I played both Beta weekends on a PS5, World Tier II, using a sorcerer, necromancer, rogue, and druid. I completed the available campaign and levelled everyone to 25. Except the druid, who I only got to level 7.
For the most part, I enjoyed the game (server issues aside, since that isn’t relevant to the game itself):
- It was enough like Diablo 3 to feel familiar and catch my interest, yet different enough to feel new and KEEP my interest.
- I’m really looking forward to the final release so I can finish the story and see the end-game content, and put some real effort into builds.
- I like that I can readily see what I’m losing by equipping a certain piece of gear.
There were some things I didn’t like, however:
- The character customization is so awful, I’d really rather it weren’t even there. I play video games as an escape mechanism, and one of the biggest things that contributes to successful escape is identifying with my character. I’ll be honest – every single character body style and face option was NOT what meets my idea of what these fantasy characters should look like, and I would have been happier if there were no choice at all, like in Diablo III. At the VERY LEAST, every body style and face option should have been available to every class. There can’t be a slender druid? Or a beefy sorcerer? Big fail here, guys. Also, the hair styles (especially the facial hair) is 1990’s quality. They. Look. Awful.
- This might be specific to console, I can’t speak to the PC experience. But when I go into view/select my abilities, I get a small panel that takes up less than half the screen, making it difficult to get an overview of what the character can do and plan out how I want to advance my skills. I know that will be somewhat alleviated as I become more familiar with the abilities. However, when I’m viewing my abilities, I can’t imagine I’d need to view anything else at the same time. So I would suggest using the entire screen, and switching from a vertically laid out tree to a horizontal one, so that we can see more of what’s there.
- Maybe there’s something built in for World Tier 1 players, but the upgrading of items (utilizing the Occultist, not the Blacksmith) could use some more explanation, I think. It’s not clear what the purpose is, I fear this might be especially true for new players.
- Inventory/gear – I found myself really missing the green/red indicator from Diablo 3 that let me know if something I picked up was higher stats than what I have equipped. Also, the description flyout when looking at an item in my inventory almost always covers my attack and defense stats, making it difficult to see how the piece I’m looking at changes them when I switch items around. This is especially true if my inventory is full and there is no ‘blank spot’ to go to so the item preview flyout goes away.