I'm embarrassed to admit that I've been looking forward to Diablo 4 since its initial gameplay reveal trailer in 2019. Diablo 2 is an awful slog and 3 isn't much better, but the fidelity of the graphics and animation impressed me, and I began to construct an enjoyable dark fantasy aRPG in my imagination that could, conceivably, have been the next Diablo. The removal of procedural generation and addition of some degree of verticality were of particular interest, and the return of the elemental Sorceress had me honestly excited.
Having now played Diablo 4 for 20 hours in beta and at least as much again in the complete release, I can report only that I was spectacularly wrong. Diablo 4 has nothing. It is one of the most excruciatingly dull games ever released. Now, at level 42 on my Sorceress, I can say that any desire to play has been sapped from my soul, leaving nothing but a vague sense of compulsion to write this article.
Rather than complain about monetization schemes in a $70 game and how it's basically a bad MMO, or bitch about the ridiculously tedious skill system filled with bizarre, boring, and overcomplicated mechanics (don't you just adore the thought of basing your entire skill tree around a static 20% increased damage debuff applied to enemies?), or shit on the horrific level design and total lack of environmental mechanics, which are all fairly obvious and can be commented on by others (as many players are already doing Metacritic), I have something more cerebral to discuss:
Why does Diablo exist?
The original Diablo was released in 1996. It remains one of my favorite games, and is by several thousand times the best game in its franchise. Diablo is excellent due to atmosphere, especially in story and music, its compelling--if very simple--gameplay loop of delving deeper into the dungeon while returning to town for provisions, and a clear sense of progression from one zone to the next. Best of all, the monsters don't respawn once you've killed them, so you don't feel like you're stuck in an infinite purgatory of genociding the same goatmen over and over again until your joints freeze shut from arthritis and your controller falls out from your hands.
In gameplay, Diablo was a direct adaptation of simple Dungeons & Dragons rules, converted to real-time, played isometrically, and made for a computer. It thus invented the aRPG genre--where the player clicks on things until they die--but its central combat mechanics were the least important part of its structure. It was more about resource management and choosing the right gear.
Far more interesting action fantasy roleplaying games have been developed since 1996. From Soul Reaver to Fable and, most obviously, Dark Souls, the ability to render actual 3D game worlds, with complicated character development, good storytelling, and combat mechanics more engaging than clicking on things has increased dramatically. There are many good aRPGs, but only a handful that still use the isometric, click-to-death combat first developed 27 years ago (Path of Exile, Diablo, Torchlight; better titles, like Hades, keep the atmosphere and perspective while revamping the gameplay, bringing it more inline with a Dark Souls title; this is what Blizzard should have done).
Diablo 4 returns us to a Diablo 2-inspired structure of gameplay, while restricting the player to six skills at a time. The spectacular innovation that took Blizzard 11 years to implement is that there is now a dodge button. Mechanics seen in games by Larian, such as environmental interactions between skills and objects, remain entirely absent. Gameplay consists of holding down your "Core Skill" button until hordes of indistinguishable enemies stop moving, or until Ice Shard-sponge bosses have died of ten million papercuts.
I have a great many criticisms of the level design and skill tree structure in D4. But the primary combat systems have barely changed since 1996.
I don't like this either, but there is beauty in simplicity.
D4 is effectively an MMO. What does it have that World of Warcraft does not? Vanilla WoW combat was basic compared to what we see in D4, but by Wrath of the Lich King, the difference becomes increasingly miniscule. D4 has an increased emphasis on avoiding projectiles and attacks, especially using the new evade button, but the player has far fewer active abilities to pull from, and the basic skill toolkit is almost identical: spam a basic skill, move around; spam a core skill, move around; use everything more powerful whenever it's off cooldown, then move around. Repeat ad infinitum.
Yet in World of Warcraft, an incredible third dimension is added to the player's toolkit through the ability to jump. World of Warcraft also features interesting environments and actually-designed levels, unlike horrific nightmare mazes slammed together by some algorithm as seen in every Diablo game. This vital difference means World of Warcraft feels like it takes place in a living fantasy setting, full of things to explore, which thus warrants its open world. Diablo 4's open world might as well be a collection of mine tunnels, with a few caverns interspersed.
