I want to preface this by saying that the approach will be a bit different than usual. I usually see D2 fans bashing the game for being bad and while thats somewhat correct from their perspective, we are way beyond the point of comparing things to diablo 2.
D2 is an old and outdated game, it doesn’t sell. Yes D2R sold a lot of copies to boomers who wanted that nostalgia hit with updated graphics and some well deserved QoL, but as a brand new game within the 2023 games industry, its not good and wouldn’t be as popular. Many of its outdated designs request things that players are simply not interested in doing anymore, and the dopamine hits are too few and far inbetween to be engaging. You may say that this is a depressing thing to say about the average player but its true nonetheless. The intent here is to have a more open minded approach, seeing the game in a vacuum instead of comparing it to some older version, unless they are trying to do the same thing.
I played around 20 hours during free beta test and played Necromancer the entire time.
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Character creation
Its decent, exacly what i was expecting from a dungeon crawler ARPG. The main emphasis on visuals will come from your amazing looking gear, so it doesn’t matter much besides base model shape and glance value. One annoying thing is that there were roughly 10-15 hair options for my character, but only 2 or 3 were “normal”, the rest were very different and quirky. It definitely should have more basic hair types. One really interesting aspect is how Druid’s hair color changes your werebear transformation fur color, quite nice detail. -
Exploration
Holy cow, the map is huge! I can see that they are very adamant in making regions relevant for a long time, while this is a serious design issue to many games. You usually will outlevel a region and never come back, but here thanks to dynamic level scaling and a bunch of quests/dungeons/collectibles you’ll have a good time exploring even after reaching later parts of the game. I can see this being an improved version of Lost ark horizontal content, especially with the altars and sidequests. The difference here is that thanks to level scaling, you have a nice time killing mobs and each content is quite simple, doesn’t require ludicrous tasks that make you question if you are a clown for doing it. Exploring on foot wasn’t all that bad, aside from a few zones where there were no teleports near the place i wanted to reach. But i can see mounts from act 2 onwards making this much smoother. Events (the orange circles) are always fun to engage with in exchange of some Oboli, although some variety will be needed. I think that events should change every time they are completed, instead of being the same in their respective places (i’m pretty sure i got the same event every time i crossed a certain low level zone, that one where you prevent mobs from reaching a demon at the center)
For links just remove the between https, can’t post links here
h ttps://imgur.com/a/Gc6EkM.r
Horizontal content in a beta test? That will be wiped? Yes i’m, a clown 
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Armor design
I can’t describe how excited i was with the armor transmog system. You see, D3 had the same system and it was amazing. So many cool options and you could make character change wildy from just their armor pieces. It was very fun to have a “themed” transmog preset for each build that also somewhat represented what type of character that was. Seeing the exact same system in D4 was both relieving and very satisfying. I have played path of exile, which is notorious for making base armors look as hideous as possible just to push you into buying overpriced MTX. While its fair to want people to give you money with skins (i wish it wasn’t, but thats the current world we live in), PoE’s approach feels scummy. Just look at this:
h ttps://imgur.com/a/RV0NNyF
h ttps://imgur.com/a/SnqJCK.Z
h ttps://imgur.com/a/DgxpEd.r
This is all for free, with the base game you bought. It almost feels like i’m getting back to the old ways when you earned badass cosmetics instead of unlocking them with your wallet. Yes, i’m completely aware that D4 will sell skins, but as long as they keep pumping badass base armors like these, i can’t really complain. And from what i’ve seen, the armor pieces i’ve unlocked aren’t even 10% of all the options avaible (based on the amount of locked things). Very excited to see the rest.
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Progression
Its very hard to evaluate progression due to the nature of this beta. We ended up ultra minmaxing level 25 characters, which is in no way comparable to what we’ll do at launch, rushing to the endgame. Even if i just did the exact same thing i did at beta, i’d by many levels higher and probably much stronger from random gear drops (while exploring and unlocking horizontal stuff). So its fair to say that whathever build you managed to assemble while playing, will not be a thing at launch that early, especialyl when needing some build defining legendaries.
