My Thoughts on Diablo 4: A Game Review.
This In-game screenshot of Diablo IV perfectly describes what I think about Diablo IV, It should be put in a coffin, sent beside the Titanic wreckage and be marked as a protected heritage site never to be touched again.
Don't get me wrong because like the mighty Titanic, Diablo IV is long awaited, highly celebrated, amazing, and masterpiece until it eventually hit an iceberg made of caveats. Once your done with the main story, you are left with an open world map which is basically mundane grinding and you can't even repeat story bosses, hence the correct course of action is to better leave it alone.
Am I saying it's bad? No! It's Good! there are no BUTs about it. The caveats I mentioned and experienced are tolerable and by the time you get tired of it, you might have already completed the game or are ready to move on.
THE GAME TRAILERS.
https://www.youtube.com/Diablo
In making this review I have decided not to spoil too much of the game and will focus instead with the features that are found in the game.
This screenshot is stolen from here because I don't have a console.
The PC version does not have local coop that consoles have.
Each character has a total of 7 active abilities, potion, and a dash to play and manage with and frankly it's just a pain in the ass to keep up with a keyboard and mouse. I recommend playing this game with a gamepad. With all the pixel explosions happening in the screen you need a dedicated controls for movement which you can edit in the controls section of the settings, It's actually surprising that Diablo 4 doesn't have WASD for movement.
On The PC hardware side of things. I recommend at least a 4-Core CPU, an SSD for storage and a videocard with at least 8gb of vram. The game uses On-demand loading and if your videocard lacks the vram requirement or you installed it in an HDD it will just end up in a stutter-fest.
Graphics is one of this game's selling point.
Your Character
There are 5 character classes in the game which you can play in a gender of your choosing. Barbarian, Necromancer, Sorcerer/Sorceress, Rogue and Druids. You can also change their hair, face shape, eyes, makeup, facial hair, skin color, tattoos, and accessories such as an earring as well.
Diablo IV has an inventory system typical of RPG that relies on GEAR SCORE and has detailed information about you character as a whole. There's also a way to customize your character's look the way you want.
The game features a Skill Tree for you to invest points on as you level up, The game also provides you with gears that modifies a skill, for example you get three wolves instead of two.
Later on you get to access this Paragon Tree which improves your character as a whole which makes one think that this game is Path of Diablo.
Gameplay.
And as a result, The scariest enemies are not the giant demons or the bosses but those Giant Skeleton Ballistae that removes 1/4th of your health per shot. Yes, it's weird.
You can also change a difficulty setting called World Tiers giving you access to better quality items.
Don't worry for as you level up, equip better gears, level up skills and gain Paragon nodes, It will eventually make you stronger and vanquish your enemies with just a snap of a finger.
The World of Diablo.
first let me show you a 20-second YouTube clip of one of my playthrough videos here:
https://www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxawKtE-MJ9T1B8CzDMfPiWafQFr3jW63g
Sigh... Diablo IV features a system where the map is divided into regions and each region has a designated server assigned to it. The clip above is a location between two different regions, which if you watched shows a very painful experience of desync.
The reason for this is Diablo IV is an online game.
Should Diablo IV suffer negative points because of the instabilities of the Network? isn't this force majeure?
Yes! because Diablo IV is designed around it! Diablo IV is an online game and it should be judged by the whole experience of it.
Meh It seems that writing a game review without spoiling doesn't have a lot of material to talk about.
And all I wrote here are rants. fitting. HATRED. Diablo IV is HATRED inducing. The Story of Diablo IV revolves around HATRED as well. nice.
My Score for Diablo IV
When I rate things, I always use a three-point system.
1 for Bad
2 for Okay
3 for Great
I must point out that I have very low standards and is easily impressed.
so it's very hard for me to give a score of 1,
and very easy for me to give a score of 3.
Diablo IV, 2023. 2/3. I'm happy I only bought the standard edition.
The Good:
- Story.
- CGI Cinematics.
- SFX & Music.
- Immersive.
- Graphics.
- Difficulty Scaling.
- Classes with Gender choices.
- The Only ARPG that does minions really well. seriously.
- Gameplay with a gamepad.
- Accessibility options such text to speech and color blind correction.
- Local Coop on the console looks fun!
- Trading*
The Bad:
- Difficulty Scaling. it ranges from really hard to one tapping. swings really wide.
- WTF the game gives you a horse for traveling only after you explored maybe what? 75% of the game.
- Gameplay with a keyboard and mouse.
- Online Only.
- That On-Demand asset streaming hits really hard on low spec computers.
The Neutral:
- It's immersive until you feel that dsync for moving to another region in the map.
- In-Game Cinematics.
- Story inconsistency.
- DO YOU HAVE NOT GAMEPADS!
And that's pretty much my take on Diablo IV. Play It~, Finish the Story~, Checkout the other characters~, and Uninstall.. maybe after checking out season 1.
I recorded my run with a playlist which includes dying and resetting because I played it in HC.
How about you guys and gals, did you play it? did you enjoyed it? because overall I did but it's hard to recommend to other people.
Cheers~