Playtime: 20 Hours
Score: 4/10

A new mainline entry that feels more like Diablo 3.5. So I'm a fan of Diablo as it was the first ARPG I ever played and I even remember the day I got the OG Diablo 2 for my PC and just being blown away by the atmosphere and the fun gameplay, even though by that point the game was several years old. Fast forward years later, I played Diablo 3 when it hit PlayStation and I really enjoyed that game despite it being divisive amongst fans. So what did I think of this one?

To start with the positives, the combat as always is a lot of fun. I played a Necromancer since that was my go to class in Diablo 2 and I had a lot of fun with it, especially once I got the corpse explosion which is always my favorite. I also like that transmog is in this game, which allows you to change the look of all the gear you pick up, so you always look the way you want to. I say that since it was in Diablo 3, but I was worried Blizzard would get very aggressive and paywall the feature each time you want to change the look of an item. I'm glad they at least showed restraint there. The music is also very good with the tracks sounding different to past games but still very epic. And though this is an always online game (more on that later), the game was very stable for me with no server issues and players generally just kept to themselves, so nothing bad there. Lastly I thought Lilith was a cool villain and was a nice change up from just having Diablo come back again.

That's sadly where the positives end for me. The game, while fun, just honestly gets very boring after a while for various reasons. The game is open world with segmented regions, kind of like Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning's open world, but exploration honestly barely felt any different to Diablo 3. You're still running around large open fields, with demons around every corner with the occasional chest tucked away somewhere. There are dungeons, but these are all just copy and pasted, with not much to differentiate them other than what enemies you're fighting in them. Side quests are okay, but I've seen better in other games and these get boring after a while. While the visuals do have a more gothic tone to fit the first two games, it lacks that oppressive atmosphere I felt when I played Diablo 2. It honestly just feels like Diablo 3 with Diablo 1+2 skin over it visually.

Leveling is back to traditional skill trees which I do like as it lets you make different builds within the same class. The issue is once you hit level 50, you stop getting skill points and instead get paragon points which lets you access a separate tree. But most of these are just basic stat upgrades and don't really let you continue to tailor a unique build. The combat is fun like I said it but it quickly starts to feel trivial as the game is just WAY too easy. Why don't you turn up the difficulty you might ask? You can't since this game uses a world tier system similar to Diablo 3 with you only having access to easy and normal at the start with hard and nightmare only unlocking AFTER you beat the main campaign which just sucks man. I get this is a live service game with an MMO feel, but just let me increase my difficulty for god sakes. I am not going to continue to play your game after the main story, so stop trying to dangle higher difficulties like a carrot to me.

Loot is also very basic and boring in this game as most of the time when I found a new weapon, it just felt like a simple stat increase for me and only the legendaries had some cool effects, but these were too far in between.

Another thing they took out from D3 was the companion system which I really missed here. In D3 you got 3 companions who could accompany you when you went out into the world. And while ya these companions were rendered mute if you were playing in co-op, I still liked having them since I mostly play these games in single player. I enjoyed having them with me and then learning more about their backstories when I went back to town. It was something I really missed here.

Lastly is the story, which while interesting, it's not enough to make up for the other issues I mentioned. You do get CG Blizzard cutscenes during the main quests which are always cool to watch, but that's about the only thing they did to enhance the storytelling. I honestly didn't care about most of the side characters and the ones that were decent, I've again seen similar characters in other open world RPGs done better. Also what I found weird is when you talk to NPCs in the game and it's still the top down view point, the camera will zoom in slightly while you talk to them but it's still the top down view, which just felt very pointless to me and after a while it just got annoying. But the actual main story was just okay, as you're mostly just chasing down Lilith and when you get to a location she's at, you learn she's already moved on and then you get a cutscene from her perspective. Again, she's a cool villain but it's not enough to keep my attention with everything else being so bland and I honestly found D3's story to be a lot more engaging. My little hot take for you Diablo fans XD

So ya, that's my thoughts on this game. I'm just not a live service game fan as I feel like they're the bane of the industry and the killer of dev creativity and it just didn't do much to forcibly make Diablo 4 a live service. I didn't talk much about the monetization since the game doesn't force it down your throats but it's still awful with its prices. You want money for horse armor? Get the heck out of here!

All Games I have Played and Reviewed Ranked - https://www.backloggd.com/u/JudgeDredd35/list/all-games-i-have-played-and-reviewed-ranked/

This was my first experience with Diablo, spending most of my life knowing of it but not about it.

Visually it's nice, the world is interesting and the characters are varied. Gameplay-wise however I just don't get it. There is fun to be had, and putting together an effect build is satisfying but I can't imagine myself putting more than 30/40 hours into this at most.

