I’ve been looking forward to Diablo IV for a while, and was pretty excited to play the Beta. Now that I’ve played it, I feel pretty… whelmed. Not particularly overwhelmed or underwhelmed, just sorta lukewarm. I think it’ll be fun to play with a group of friends, however, there are also some flaws, as I’m sure many people are shouting about at the moment.
The UI needs to be improved. I’m sure it’s being worked on, but it’s worth repeating. The font choice for items on the ground is… not good, it doesn’t fit the tone of the game. Also, the subtitles for at least the opening cinematic are not timed correctly, which is very distracting.
The game has a number of mechanics that it just never really explains. You can get gear with thorns… okay, but what does that mean? You can also get gear with effects that improve your thorns, but it still doesn’t say what that means, or how thorns work. Another one was lucky strike, there is a lot of stuff that uses or improves your lucky strike, but the game, as far as I could tell, never tells you what lucky strike is, or what your chance of a lucky strike is.
In any game with a character creator I tend to spend far to long trying to make my character look just right, I care a lot about it. Something I really like in Diablo IV is that each class has a unique body type, and that there’s a large number of different body types between all the classes. It gives each class a unique silhouette, and when combined with unique armor for each class, really helps create a distinctive look for each class. However, there are not quite enough options available for character customization, especially for faces. Pretty much all the female faces are on the smooth, elegant, ‘pretty’ side, while all the male faces are lined, weathered, rough, and wrinkled, I think this is most clear on the necromancer, where the male faces are all wrinkled and guant, the female faces are all smooth and soft. Give us some options for ‘tough’ looking female characters, and please, give us some options for smooth ‘pretty’ faced men. I love the trope of the young character who is full of hope in spite of the dark world around them, but all of the male faces instead fulfil the fantasy of the tough, weathered, man.
Anyway, moving on from character creation to character customizations through builds. One thing that’s a bit off to me is the balance between skills and weapons. For one, it feels incongruent to have legendary weapons that effect certain skills drop and then have to pay gold to change up your skills so you can try out using the really cool weapon that just dropped. It would be nice to either not have legendary weapons that effect only one skill, or allow people to respec without paying a gold cost.
I also don’t love how most skill upgrades are handled, the skill now has a percent chance of doing X. I would love to see skill upgrades that change the skill in more interesting ways, for example, the upgrade to lightning javelin that increases the power for each crackling energy you pick up. That creates interesting gameplay. Either make the thing happen every time (no percent chance that it might happen) or give me a way to make it happen. It would also be great for skill visuals to change depending on which branch of upgrade you choose.
The last thing before moving on to the positive stuff, the druid didn’t feel good to play up to level 20. I struggled and was not able to defeat bosses I was able to get through without too much effort as a sorcerer. I think the Druids early game needs some tuning up, 'cause it felt great to play as a sorcerer, but the druid just felt frustrating.
There were some pretty promising things that I noticed in the beta. The combat, for the most part, felt fun. Especially when you had a more mobile character, but even on less mobile ones, being able to dodge helped. The pace of combat was generally good, there were a few times when I waited around before engaging so my cooldowns could come back, which isn’t the most interesting gameplay, but while in gameplay, it felt good.
Enemy design made for fun encounters. The enemies designed with tells before powerful attacks, like the vampires with the sword lunge, meant you had to remain mobile, or at least aware of the enemies around you, and be ready to dodge. The bosses were good, except the fact that I fought the same boss at the end of almost every dungeon I completed, which wouldn’t be a huge deal if I knew the boss before hand and there was some accessible lore as to why the same boss was in these handful of dungeons.
The visuals were good, especially areas with ‘lookout’ points. I found myself looking forward to those. The art direction of the world is great, even just this one zone we’ve seen feels dark and moody, but beautiful in it’s own twisted way. I loved when I got into a dungeon and it was using visuals I hadn’t seen before, and I look forward to exploring around the world.
The random events that you could run into while moving about the world were fun, but I wish there was a bit more to them. Maybe a chain of events that could lead to the chance to get unique item spawns, depending on the event. Or, if the events in an area all lead up to something, like after X number of events are completed a large, area covering event takes place, and you could see how many more need to be completed. Either way, they were a fun diversion while wandering the world, I just wonder if they’ll be interesting once you’re reaching late game and don’t need the experience anymore.
I like how the story is being told so far. I am interested in seeing where it goes, but it’s hard to say much when we’ve only seen a small part of it.
Anyway, I am not completely sold on the game yet, but I am interested to see where it ends up. Hopefully some of the stuff can be fixed for launch, 'cause I think there’s potential for a really good game here. (sorry for being long and a bit ramble-y)