After playing through the latest title in the Diablo series, as someone who is a huge fan of Diablo II, I have to say that Blizzard Entertainment has definitely delivered the story and gameplay that players have been wanting to see in a sequel title. When Diablo III came out, I was excited to get a chance to experience more of the Diablo series and found myself disappointed. Then we got Diablo II Resurrected, which was a refreshingly nostalgic experience. and Diablo Immortal, which was a decent game for a mobile version of the series.

Now, Blizzard has absorbed Vicarious Visions completely and renamed them Blizzard Albany, then had them crank out what everybody has been waiting for - Diablo IV, the next title for Diablo fans to divulge their time into! This title has the potential to revitalize the Diablo community as it brings back the dark realm, harsher artistic tones to show a more disturbing, demon-filled environment, and beloved simplistic RPG-style gameplay with strategic elements. Plus, it has a story that is actually interesting and directly includes the player in the core heroic side of the journey.

In short, I really enjoyed my experience reviewing the game and can’t wait to dive back in! For now, let me dive into the details of what this game has in store.

Story

The demon mother Lillith has been brought to the living realm and she’s here with a drastic plan in mind. When the game begins, you will find yourself stumbling into a small village where someone is in need of aid. The only way to help them is to get a particular item from the nearby dungeon. After conquering your first dungeon and defeating your first boss, you head back to town to be met with cheers and celebration. Although, all is not as it seems and you are drugged in this instance.

While unconscious, the group in this small village offers you to Lillith where she proceeds to put her demonic blood into you. Before the village has a chance to fully sacrifice you, likely to be eaten or offered, the man you saved helps you fight your way out. After defeating the people of the village, you head into their chapel where you find your first set of blood roses and experience your first vision of Lillith’s memory - which is possible only because you have been touched, or anointed, by her blood originally.

After following the man to the nearest major city, the true adventure begins (and your character will officially be online with the rest of the server). From here, you are able to go through Acts 1, 2, and 3 in any order you prefer as these Acts lead to information about Lillith, what she is doing, and what her plan is. Act 4 is where the story gets linear once more and the true aids of Lillith’s rise to power are revealed. I do suggest completing the first four Acts sooner rather than later due to how much of the map, abilities, and lore is revealed. Plus, after Act 4 you can look into getting a mount for a horse!

Following the story is actually quite entertaining and proves to be a great premise as to why you are acting as the main character for the plot. You aren’t just a powerful person that comes along at the right time, but rather you are a key element due to being given the blood of Lillith at the start of the game. This gave you a connection to her and thus the ability to see visions, memories, and more that the party is able to use in order to figure out what she is doing, divulge her plans, and then take her down. Being deeply connected to the story is such a nice touch that I didn’t realize I would want but happy that I did. Every NPC that fell to Lillith and her minions, all the Devil Lords she and her followers help summon back to this world, and every monstrosity that she enacts into the land all give off this personal liability that you are to not only step up to the challenge for but must succeed. The previous Diablo games relied on your want to vanquish evil, but this time they make it your direct responsibility, even putting you through moments that would not be possible without you.

Gameplay

They really brought a simplistic aspect to the Diablo series with this game. Making the controls viable for both controller and mouse-and-keyboard players alike, you have the following mapping options: A button for taking health potions, an interaction button, a main attack, a secondary attack, four strong skill attacks, and an emote wheel. These are shown to you in a semi-tutorial style as each block gets filled as you level up. Playing as a Druid, you start out with just a regular attack. At the first level, you get your main attack by selecting one of the four attack options. Then, a few levels later you get the secondary attack by selecting one of the four skill options. This is the start of how you will set up your skills throughout the full skill tree, but everything can be changed at any time, so don’t stress your picks at the beginning.

The skill trees are interesting in this game and are where the strategic aspects come in. Every few levels, you’ll unlock the next branch from the skill tree. Each branch brings the next skill, so if you just pick one skill from each branch, you should fill up your full attack options - although there is a chance you’ll have an open spot, which is nice when adding variety to your skill attacks. Skill trees can have all skill points refunded for a gold price amount with the cost being higher as your level increases. It is honestly pretty cheap to do and I personally changed my skill tree multiple times throughout the game. In fact, I even changed my skills mid-boss fight once because I had a close-range combat setup when the boss had a lot of close-range AOE (area of effect) damage, so I switched it out to ranged combat skills. As long as you have the time to pick the next set of skills, you can change them on the fly with no limitation on how many times you can do this.

Having simplistic controls and all the strategy being burdened on your skill tree opens this game up to be a stepping stone for players who are new to RPGs like this and still entertaining for hardcore returning RPG players, such as myself. Simplified attack options, simplified battle setups, and simplified potion handling make for easy and understandable gameplay.

When it comes to managing your health and mana energy, I would say that this game offers the most simplified version of management I have ever seen in an RPG. Health potions are in abundance and easy to come across. You have four at all times and every ten (10) levels, you can go to a specific merchant to increase the kind of health potions they are - making them heal more the better they are. You can find replacement health potions from chests, busting up some scenery, killing enemies, and there are even ‘next stage’ notches on a bosses health bar which indicate how low you have to get their health before they drop two-to-four health potions for you to fight them with during the next stage of health. Of course, beware the fact that a new stage in a boss fight means new and/or harder attacks. Mana is even simpler than that - the only thing that uses your mana is your secondary attack and you regain mana by using your main attack. All of your other skills use a timer system where you have to wait for the cooldown to end before you can use it again.