I like the legendary effect system, class legendaries feel varied and unique for each build. Some are less useful or weaker than others yes, but they are there. Devs can easily make underperforming / unpopular things better aswell. I don’t know if its a level 25 gear issue or it will be prevalent the entire game, but the affix pool felt a bit lackluster. I don’t like “damage against close/distant enemies” mods, or “damage against stunned/slowed/vulnerable” enemies. They impose a certain condition that is not always feasible, and while most builds can fulfill that condition usually, it feels a bit restrictive and a wasted mod for the rest. There is also a serious lack of information, which gives me path of exile vibes. For instance i was trying to stack +1 to corpse skills/corpse explotion), and would constantly get +1 to corpse tendrils instead. I’ve droped more than 10 boots with that affix. Is it even possible to get explosion on boots? I have no way of knowing. Given that they belong to different trees, i assume that each armor piece is limited to different trees and thats why i never seen any, but a codex of sorts or being able to see possible rolls (through the stats rerolls system, which D3 had!) would solve the issue entirely. I need to know what type of gear i can get, if that makes sense.
I also heard that gear will have hidden “tiers” (sacred, ascended) and that you’ll have to farm aspects for each new tier of gear. i’m not very fond of that, but won’t elaborate further since it was not a thing during our limited beta test.
I’d also like to mention that you cannot retrieve aspects that were previously added to an item, so you’ll have to drop it again if you get better gear. Thats very annoying, especially when knowing that legendary drop rates will be much lower at launch. Imagine getting an awesome rare with all the stats you need, but having to stash it away for an indetermined amount of time cause your current piece holds some important legendary effect…that causes a negative feeling that has to be avoided, its not good design. -
Builds
I’ll only talk about necro. Its good. Firework build is hella fun and it has its own issues, such as poor corpse generation if your minions die too fast (hello butcher), but aside from that its absolutely broken. Corpse explosion is a very hard skill to balance since it scales directly with mob density, and it can go from ungodly broken to complety trash depending on the type of encounter. Overall very fun, especially for events and speed farming. I’ve also tried a bit of pure summoner with iron maiden, but mobs seemed to attack too slowly to hurt themselves at a fast enough pace. but then again, my reference of “good” was the firework build, so it could be very well decent and just not better than a broken build. Aside from these two, there were also a lot of other interesting legendary aspects for other skills, which i didn’t get to test properly yet. The skill tree has a good amount of skill options, however runes for each skill are limited by two usually, which is not enough. Most of the time there will be one clear better option aswell. Lastly, we need more skill slots! 6 is not enough! -
Dungeons
They look good, and linear ones are very smooth for speed farming, but whathever asks you to do specific things like gathering a key or breaking 4 pillars (on a non linear map) is boring. This game is all about dumb fun, where you turn your brain off and go monke on a bunch of mobs. why am i stopping this gameplay to carefully look at my map and try to find the missing pillar or key? Please, no. Even if you split party members to achieve this faster, you’ll miss gear drops from mobs that other players kill, which isn’t good either. More monke gameplay, less things that break your flow. I don’t find the tilesets to be too repetitive, or rather don’t really mind it. Just make them smooth. -
Bosses
I came from lost ark, where raids require players to perform various tasks in order to survive. Most of the content won’t simply let you deal absurd damage and negate most of the fight. Compared to that, here you can just ignore whathever the boss is doing and just take it down quickly. With enough damage and sustain every fight turns the same, you won’t have to worry about anything. While i don’t expect a full fledged raid on every boss, i expect them to last more time and provide more attacks that need to be avoided. This could very well be another level 25 beta minmax issue.
Conclusion
I had a fun time, its pretty clear. I can see myself playing it for a very long time, if things stay in a similar way at the endgame. It feels like an improved version of diablo 3 that also benefits from some of the positive sides of lost ark, while trying to keep you engaged all the time. I can’t really tell if it will die down like diablo 3 or if it will have more engaging endgame systems, but its definitely a decent one time experience so far. Would i pay $70 for just what i had this weekend? No. $70 is a lot of money and there needs to be more content. Do i think that i’ll get my $70 worth at launch? Absolutely.