The Queso Gamer

If you’re anything like me, the ARPG genre scratches a lot of itches that one gets when playing through other types of games.

Sure, other RPGs have you start out as Joe Schmoe and work your way up to punching god in the face with the power of friendship (looking at you Persona series) but there’s no type of game that lets you jump straight in and start murking mobs and picking up loot like your good ol’ fashioned ARPG.

So in 2019 when Blizzard announced that they were working on the fourth installment of their legendary series Diablo, you can imagine the excitement that I felt.

Growing up I remember watching my dad play the original Diablo (and trying occasionally to LAN with his friends) and thinking about how exciting it was to watch him go from dank dungeon room to dank dungeon room cutting down skeletons and demons. The tone of the game too appealed to my sense of aesthetic, seeing as I grew up in a home where Halloween was everyday.

Then in middle school going over to my friend’s house and binging hours and hours of Diablo II: Lord of Destruction (he had a PC in his room and boy was I jealous) trying to grind out set pieces and unique weapons in order to get the bragging rights of beating Ba’al on Hell mode.

Controversially, I really enjoyed Diablo III, even if the bright colors, insane damage numbers, and slightly less serious tone was a departure for the series, all because it scratches that itch that I get as a gamer at times where I simply want to push a button and watch hordes of monsters die.

But, as an adult, I’ve become much more leery of AAA game studios and their tendency to overpromise and underdeliver. So I went in to Diablo IV with muted expectations, and let me give you my not-so-comprehensive review below.

1. The Good

First things first, when it comes to the art direction I think that Blizzard absolutely knocked it out of the park. From the opening cinematic to the first half hour of gameplay I was immediately immersed in the grimdark world of Sanctuary. Compared to the tonal dissonance of III, I knew from the start of the game that this was going to be closer to “The Revenant” than a Marvel movie.

From there you continue to get the sense that things are not so good in the world of Sanctuary, and despite your hero showing up stronger than any NPC, you feel the constant uphill struggle. Then, despite your best efforts you make things less bad, rather than fixing them. The urgency and the setting are all carried along quite well by some excellent voice acting (particularly that of Lorath Nahr, a minor character in the expansion to Diablo III) and a near obsessive attention to detail when it comes to building the environments and the world. For example, each in-game dungeon has a drop that acts as a sort of audio log, that gives some background to the dungeon and why it might be full of monsters for you kill.

This world building is served adequately by an engaging campaign, and while the campaign itself isn’t great fodder for speed-farming or loot grinding, it’s well written and taps itself into the pre-existing Diablo lore. It does this in both a way that lets the story do its own thing and without being guilty of too much ret-conning or denial of the accomplishments of your previous Diablo protagonists.

2. The Mixed

There are a handful of things in the game (at the time of writing this review) that I believe to have a lot of potential, but aren’t executed well as of yet. Both the beauty and the frustration of the “games as a live service” model that we’ve seen in recent years is that things can and probably will change from launch to patch to years on. This gives the developers the opportunity to fix issues that come up, rebalance classes, add or remove features, improve QoL, add new mechanics, etc. However, this means that there can be an attitude of “release now, fix later” and that is apparent in some of the features in the release version of Diablo IV.

A big one, and arguably the biggest one (if you spend as much time as I do on the subreddit) is character builds. In my memory, one of the big gripes about the third game was how much it simplified the skill tree down for each class. Although you could set up your hot bar to allow for more than one class from each category, it meant that typically there wasn’t nearly as much experimentation or interesting synergies as the more complex skill tree from Diablo II. This was fixed later with some gear sets that allowed previously untenable builds to become meta.

When I first looked at the skill tree for Diablo IV I was happy to see tons of options with the ability to stack up to five points in some skills, with various integrated passives and trees. It once again tickled that Diablo II nostalgia that I was looking for. Experimenting with builds throughout the first few acts of the campaign felt fun and well paced, and I found myself stopping about every ten levels or so to adjust some abilities or to switch the build depending on a new legendary item that I had found. However, I discovered that the cost to refund skill points (and the eventual paragon boards unlocked at level 50) scaled with level, so doing a fresh reboot of my skills always bit into my gold reserves a fair amount. This by itself wouldn’t be so bad, but I’ll go into that in the next section.

So as you work your way up the world tiers, increasing rewards versus risk, the game gets more difficult (as you would expect) but the increase in loot quality seems to keep decent pace with the more difficult monsters. What doesn’t, however, are some of the skills.