Probably most important is that, in World of Warcraft, the player has things to do other than mindless murder and grinding. Questing and dungeon-delving feel different. Quests themselves are varied, to greater or lesser extents. There's also PvP and professions, plus the auction house. Individual dungeons and quests can make use of traps, platforming sections, and vehicles (excuse me while I throw up, but at least it's variety).
Diablo 4 has murder and mindless grinding. It technically has quests, but they're all the same. The main campaign takes you through countless biomes, but they're also all the same beyond color palette. There are no traps that matter. There's no platforming. There are no vehicles. The game is its combat, and only its combat.
There may only be one Scholomance, but it is infinitely more interesting than seventy-six identical, tedious, procedurally generated dungeons.
So D4 is an action game all about combat. But what does it have relative to Elden Ring?
I'll tell you what it doesn't have:
A dodge mechanic that matters
Horse combat
Interesting 3D environments that keep you on your toes
Varied enemy design and engaging bosses
Puzzles and platforming sections
Secrets and cool level design
The ability to jump
These things are entirely absent from Diablo 4. All it has relative to Elden Ring, or any modern action RPG, is its class system; its inventory system; and its skill tree system. These are its only selling points. Let's examine them more closely.
1. Classes.
Classes have long been central to Diablo, and while they're interesting enough in a multiplayer game, they add nothing to the singleplayer experience. The best thing I can say about D4 is that it does a good job streamlining subsequent characters on the same account, which might make Hardcore more enjoyable, but any points it wins in this regard are quickly lost again by having the game be so otherwise linear and dull. Every playthrough is exactly the same.
2. Inventory
Itemization in D4 isn't as horrific as D3, but remains a hideous slog due to an excess of drops and scores of boring item stats like +Overpower, +Critical Strike, +Lucky Hits, +Damage of X Type to Y Kind of Enemy While His Pants Are On Fire, plus the core stats--are you having fun yet?
Having to return to town to sell items and get cash in the first Diablo game is central to the process of clearing out the dungeon. Most of the best gear is available from the blacksmith, so turning a profit is vital. But in D4, any semblance of purpose has been utterly lost. I have 500,000 gold and more crafting supplies than I could ever possibly use, but I still feel compelled to return to the nearest town to sell all of my junk every five minutes--mostly because my inventory keeps filling up, and if I stopped grabbing loot, the game would basically be over.
Diablo 3 and 4 would both be better games with the inventory yeeted out of a cannon and drowned at the bottom of the Adriatic Sea. Everything uninteresting is sold the moment it's picked up; the rest goes into the stash. There is no reason for sub-yellow items to exist in 2023. Having to manage this shit adds nothing, but because Diablo has no identity as a franchise beyond "doing things the old games did," horrible inventory mechanics remain.
They have no purpose.
3. Skill Trees
The skill system is vaguely interesting in D4 relative to D2 and 3, but the existence of obvious synergies in the tree discourages experimentation, while the absurd complexity of those synergies--and the quantity of skill points required to be invested--similarly discourages experimentation. Do I want +15% Crit Strike chance, or 20% extra damage to Frozen enemies, or should I make sure that I always have everyone on the screen vulnerable? If I do, then my every twenty-third Basic Attack against them in a row will give an extra 17.5% chance of an Overpower attack, and Overpower attacks proc a 2.7% chance (per talent level) of instantly Freezing my opponents!
Awesome! What the fuck is an Overpowered attack again?
At least as a Sorceress, I found many of the skills--Meteor, Wall of Fire, Blizzard, and Arcane Weapon--to be useless wastes of mana, and respeccing to try out different trees required so much thought and time that it quickly became murderous. I gave up and stuck to Frost for most of my playtime, which seemed by far the most powerful.
You will also always be left to wonder if there's some other, more optimal synergy out there waiting for you. This makes experimentation and min-maxing pointless, because some asshole on IcyVeins with three Ph.Ds in math is going to figure it all out far better than you ever will be able to on your own. Thus the entire skill tree system might as well be a "let the internet design my class spec for me" button long-term, especially when playing in the late game.
In this game, you can walk over to a cliff AND THEN fall off it! Isn't modern technology immersive?
I will tell you the single thing Diablo 4 has going in its favor: playing it requires almost no brainpower whatsoever, which makes it an ideal mindless game for podcast and audiobook listening. This was the singular ounce of praise I managed to find within my blackened heart for Diablo 2: Resurrected as well. But this fact is also the game's indictment: its only positive quality is that it is vapid and pointless.
