Hi everyone,
I know this game is pretty polarizing right now. I am going to attempt to give my impartial thoughts.
First we’ll start with pros:
- The game plays much better than d3. It feels a bit slower and attacks feel heavy. No arcade gauntlet legends, but we’re not in end game.
- Music and atmosphere are very good. Closer to the gritty feel of the first 2 installments.
- Storytelling feels miles ahead of d3, but some of the dialogue still feels a little cheesy, and dramatic.
- Character creation options are pretty good, but unfortunately they are probably withholding more to sell on the store.
- Health checkponts for potions on bosses feels good.
Some of these might be nitpicky, but here’s some cons:
- UI is not good. Screen feels cluttered at times with pop ups. Things are not placed in intuitive places. Font style and colors are all over the place. Minimap probably need an overlay option. The skill tree ui is oddly spaced with zoom features to make it seem bigger than it actually is. Sadly there’s almost no redeeming features in the UI.
- Skill tree feels underwhelming. I think this could be fixed with extra enhancement nods after learning the skill.
- Items feel off and somewhat bland and drop rates on rares and legendaries are way too high at 25. A lot of affixes are % damage rather than flat damage. I feel like this was done intentionally to not have fine tune progression and scaling. Just slap a % on it and done. Don’t really have a problem with the item power level. Most casuals will just want to choose green arrow up upgrades and min maxees will choose specific stats regardless of item power level.
- Zone scaling up to your level feels horrible and makes you question why leveling even exists. Arpgs typically don’t do this. I think some of the fun is spending time farming and leveling to overpower content. 1 to 50 is just going to be a tutorial i guess.
- Cellars feel too repetitive. Atleast rotate the tileset to make it feel a little different. Dungeons feel decent, but not perfect. The Dungeons typically have the big circle boss room at the top. Please add more variety.
- The zones are not as big as they appear. They are pretty much exclusively winding linear pathways without much open space. I know this will not be changed at this point.
- I hate to say this, but Diablo 4 doesn’t really feel like a Diablo game. It feels like an MMO. It’s not necessarily a bad thing… it’s just different.
Overall I think the game plays well and is fun, but it feels somewhat shallow and bland. I’m not sure how interesting it will be to flesh out a character beyond 50. Only time will tell. If anybody has anything to add feel free! Thanks!