Prefacing this post, I’ll just say that I’m not Kripparrian, Rhykker, Bloodshedd or any of these other streamers playing Diablo for a living who are probably way more knowledgeable about ARPGs than I am. With that being said, these beta thoughts/impressions are from my own perspective as someone who’s 31 year old male, been a gamer for decades in various genres and played Diablo 3 quite a bit. Now a days I’d consider myself a casual enjoyer of games and have put my hardcore days behind me. I feel players feedback should be valued no matter your skill level. Here we go.
GENERAL IMPRESSIONS
I grew up playing the old Gauntlet games and so when I learned about Diablo, I first got into it in Diablo 3 and was hooked!
Given the obligatory “this is a beta” clause when it comes to reviews, I do believe that D4 will be a good game with some further polish. There were a lot of things that felt great and some other things that felt pretty lackluster if I’m being honest. I’ll touch up more on that later in this post.
Also I’ll get this out of the way now, but I don’t like any of the playable classes. This is coming someone who played Monk and Crusader in D3
THE GOOD
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The graphics are amazing, way better than I thought they’d be. The Twitch/YouTube streams don’t do it justice at all. Only nitpick is that I wish there was RTX available.
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Gameplay felt smooth and responsive.
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Others might not like this but I love the open world aspect. You can go anywhere you want and and every zone matters.
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Bosses seem challenging and that’s a good thing. The worst thing in a world is a boss you can just AFK on like D3 rift bosses.
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Gold and potions felt meaningful again.
THE BAD
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The UI was dreadful. When trying to compare items I couldn’t properly understand what’s changing at all. This wasn’t an issue in D3. I also hated how you couldn’t tab back to the general world map when in a dungeon.
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Playing melee wasn’t enjoyable. I went into D4 thinking I would want to play melee since that’s what I usually play in most games. Unfortunately, I found the most fun playing a ranged Necro and Rogue which shouldn’t happen. The game isn’t melee friendly at all.
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Skills/abilities feel lackluster. When I was going through the trees in each class, there were just so many options that didn’t feel good or worth taking which sucks. Every time you get a skill point, you should feel excited but I never did. Even once I had enough points to unlock a new ability, the new abilities were…meh. Maybe the Paragon boards will alleviate this, but again, we have no idea and so I’m just going off what we have.
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Mob density was too low in beta. There were times I could walk around for minutes at a time without encountering a single monster. Even in dungeons, they didn’t feel like anything was in them. More shrines, more mobs, more chests please. More surprises like butcher than just appear out of nowhere.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Blizzard needs to get a holy class in the game asap. I’m really shocked that the necro made it in considering they were just the last DLC class in D3.
I think with the right adjustments D4 will be a good game to play in the long run, but then again I’m also a player who enjoys direction. Logging into the end game at level 50/100, just running around doing random stuff instead of just rifts all the time will be something to get used to.
Lastly, take a second look at skills. I really miss the Rune system where I could customize skills with the different elements. I want skills to feel more exciting to use. Things like decrepify and + 3% to overpower damage ain’t doing it for me.
Again…these are experiences based on playing one act on softcore at level 25. The game could take a complete 180 at max level, who knows.