Basically any action game ever made is more interesting than Diablo 4. Every boss fight, every quest, and every encounter will be exactly the same as the next. Frost Nova, hold down R2, watch everything die. Or, Fire Snake Ult, hold down R2, watch everything die.
Every trash wave. Every boss. Every dungeon. Every story mission. Everything.
I know people love Path of Exile for some reason, but I am going to boldly and aggressively proclaim that the isometric aRPG is extinct, evolutionarily supplanted by over-the-shoulder Soulslikes and brawlers such as Hades. It existed only as a 1990s stopgap between pen-and-paper RPGs and 3D graphics. Path of Exile and Torchlight can be made interesting through good graphics and animations, engaging progression systems, original ideas, good itemization, and fun worlds, but they will always be fundamentally lacking compared to more expensive, more thoroughly developed action RPGs like Elden Ring.
They can still be enjoyable. They can still be good games, especially for indie studios. But they are not $70 retail releases that take eleven years to develop.
What it was about Diablo 4 that took them so long to get right, I really can't say. Maybe their QA testers kept falling asleep, so they could never get good feedback. I had hopes that at least the animation quality would be high. I find that good animations, such as those in Heroes of the Storm, can make me overlook a lot of flaws in a game. But D4 doesn't have good animations. It barely has any at all. One animation for Core Skills, one for Basic Skills, maybe one or two more for various others. Don't expect your Sorceress to fling her wand in different directions while her hair bounces around and she dances on her tiptoes like Li-Ming. And why doesn't she? I don't know, but it's probably because no one cared. D2: Resurrected does this far better than 4, which is positively shameful.
It should be clear by now that I do not like Diablo 4. I find it mind-mulchingly boring, to such an extent that I don't even enjoy playing it while I listen to podcasts. It saps me of my will to live. I find its MMO elements totally pointless and its levels repetitive and odious to traverse. I hate its wretched dungeons and boring environments, and I can't stand the combat. The lack of any sense of progression drives me insane. It may be the only game in the franchise that I won't be able to finish. It's times like these that I wish I had a score system, because I'd give it a 6/10 just as petty revenge against Blizzard for wasting 40 hours of my life.
And honestly, I'll say it: I even liked Diablo: Immortal more.
By the way: Immortal
It turns out that I did have a phone after all, and I played Immortal for quite a few hours last year. While it was being mercilessly shat on from all corners of the internet, I intended to act the contrarian and upload a positive review to this blog.
This was not because I wanted to be a provocateur, but because I actually kind of liked it. Despite horror stories of how maxing out a single character can cost the player up to $600,000, I played for 30+ hours and never once encountered a microtransaction. I don't mean that I never felt compelled to pay real money: I mean I literally never once encountered a microtransaction, of any kind, ever, or any in-game shop. I don't even know what I would have paid for. It's all endgame shit, I think.
The contrast with 4 in this regard is rather alarming, because I played D4 for twenty seconds before stumbling upon its MTX real-money shop. In other words, Blizzard is greedier than a bunch of ChiComs making a scam Diablo iOS game. Let that sink in.
I played Immortal on my iPad Air 2 and enjoyed it a lot for what it was. I had the flu the week it was released and ended up spending a lot of time with it in bed, feeling like shit. It was the perfect game at the perfect time.
It's true that Immortal is on the shallow side, but it has good animations and art, some fun encounter design, and enough variety in the skill system to be enjoyable without overwhelming the player. I had significantly more fun playing my Wizard in Immortal than I did as a Sorceress in D4.
The game lost me when I reached the late game and the XP-gain rate was cut to one one-millionth of what it had been earlier. There the MMO elements became more prominent, and I can't say I found them very compelling. In fact I found them confusing, and never figured them out.
I haven't felt any compulsion to return to Immortal since putting it down. I never made the conscious decision to quit, which is why I never wrote my review. But I enjoyed it for a week or two, and I'd say it's by far the best aRPG on iOS. And I didn't pay a single dollar for it, either!
So that's the hot take of this semi-review. D4 is boring and overpriced and I don't recommend it to anyone but masochists, but Immortal isn't half bad. Why not check that out instead? Don't you have a phone?