[Review] Diablo IV Season 5: The Fun is Back

It’s been a while since I last played Diablo IV, taking a break after Season 2 to avoid burnout. This game can really hook you for long periods! As a developer myself, I appreciate the incredible work the dev team has put into this game. I’ll focus on the game itself, breaking it down into three parts: the good, the bad, and the ugly. And remember, this is just my opinion, as The Dude would say. :blush:

I’ve created and played 8 different characters this season, just for the fun of building: 3 melee rogues (frost, poison, and shadow builds), 2 necromancers (summoner and blood necro), 2 barbarians (whirlwind and frenzy), and 1 sorcerer (lightning). They’re all level 100 or nearly there, except for the sorcerer. So, here’s my review.

The Good

  1. Oh boy, oh boy. This season is amazing compared to Seasons 1 and 2. I’m thrilled with the Quality of Life improvements, like fewer enemies with crowd control that freeze you constantly, less deadly poison, and easier-to-kill elites. The gameplay is much better now.

  2. The new loot system is great, with drops more tailored to your class and more frequent unique items. This adds a lot of build diversity, with uniques that increase critical chances, freeze and burn enemies, or cast skills, making the game more fun.

  3. The graphics are astonishing, especially the landscapes. It’s a pleasure to travel on foot just to admire the detailed environments, from shores to deserts to mountains. The animations, particularly in combat and for monsters, are fantastic and give the game an arcade feel.

  4. Helltide events are very fun, especially when playing with others. They’re a great way to gain experience and items, even better than world bosses and legions. The Helltide enemy barometer adds a fun rush, killing several elites at once.

  5. The dog that collects resources is a great feature, and I hope it will be improved to collect Seeds of Hatred, Venous Motes, and Animas as well. The temper manuals are also a great addition, helping to improve and customize gear that can be used by other characters. The stash with more than 4 tabs is an improvement too, though it would be even better if the tabs could be moved.

The Bad
Here some not so good points.

  1. Events, waypoints, and stronghold progress should be shared between characters in the same season. It’s not fun to do the same stronghold 8 times.

  2. Doors should be destroyable. Some dungeons have more doors to open than enemies to kill, breaking the action. It’s not natural for a whirlwind barbarian to stop his rampage to open a small wooden door in a creepy dungeon.

  3. Reaching level 100 should be rewarded. Currently, there’s nothing special at level 100, and you can’t advance in the paragon board anymore. We should get some paragon points after level 100, even just 1 or 2 instead of 4, and some reward (a special skill, unique item, or paragon points).

  4. The Gauntlet should be advertised as a level 123+ event. My level 90 barbarian didn’t survive the first hit. The game is way too easy until you reach the endgame. For example, I was waiting for a World Boss to spawn with other players, but after a server disconnection, I was the only player left. My barbarian killed the World Boss solo in less than 6 minutes. That’s how easy it is now.

  5. When blinded by smoke, we should be able to attack without targeting, hitting enemies with some luck, like in real smoke. The evade animation is too slow. For example, the blood necro aspect that adds evade during mist makes it slower than without evade. There shouldn’t be a first stop step in the evade; it’s meant to save your life, not to make a beautiful jump.

The Ugly
Sorry, dev team, but I have to mention these issues for a thorough review.

  1. The lags: playing solo in dungeons, each time the character collides with a wall, they’re stuck for half a second, making the game unplayable. Why is a strong server connection needed for solo dungeons? During solo events, the game could be played almost like offline, which would be much better. At least during Helltide, there’s not much collision, but in dungeons full of small corridors and doors, it’s quite painful to play.

  2. The collision: not sure if it’s due to the lags mentioned above, but each time the character hits a wall, they’re stopped for half a second. Continuous movement would be much better than a full stop.

That’s all. I hope there will be more improvements in future patches and seasons. Keep up the good work, Blizzard. I think I’ll take a break now, as I’m almost at burnout. See you in two seasons!

Thanks for reading :slight_smile:

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Didn’t read but glad you are happy, enjoy it for the both of us.

My Experience has been horrible, but then again I’m a Shred Druid, go figure.

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Yep, I skip the Druid this season, maybe a next time.

yuck 20 characters because I can not find 1

Do you mean “yuck” like in “yuck yuck”, or “yuck” like in “hell yuck”?

I find this whole season and Horde to be pretty boring and checked out in the first week. This game needs to do better in allowing more builds with more uniques that open that up, and better paragon board/glyph options.

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Glad you are having fun. It gos pretty good last season with the loot rework and much of those QOL changes. This season is an extension of S4 with hordes being added and some decent items added plus a round of unique items reworked to being them closer inline with tempered items.

On the whole the game is much better with a few points of friction still to iron out ahead of the expansion. There are big changes and new systems being talked about do the expansion, some we know about, others still waiting confirmation, but it looks mostly OK. I do t think the devs want to rock to boat too hard after a couple rocky seasons, but we likely won’t know much u til we get our hands on the DLC.

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In previous seasons, your barbarian would have killed the world boss solo in 6 seconds. :smile:

Glad you’re having fun! And there are good Druid builds out there. Landslide with the new Basalisk staff is pretty solid. Also did an eternal Cataclysm build that fun, but relies a bit too much on burst damage.

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