Resource management becomes a constant struggle in the mid to end game, pigeon-holing a player into picking aspects that keep their resource up, because unlike Diablo III, the basic skills, which are your generators for resources, fall off of a cliff rather quickly in terms of damage. Taking up valuable skill real-estate, while not doing much damage, and honestly for the most part not feeling like they’re doing that much resource generation. For most of the meta builds currently, a core skill is required, and these do put out the DPS you desire (and sometimes require) but they also burn through resource quickly. Disclaimer: at the time of writing this, I have only rolled a Necro, a Rogue, a Druid, and a Barb.

So progress begins to grind to a halt and then you realize in order to be competitive or even enjoy the endgame content, you once again get pigeonholed into one of the meta-builds developed by theory-crafters and mathematicians in order to continue to be able to grind gear. For some classes this leaves some of their more intriguing abilities in the lurch and you end up with Bone Spear Necromancers everywhere (Bone bros unite.)

I put the above point under “mixed” because based off of the tone of some of the developers campfire chats, I believe this is something that they’re going to continue working on to balance out, and to make other builds more viable. I’m cautiously optimistic that as time goes on, there won’t only be one “S-tier” build for each class, and you won’t have to rely on theorycraft or build guides to have a good endgame tier character.

3. The Not-so-good

Okay. To start this section off with a controversial opinion.

I am having fun with the game.

There I said it. Feel free to tell me why I’m wrong, or “how we can’t keep letting AAA game studios get away with this,” or about how “blizz bad, make WoW better.” Chances are, I’ll agree with you on your point, but I’d ask you to look at some of these problems as symptoms of the industry at large and not consolidate your frustration into looking at one game.

That being said. There are a few things that I had a hard time looking past.

First things first, can we talk about the mounts? If you’re going to hype up the mount by locking it behind four acts of a six act game, it better deliver. My partner was super excited to unlock theirs (mostly to do some dress up with the armors and mounts) but when it came to using them, they really felt flat. The horse was buggy, can get stuck in the terrain pretty easily, has a mechanic where enemies (ranged especially) can hit you and eventually knock you off, and has a ten second cooldown.

Additionally, the open world is full of barricades and places where you can only climb or jump if you’re not on your horse. So even in the most direct path to a location you’re trying to get to you may have to get off and get back on your horse three or four times, with that ten second cooldown attached. It seems insignificant at first, but it adds up over time.

And if I had to sum up my biggest complaint with the game, it would be that. Over and over and over again it feels like there are little things that are intentionally designed to nickel and dime you for every last second. Things that aren’t fun, just to pad your game time, which feels totally incongruous with the care put into the overworld. I felt that while going by there were plenty of things to keep me exploring, from tracking down the Lilith Altars, to world events, and even to run a cellar really quick if it was right by a side quest. Filling the world with this sort of engagement is a much more enjoyable way of getting me to stop and look around at the world and feel it. Waiting for my horse to come off of cooldown really broke the immersion.

The balance also has been a big negative point for me. The infamous 1.1 patch tried to “fix” the issue of meta builds by nerfing pretty much every aspect, source of damage, and ability across the board. Obviously I have no proof of this, but issues with balancing that are this severe either speak to an indecisiveness in game direction, or a product being rushed out with minimal playtesting. I believe that as time goes on and the developers keep in touch with the vibes being put out by the community, this issue will become less… severe? However, in a full release game that costs 70 dollars for the base edition, players shouldn’t feel like they’re still beta testers. But, like I said before. I feel like this is more of an industry wide issue than an issue with Blizzard specifically.

Final Thoughts and Score

To get the record straight. I would like to make it clear that I am still playing through the seasonal content and playing the game in the evenings with my partner. So I’d say that I’ve gotten my money’s worth, and honestly it is a really enjoyable experience. For a AAA launch title, I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that it wasn’t totally plagued by the entire seven plagues of Moses that a lot of launch titles are in the modern era.

Even before any fixes go it, I’d argue that it’s a solid ARPG with enough variety and potential that I can see players spending considerable time with it to come, and hopefully with some quality of life enhancements and some polish it could even stand out to be one of the better ARPGs in the last few years. As it stands currently, I could comfortably recommend it to fans of the genre, the franchise, and people who are looking to dip their toes into this type of gaming.

Final score:

Four wheels of cheddar out of Five!