The systems in place are thoughtful and work together nicely but the loot at the heart of everything is disappointing. When I think about my favourite looters I imagine those moments when you find a weapon that feels so good, so powerful that you wonder if the game made a mistake giving it to you.

Enemies scale with your level/loot so those kind of instances never occur, so the combat across the board feels very one note.

I had basically no expectations going into this but I have come away accepting that Diablo is not for me. I am grateful I played this on Gamepass and not for the cost of €70.

it's difficult to explain why I love this so much considering so much of the valid arguments against this game are exactly that, valid and fair.

the story campaign is truly spectacular, if boring in gameplay with a lot of walking. I'm not sure I'd ever play it again but it's a must if you play for the first time.

the state of the game in July 2024 is very healthy, with the rework in the latest update to loot being especially needed. that's not to say that's a pass for it being as bad in the past or to say that it's perfect. diablo has always been a franchise whose games are in progress and I think thats to be expected.

but it's just fun. it's mindless sure, but

I bought the game a whole year ago and have never been able to play without rubber banding or lag that makes the game borderline unplayable for me. My connection is fine as I can play any other game without issues, it is just this game.

Even tried to contact Blizzard's customer services and they just assume the problem is on my side and not theirs. I made it to Act V but just got tired of this Always Online bullshit that runs like ass. The trade-off is some shitty MMO mechanics I do not even care about.

Impossible to recommend.

- 23 hours played
- Level 50 Necromancer

I’ve seen the memes. #D4BAD. I’ve been watching from the shadows since release day. I’m not an ARPG guy. I loved Diablo 3 Reaper of souls but that’s about all my experience with the genre. I’m a casual. According to some D4 YouTubers, this game was made for me. The Casual Arpg player. But man did this game bore me to absolute tears.

I had to wait to snag this game on the cheap as couldn’t justify full price after the community response. £20 off eBay and I managed to get £1 an hour out of it yet those hours still feel wasted. This game encapsulates my main issues with the AAA game space at the moment. It’s HUGE!! First world problem incoming but it’s too big. Not every game needs to be open world. The exploration in this game feels pointless. You’re only ever moving the camera, getting attacked by mobs that walk into screen and clicking buttons to mass delete them. There’s nothing interesting to discover. Dungeons, basements and forts all play exactly the same. There is no variety to speak of in this game.

The combat is way too easy. I started in world tier 2 and desperately needed to up the world tier to increase the challenge. Yet that’s not possible until beating the campaign. With both the exploration and combat failing to hold my interest, I can’t force myself to complete it. I do not understand why difficulty is sometimes gated off from the start of a game. If I want to go straight in on hard, let me. It’s my experience. Combat also isn’t helped by lack of enemy variety. There’s lots of enemies in the game and they all look different but they all play the same. They group up and I destroy them in one or two button clicks. Boring.

The loot and levelling also didn’t do a lot for me. Loot only seemed to offer small increases in stats and I never really discovered any loot with exciting affixes during my 20 hours. Nothing that really changed up my gameplay. And the levelling disappointed me. I thought I would have 100 levels of skill points to craft my build but at level 50, you start putting skill points into the paragon tree instead which only offered boring build increases. + 5 intelligence etc. I would prefer a lower level cap with more exciting skill tree progression than this level 100 slog.


Another issue I have with gaming at the moment is side quests. There’s loads in every game and there’s loads in this one. They introduce a little bit of flavour here but it’s seasoning the same ole combat. No matter the goal of the quest the gameplay is always the same in diablo 4. And I wouldn’t mind that if the game was shorter but this game is huge.

And finally the visuals. This game does look good but its art style doesn’t appeal to me. It’s very drab and lifeless. The ambient music is also lacking and failed to inject some excitement.

All in all Diablo 4 is another very expensive AAA lifeless slog of a game looking to hoover up all my spare time. It’s not an objectively bad game. It’s well made. But it’s boring and for me that’s worse. I feel nothing for this game. I also wasn’t a fan of it being online only and asking me every time I loaded it up if I wanted to subscribe to ps+.

Quiabo IV com toda certeza se destaca pelas cutscenes impressionantes e uma história envolvente. As cutscenes e trilha sonora são o verdadeiro significado de cinema, eu assistiria um filme assim. A história é bacana e comovente, apresentando dilemas morais que prendem a atenção. O jogo por sua vez se torna um pouco repetitivo demais e cansa, alem de ser muito facil na maior dificuldade que pude deixar, nunca valera o preço que esta, poucos jogos valem, mas o jogo tem uma boa experiencia para proporcionar e uma historia muito bacana para deslumbrar, recomendo apesar de determinados defeitos, o importante e que me diverti e realmente gostei da historia e personagens.

