A decade has passed since we last battled the minions of Hell and defeated the Prime Evils, but Diablo IV brings a cruel reminder that Evil never rests. After a little over a week of playing through a near-retail build of the game, I can safely say that Diablo IV packs plenty of action to make you want to play it from day one. Every inch of the world is overrun by demons waiting to tear you to shreds, and using your skills and wit to stay alive will be paramount. In some scenarios, you’ll quickly learn that chugging through your four health potions is a poor way to stay alive, and will be grateful if you mange to stay alive long enough to get to safety.
That doesn’t mean that Diablo IV is unforgivingly difficult, unless of course you’re intentionally playing it at a higher difficulty. The adjustable world tiers are an excellent way to test your courage in return for more experience and loot, but the enemies are more likely to send you away whimpering from battle. It’s so easy to become overwhelmed by enemies in Diablo IV that it really does feel like you’re fighting for your life every time you step outside the safety of a town or encampment. That fear of death and rush of adrenaline is what will fuel you through the many missions, side quests, dungeons, strongholds, and unexplored regions of the game.
Sanctuary lies at your feet
The world of Sanctuary is at first a small space to explore. A quiet town here or there is all you’ll discover in the beginning, but as you level up and the story unfolds, you’ll grasp just how massive the entire world is. Story missions make you trek halfway across the entire map to get to them, battling demons and creatures in your path at every chance. Even merely standing still to look at something in your inventory is a risk, as you’ll most likely attract the attention of wandering demons who are more than happy to sever you from this mortal coil.
Sanctuary offers plenty of variety in its landscape, from snowy mountaintops rife with werewolves to putrid swamps littered with bloated bodies. Each area has a healthy level of detail to it, and even when you’re exploring abandoned cellars you’ll notice that every single item has its place. Have a mob of enemies rushing towards you? Ignite a nearby barrel to send them to a fiery grave – it’s as simple as that. The variety of locales keeps the game looking fresh, even if certain enemies make a reappearance in other areas as well, thus slightly dulling the experience.
The point is, there’s a LOT to explore here, and trekking from one town to the other can certainly be tiring. There is – thankfully – a mount available to you, but the drawback is that it can only be unlocked nearly halfway through the campaign. Once unlocked, you can charge through (or away) from enemies when exploring the map, or even dismount with a special attack to do some damage.
The great class divide
Since Diablo IV offers five unique classes to choose from, there’s plenty of room to explore and experiment with class builds to pick your favorite style. Fan of being up-close and brutal with enemies? Then the druid or barbarian is the class for you, capable of quickly disposing of enemies with a few well-placed blows. The sorcerer or necromancer are firm favourites if you prefer to attack from afar, with plenty of crowd control skills to keep enemies from overwhelming you. Lastly, the rogue can quickly dive in and out of battle while dealing swift strikes, making it a great class for short bursts of damage before slipping into the shadows again. A fairly well-thought out character creator rounds everything up, allowing you to truly personalize the kind of champion you want to be in Diablo IV.
Having tried all of these classes over the course of the game’s beta, the ones that stuck out the most were the sorcerer and necromancer. While the druid and barbarian are built as extra-aggressive characters that can take a beating, they only really feel much more useful after you hit level 20. The rogue feels a bit more balanced with damage and manoeuvrability at lower levels, but it’s the sorcerer and necromancer that take the cake for me. Both have impressive crowd control abilities that can keep enemies well away from you, and can quickly generate mana or essence to dish out more punishment. That’s not to say that the other classes are by any means inferior, but rather they’ll require a lot more work and respeccing of your skills to work in your favour. For some players this might be a trivial thing, but for others it might be enough to wipe a character and start with a different class.
Regardless of what class you play as, the refreshed skill tree is easy to understand and extremely easy to manoeuvre. Both active and passive skills can be unlocked with each character level up, or you can refund a claimed skill for a small gold fee at any point in the game. This allows you to constantly change how you play the game, especially when you find yourself dying repeatedly to a particular boss. In one particular battle I found that my necromancer’s minions were no match for a boss and his followers, so I sacrificed the ability to summon minions and refunded any skills I had put into their health pools. I then chose more defensive skills and abilities and was able to stay alive long enough through the battle to slay the stubborn demon. This constant tweaking and exploring is what Diablo IV shines at, and there are going to be countless build examples and tips once the game goes live.
