire with the choice of heroes that Aldam screams, everyone looks good “Just like in diablo 2”, and then looks around the corner and tells her everything that was in the third part, but better. And then it’s time to tell you that Blizzard is drowning there is nothing new in self-repetitions. In general, they rolled down hundreds of years ago, but now each class has its own unique gameplay mechanics thanks to which your character, the killer of the deadly storm of demons, is revealed from a new side, and this way, you can describe the whole recipe games just take 300 g of the second part of the 200 g of the third season with a pinch of novelty, and you’re done.
There are a lot of demon slayers like you running around the world. Events are held periodically for everyone at once, and it’s better to stumble upon world bosses with crowds of players.
But do not forget that after a little less than 30 years, the game has remained a clicker with special effects. With a slight movement of the hand, the player moves the cursor to the monster and presses the left mouse button, after which the Monster changes its health points to repeat the experience until all living things on the screen are eradicated. That’s just the nuance that the series was known for its addictive gameplay in a good way. At first, you shoot your next skill at opponents and rejoice at how beautifully they scatter. After a dozen or two minutes, the thought comes that these few skills combine well, and you can give out a powerful combo. And in a few hours, you turn into a Construction Guru with a clear plan for pumping and actions, and not a single-horned Devil will stand in your way.
This world is magnificently scary
The game can be praised for its outstanding detail, which is only surprising. The design of locations and enemies in Diablo 4 is a true “black fantasy” without the attributes trailing this style since the 80s. Yes, there are no sexy young ladies in armored bikinis and half-naked beefy barbarians. The game creates and immerses you in a gloomy world saturated with pain and suffering in which a person’s life is worthless. Mountains of corpses, dirty cities, curses generated by a perverted demonic mind, affecting the whole space – that’s it, dark fantasy. We can say that Diablo 3 is for children, but everything goes as usual here.
Walking around the world, the player sees and feels how he lived and what pain all current events are for its inhabitants. It’s a very immersive feeling, enough to push the player to explore the world, talk to NPCs, and explore the stories that are happening in the here and now.
At the same time, the game lacks logic in the design of locations, buildings, and cities. This is a big problem in many settings, and Diablo 4 does not ask how and why something was built. Cities and villages look how they should, and the fortress walls are defensive structures, not beautiful and spectacular fences. The ancient shrines and chambers of the priests were built not as an arena for battles with enemies but as something that could be used for its intended purpose. In Diablo 4, there was a place for both the majestic and the beautiful, and the frightening (and disgusting, phew), and it’s mesmerizing.
The only thing that prevents you from enjoying all the splendor to the fullest is the close enough camera. Yes, it is easier to notice the details of locations (of which there are many), but it is extremely rare and in strictly designated places to appreciate the full scale of the picture.
The icing on the local-style cake is the sound component. The soundtrack for Diablo 4 is beautiful, dark, and varied. The musical theme of the locations perfectly complements their atmosphere without breaking out of the general range of compositions. So fans of Tristram’s theme will find everything except this guitar playing awful, but even they will be satisfied. In isolation from the gameplay and visuals, the music sounds a bit faded, but not all games need to release albums with compositions separately.
The sound design of the locations is cleverly woven into the game’s soundtrack, and it is not always possible to separate the musical composition from the swarms (and other sounds). The rest of the sound effects are at a high level: both hits and spells. They sound too “vicious”, but in the general mix Diablo 4 feels organic.
The world is divided into 4 large zones, but inside each biome is not monotonous, which is nice. The surrounding landscape changes quite often, and even during long races you do not have time to get bored. Within each zone/country, there are several cities that offer a full range of “services” and villages/hideouts that may not even have a forge.
Foundation for development
Diablo 4 is clearly set to grow. All the best parts should come later with future updates and additions. In the release version, every aspect of the game feels like something is missing.
It is not known what influenced more – numerous restarts of development or a banal unwillingness to deepen systems and mechanics before the first player feedback. But in fact, Diablo 4 was not released completely, but in a more refined beta version: the open world is very empty, the variety of opponents is not that great, the end-game content is sketchy – this – after that – after that, and you will understand all this already an hour after the end of the story.
In the release version, there is only very solid basic gameplay with killing crowds of monsters and clearing dungeons, which lacks at least some additional fun: special traps in the dungeons, and a greater variety of random events on the map.
Dungeons are the main curiosity of Diablo 4. There are more than fifty of them throughout the open world, but in fact they do not exist. Each catacomb, old temple, cave from this impressive list of evil lairs is the same set of empty rooms, where only the scenery and “enemy families” change and are not special. Episodes from the plot are reused for additional dungeons.
This is a step backward even compared to Diablo 2: there, each dungeon, mandatory or side, had its theme. Desert temples have coffins that constantly create poisoned mummies. Under Mount Arreat, the enemies are hit with ice. In the crypts of the first act, there are coffins with treasures, and among the enemies, there are mostly undead. Every dungeon had at least one feature and minimal styling, but here it’s just a place to farm.
In Diablo 4, the problem is with the variety of content. Not enough monsters, not enough activities, not enough crafting options, not enough gameplay features. Everything has been removed to optimize the main feature of Diablo 4 – fun slicing monsters by pressing the hit button and five more additional skills if you have learned them. She certainly does a great job. But besides her, there is nothing in the game except great design and a cool plot setting, and here you will say that this is Diablo, and then you will be right.
In general, we can safely say that Diablo 4 almost literally follows in the footsteps of the previous part: the release version is only enough for one or two passages of the plot, and then you can forget about the game until the first seasons and add-ons, when it makes sense to endless grind and hundreds of hours of trying to get legendary staff. Luckily, Season 1 will begin this summer with the launch of the first Paid Battle Pass, and for now, you can only donate towards Armor Skin and Horse Armor.
Verdict
You open the review, look at the rating and live on with your life – this happens most often. But in the case of Diablo 4, this trick will not work. In fact, any of the parts of Diablo (except the first one) is divided into two games: everything that happens during the first passage and the endgame world shrouded in darkness, farming and endless loot campaigns. And for a complete and objective assessment of the game in this endgame, you must reach it, which will take more than a few dozen hours.
Purely technically, the game is revealed from a new side immediately after the completion of the 6th act. While going through the story and main quests, you do not open the entire map: there are unexplored areas intended for special activities, including PvP zones.
And now I will try to answer the questions of those who are still thinking about this game:
- Is the game worth the time? – Yes, like any part of Diablo.
- How’s the plot? – The plot is one of the best in the series, the characters are logical and well-developed, and the antagonist is even endearing, and the cutscenes are some of the best in the series.
- What did you like the most? – Lilith and graphics
- Is it more D3 or D4? – Mix speed and skills from D3 but speed from D2.
- What are the problems now? – There is not much content in the endgame. There are also tree-like quests that give a chest with rewards for completion, the same system for pumping runes or legendary gems from D3, and events and a terribly small inventory that is divided into all characters.
Our PC review was accomplished through a verified game purchase through the Blizzard launcher.
