Like seeing your favorite band play their greatest hit live, Diablo 4 is completely awesome to behold even though you know exactly how the song’s going to go from the moment you hear the first iconic note. Diablo 4 doesn’t do much to reinvent ARPGs or push the boundaries of a genre its series helped pioneer, but the tweaks, improvements, and borrowed ideas it does introduce have forged this latest model into the best Diablo we’ve ever had. The finely-tuned combat, extensive build options across each class, stellar graphics, and strong live-service foundation are all among the most impressive in the genre, and the endgame activities and grind are so well thought out that I struggle to find any fault in them – as rare an occurrence as rainfall on Mars. A weak story and some irritating bugs do occasionally throw a wet blanket over the fires of Hell, but the 80 hours I’ve spent in Sanctuary have still been overwhelmingly positive, and even after all that demon slaying and obsessing over loot rolls, I’m still very excited to play a whole lot more.
Diablo 4 is the latest in a demon-centric series quickly approaching its 30th birthday, and it largely succeeds at modernizing the depths of Hell enough to finally match its more recent ARPG peers. You’re once again sent on an endless string of dungeon crawls where mastering your hotkey-bound abilities, optimizing your DPS, and improving your survivability are generally more important than things like an engaging story or explaining the insane diarrhea of flickering lights and elemental effects that typically occupy the screen – and practically every moment of that is really, really enjoyable whether you’re playing alone or with up to three friends. Running dungeons captures that familiar but just as compelling loop of killing hordes of enemies, completing objectives, and downing bosses, and running sidequests to learn more about the world’s lore and characters is usually a very good time even while the main plot meanders.
If you were hoping Diablo 4 would shock the ARPG world with massive innovations to the genre, however, you’re likely to be disappointed in that specific regard. Instead of trying to revolutionize ARPGs in any major way, Blizzard mostly seems content to play it safe by making smart but unsurprising changes to the formula, with things like more customizable skill trees and more diverse playstyles between its iconic character classes. This series had a lot of catching up to do in the 11 years since Diablo 3, and whether it’s borrowing combat inspiration from Path of Exile or online elements from Lost Ark, there isn’t really anything about what Diablo 4 does so well that is completely unprecedented. But while there may not be much in the way of game-changing innovations, the good news is that lack of experimentation has resulted in a game that’s unbelievably well-designed and succeeds at practically everything it tries.
I’m one of those weirdos who actually closely follows the story in Diablo, and although Diablo 4’s probably isn’t going to win any awards, it is still a massive step in the right direction compared to its predecessor. The quest to find and stop Lilith, daughter of one of the Prime Evils of Hell, after she unleashes her fury upon Sanctuary serves as a fantastic kicking off point that I was still eager to unravel even after my eighth playthrough of the first act during the pre-launch beta. Gone are the days of WWE-like voice performances and dreadfully cheesy dialogue, and the queen of succubi is one of the most complex villains the series has ever seen, with motivations that even made me question the justness of my own cause.
But before you get any real payoff for what’s expertly set up in the first act, you’ll spend the vast majority of the next four going on tangentially related errands with more filler than a packing peanut factory, before finally getting back to the task at hand. The result is an interesting but disjointed story with a payoff that doesn’t quite stick the landing. The real shame is that anytime Lilith is on-screen or closely involved in whatever action is going on, it’s absolutely engrossing stuff. But she’s largely hidden behind a curtain waiting for the final act for the vast majority of the campaign, and the diversions you’re sent on along the way consistently feel like unnecessary detours. Combine that with some seriously disappointing boss fights I won’t spoil, especially the campaign’s final one, and it’s hard not to feel let down by what this could have been.
It does help that Diablo 4 looks and sounds fantastic regardless of what’s going on in the story. Between the rare but breathtaking CGI cutscenes and the more numerous in-engine cutscenes that happen in between major story missions, as well as the detailed, disgustingly corrupted environments found in dungeons and out in the world, Sanctuary is rarely not a gorgeous sight to behold. It’s no small feat, then, that Diablo 4 sounds even better than it looks, with one of the most memorable OSTs in recent memory, mostly great voice acting, and lots of gross demon roars and shrieks as you lay waste to the minions of Hell.
The ending of the story at least nicely sets up a whole host of possibilities for Diablo 4’s live-service future and inevitable story expansions, but I find myself excited about the potential of where things might go more than I am happy about the base campaign we got overall. It’s no wonder that Blizzard allows you to skip the campaign entirely for every character you make after the first time you complete it – a five-minute recap video would be just as effective as replaying the roughly 15-hour story. That might have been more disappointing if the brief campaign were meant to be the main course of this meal, but thankfully rolling credits in a Diablo game means you’ve only just finished the appetizer.
When it comes to the things that really matter in the long run like combat, buildcrafting, hunting for gear, and especially the endgame, Diablo 4 absolutely knocks it out of the park in practically every way. Even if they aren’t perfectly balanced, all five character classes are a ton of fun to play as. The rogue darts around to deal extreme damage either in melee or from afar with a deadly bow in an exhilarating high risk/high reward tradeoff; The sorcerer creates horrifying cocktails of destruction, like an absolutely disgusting lightning build I brewed up to stun everything around me constantly; The necromancer raises an army of the dead, steals life, and manipulates the corpses of fallen enemies to carry out their foul desires, for when I’m in the mood to keep my distance and let someone else do the hard work for me; When I just want to Hulk my way through the depths of Hell, the barbarian is an expert in all forms of smashing who can charge forward to destroy everything in their path; And the druid uses their Animorph abilities and the power of mother nature to wail on all manner of demons, with probably the most build diversity of any of the classes.
Part of what helps make each option feel unique are the class mechanics that unlock at various points in the campaign. For example, the Sorceress gains access to the enchantment system in Act I, which allows you to enchant a couple of their spells to augment how they work. I used one of my enchantments on my teleport spell to turn the standard dodge every class gets into a second teleport cooldown, greatly improving my mobility. Each class has their own unique twist, whether it’s augmenting your ranks of the dead as a necromancer or bonding with spirit animals to gain beastly enhancements as a druid, and that goes a long way to making your playthrough and buildcrafting on each character feel distinct in some really cool ways.
Gear can also substantially affect the paths you might choose to take a character down. For example, after completing a job for a demented tree, you could be rewarded with a magical pair of pants that heals you over time when standing close to enemies, warranting a shift in your build from slaying enemies from afar to something close quarters. Or maybe, like me, you’ll get devilishly lucky when you find a weapon that has a chance of casting a random lightning spell for free whenever you cast an initial one, leading to absolute mayhem when you bring your electrical might to bear upon an unsuspecting huddle of bandits.