The merchants in this game are borderline useless honestly. The armor and weapon vendors only hold about four items and they are rarely worth looking at, let alone buying. The only vendors I really used were the health merchant for free health and potion refills, the blacksmith to fix and upgrade my gear, the potion guy for upgrading my potions every ten levels, and the stable for renting a horse (after unlocking Mounts). Everybody else was just there so I could sell everything that I collected, but once I had a couple of 100k in gold, I started going to the blacksmith to scrap the collected items instead so I could get more material for upgrading.

Out in the dangerous world, you’ll come across materials in their natural state, which can be collected. You’ll also come across statues that give you a new power (there are a ton of these, each with a different power), NPCs, vast amounts of enemies, and a large number of other aspects. I suggest starting all side quests in every town you go to as soon as possible because some of them can be completed passively as you are just playing the game due to a number of them being to kill a certain number of a specific enemy or collect something a specific enemy drops - and were all fiends in these games, collecting everything that is dropped after all. You’ll also come across event-like moments where enemies will have something special going on, in which you gain a little prize and extra experience by taking out these events.

Honestly, when it comes to side activities to do in this game, Diablo IV has reached a new height of activity. Even as the reviewer that focused on the story elements, I came across so many things that there are to do other than the main quest! The random enemy events, there are cellars and pits everywhere to explore, dungeons are put around the map in mass, secret areas can be found and explored on the map, and this barely touches the surface as they plan to add world events, special events, and more through a live service for the game.

One thing I thought was quite a triumph for this game is the way enemy levels work. The sections of the map that deal with Acts 1-3 all have a sliding-level system. What that means is that enemies in these areas will be set to a level according to yours. Act 4 is when the game starts taking you into areas with set levels, ranging from level 30 and up. Before that, the areas present monsters and maintain their level in accordance with the player. This even goes for online play where one player that is level 5 will be fighting the same enemies as a player who is level 20 and the enemies will be adjusted per player. I’m not sure how they give a single enemy a health bar and attack power to match two or more players at the same time, but they did it! The areas with harder monsters have set levels, so this sliding-level system isn’t something to get used to, but it is worth noting that it is a developmental marvel regardless.

Audio and Visual

The aesthetics of this game are much more fitting to the Diablo series that many are going to be happy to see return to the series. They created a dark world full of various creatures and demons along with pits, caverns, chests, bodies, gore, various tragic scenery that tell their own tales, and so much more. Given the game revolves around fighting back against the tyranny of demon lords, the dark atmosphere that destructive environments give off is just much more fitting and something I am glad they brought back to the series. That doesn’t even go into the detail put into the different characters, the various items you can find and collect, along with a variety of other aspects. My only complaint with this is the lacking reach the standard field-of-view provides.

As for the music and sound effects in the game, we are getting a lot of familiarity with the style we experienced in Diablo II particularly. While adventuring the land, you’ll have somewhat calm and dark music that doesn’t build hype but rather fills the atmosphere with energy that aids the environment you are in. When you come across a large group of enemies, it gets a bit more intense, but the music really picks up during boss battles giving a high-energy combat-focused tone behind the battle. I can say that I am very content with the overall sound structure of the game.

Replayability

This game definitely has replayability. Without even going into the details that having different classes to choose from which bring their own gameplay styles to the game, there are going to be rare items to find, world events to take part in, and everything that the previous Diablo titles have had for reasons to keep playing. While this game doesn’t offer the chance to do ‘runs’ against main boss enemies as quests can’t be beaten more than once, there will be dungeons that can be explored more than once along with various other pits and cellars. We will have to see how often there are world events and special boss encounters to experience to figure out how ‘runs’ will best be done, but I have faith the community will quickly find the best way to farm top-tier loot opportunities.

What It Could Have Done Better

My complaints are almost all mechanical at their core. When it comes to the gameplay, this game has proven to be very impressive and while it isn’t exactly perfect, it isn’t something worth complaining about. With that positive note in mind, there are a few issues I came across while reviewing the game on PC. This includes story, loot, and dungeon progress loss plus some issues like 30 FPS cinematics and no full-screen mode. Not to mention that the field-of-view feels really tight and I would very much like to expand it. Also, as a personal preference, I wish I could get the transparent map style back instead of an actual mini-map.

During some of the quest lines, you end up going to areas far away from any waypoint, and if the game disconnects while you are out there then tough luck; you’ll be running all the way back out there again. They plan to add more checkpoints and auto-save moments to fix this, but it is still something to keep in mind as a possibility.

That last point goes into my main complaint - the servers. I am simply not confident in the way they have the servers set up and believe many players will find themselves waiting in long queues to get into the game during the first few weeks, if not a full month. They should have a better system for the servers, perhaps a system more like the classic RuneScape style where you would pick one of the many worlds and they load into that server. We will see how this works out, but high caution on this aspect of the game.

Given all of these issues can be fixed with patches and updates, I’ll only be allowing this to slightly affect the final score.

Verdict

Diablo IV is the sequel this series needed! This game is excitingly invigorating and I will be sinking hours, if not days, of my life into it and will be entertained throughout the whole experience. There are so many things about this game to love and I doubt that I saw all this game has to offer during my time in it so far. The map is huge, the gameplay is fitting and what I was hoping to see, and there is just so much to do in the game. I haven’t enjoyed a new Diablo experience like this since I first played the game when I was 11 years old back in 2002 and I can’t wait to dive back into the game! Easily a game that I strongly recommend to anybody interested in the RPG genre.

Diablo IV will officially release on June 6th for PC via BattleNet, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. Those who pre-purchase the game’s Deluxe or Ultimate editions can gain access as early as June 1st.