Further bolstering your abilities is a host of fantastic legendary items and equipment to find throughout the game. Each new loot drop presents you with the challenge of swapping it for an existing item, salvaging it for precious crafting materials, or destroying it completely to extract an aspect that you want to apply to another piece of armor. Finishing dungeons across Sanctuary will also unlock aspects for your current and other classes, which you can then apply to other equipment. You’ll constantly be mixing around equipment and looking over stats to find the best build for your class, and it’s once again another part of what makes your character unique in Diablo IV.
Once players reach level 50 with a character, a new system will unlock – the Paragon Board. We’ve seen paragon levels in Diablo III as a way to recognize players who had played many hours of the game and levelled up their characters, but the Paragon Board works in a much more different way. In Diablo IV, players will continue to earn skill points which they can assign to a tile on the board to affect their core stats. They can then continue to unlock further Paragon Boards and apply even greater effects through magic, rare or legendary tiles. I wasn’t able to experience this during my time with the press build as I only hit level 38 on my character, but it’s still an exciting feature to see for those who’ll be playing long-after the main story ends.
What lies ahead
One thing that wasn’t available in the press build was the in-game shop, where players will be able to purchase various cosmetic items to make their characters stand out. Blizzard has reiterated that no items in the shop will affect gameplay in any way, so it really is just for players who want to personalize their characters even further.
As with other games in Blizzard’s lineup, there is a planned battle pass that will be integrated into Diablo IV. Again, this will reward players with cosmetic items along with fresh quests to keep the gameplay going. The flip side to this is after a season ends, you’ll need to retire your character and start a new one in order to access the next season’s tasks and rewards. This isn’t new – Diablo III had the exact same concept, so fans shouldn’t be too surprised.
Once you’ve actually finished the main story campaign, the game still offers plenty of rewards and quests to get through. And you can always change the world tier for an even greater challenge before tackling the end again. The short story is that even when you’ve finished the game, you haven’t quite finished the game. While there were no world bosses spawning during the press build, they will certainly be doing so once the game is live, along with limited world events that pop up on the world map for you to take part in for rewards. Along with cross-platform gameplay, you’ll be able to team up with friends on both PC and console to take on the world of Sanctuary, with even great challenges lying in store.
There were of course, a few technical difficulties in the press build that will hopefully be ironed out once the game is live. Most noticeably were camera issues where my character would be hidden by a wall or pillar that didn’t fade away when the camera moved, so I could neither see nearby enemies to attack nor trigger an interaction with an item to move the story along. This happened a few more times in other areas of Sanctuary, and there didn’t seem to be a way to fix it other than teleporting out and back to the area.
Visually the game looks great, and the game is set to ship with support for NVIDIA’s DLSS 3 for 40 series GPUs, as well as ray tracing support post-launch. But even without these enabled in the press build, the game looked fantastic. Whether it was flickering shadows cast by candlelight or pools of blood oozing in an abandoned cathedral, there is a lot of atmosphere and attention to detail that comes through in every level you explore.
The Verdict
Diablo IV is an incredibly fun game to play, regardless of where you are in the Diablo franchise. There’s a great story to unearth and follow, plenty of loot to discover, and enough side quests and dungeons to keep even the hungriest adventurer busy. The updated skill tree and paragon system helps to cement plenty of post-story gameplay, so even if you speed through only the entire story in 20 hours like I did, there’s still going to be a lot left to explore.
The seasonal additions and timed events are also incentive to stick around after the final boss fight, even if to just hunt for the best weapons and armor the game can offer, or carve through the minions of Hell with friends. There’s a lot to discover about Lilith and her connection to the world of Sanctuary, and the story weaves an interesting tale with some choice twists that are fitting to a Diablo game.
Diablo IV is a strong addition to the franchise, with enough on offer to tempt new players and old. The always-online requirement might be irritating for some, but teaming up with other players to conquer a difficult boss or dungeon is an instantly rewarding mechanic. You’re guaranteed to spend a large portion of your time hoarding the best loot you can find and perfecting your character build until you’re one unstoppable force of nature. That is, until you’re quickly put in your place by a demon and have to rethink your entire strategy and character build to finally slay the foul beast. It’s a process that never gets old, and one that sings loudly throughout Diablo IV’s chapters.