Diablo IV é um jogo complicado... Por um lado, temos aqui uma das, senão, a melhor gameplay do gênero. Jogo divertidíssimo, builds interessantes, co-op muito bacana. Porém, no que diz respeito a história, ao meu ver, é a mais estranha e desconexa de toda a franquia.

Acredito que faltou um senso de direção no roteiro do jogo, os atos da história começam em nada e terminam em lugar nenhum, a presença da Lilith é desperdiçada entre os atos 3 e 5, além do jogo de prolongar muito além do que tinha para entregar.

O final é aberto e deixa claro que nada se resolveu. Portanto, a sensação que fica é que você passou 40h, para no final das contas, toda sua jornada ser resumida em: Compra a expansão e vamos ver onde termina hein.

Bom jogo, mas não vejo sentido em você pagar 200 reais em cada expansão pra que a história dele se encerre.

I'd like to start by saying that I did enjoy this game and found it to be a lot of fun. The plot was interesting enough and fighting hordes of creatures is always fun. I chose the Necromancer class as that's my personal favourite, I find it takes some of the repetitiveness away from ARPGs when you're able to raise skeletons and have them fight for you.

My only complaint is the multiplayer aspect to the game. The fact that it's always online lead to errors, like getting logged out mid cutscene and not being able to log back in for at least 15 minutes. The seasonal stuff looks interesting but doesn't really concern me as I don't really dive into endgame stuff unless there's something to strive for.

Hopefully whenever they get around to making another Diablo game, it'll be offline with the option of co-op.

Good installment of Diablo series. Gameplay is fast and fun. Plot is intriguing but not fully satisfying because many questions left unspoken. I hope addons will bring some clarity to the story. And here's one good advice: do sidequests after the main story, because overwise you'll become too overpowered so the game will be boring and because you will receive more usefull rewards for sidequests if you'll do them on harder difficulties which will be opened only after beating final boss and exam dungeon

Diablo IV's second go round with the "Loot Reborn" overhaul as well as a bunch of other progression related changes have made a marked increase in quality of the game. I still probably won't play it for more than a couple of weeks as even in it's improved state it doesn't hold a candle to D2 or PoE, but it's definitely much improved from the initial release. Another compliment I can levy at the updated version of the game is that during this playthrough I haven't been constantly hounded to spend money on stupid crap every five minutes. The microtransactions are sectioned off in areas where you don't have to engage with them unless you choose to.

Diablo IV continues on Blizzard's dumbing down of design bringing games ever closer to mindless mobile games. Hope you like left clicking!

A real bummer because the art finally nails the Diablo 1 esthetic in incredibly detailed 3D, it's gorgeous. The music follows the original vibe without turning into cheesy references and having it's own voice. The story's even better than I expected!
But none of this can save the incredibly controlled game design refusing to give any freedom to whatever class you've picked.
No, you'll only unlock a few skills every few levels even though the ones available in each circles are very redundant.
No, you won't equip more than 6 skills total (including your basic attack) because why would you wan't to make complex combos, right? Forget making any elaborate multi skill trap / attack / movement synergies, D4 wants you to have a controlled balanced build and force you to play with multiple other players so that you can't do everything on your own.
No, levels won't be meaningful. In fact they feel completely useless as monsters level up instantly with you. Why would you care about getting more powerful if enemies do at the same time. This is Skyrim syndrom, everything is set to your level and it's as efficient to just run through the oversized maps filled with boring loot as to killing everything. The loot isn't even linked to the areas either, they are set to your level. You'll always find something better, which you'll need because you leveled up and made the monsters stronger in doing so. It feels so gamey and immersion breaking.
The game is filled to the brim with idiotic systems that feel right out of a mobile game, that don't quite make sense in an RPG that should immerse you in the world. The game tells you exactly how many steps and quests remaining in the current quest / act so that you know when you ve checked all the boxes: you wouldnt want to have any surprises in the story, would you? At each step of quests, gold and items magically appear in your inventory because we need to constantly feed the slot machine addict players and maintain the belief that they are "progressing".
Once you step back and look at the mechanics, it is shockingly obvious how it is designed to create a mindless loop where players are constantly given a thumbs up no different than mobile games giving you a pat on the back every 10 seconds. There is no thinking involved, builds are incredibly basic ( are you doing bleed ? no, then you're doing berserking) with each skill only having 2 specific upgrades clearly lined with just 3-4 kind of build in mind. Wouldn't want you to get creative, woah!
Surprisingly I also found the controls pretty bad with my character regularly getting stuck in walls. Would have expected that to be super slick considering Blizzard's high production quality.

D4 gets incredibly boring after a handful of hours and monotony steps in as you watch thousands of meaningly critters gib and drop pathetic piles of gold.
But hey, still better than Diablo 3 which couldn't even boast such great art direction.

If you're looking for a similar game with any kind of depth, go play Path of Exile.