After a disappointing, buggy, and underwhelming PTR, I wasn’t hyped about S9 at all, especially with nerfs to many builds. However I just spent 3 days in S9 and I must hand it to Blizzard, they cooked this time around. The new overhauled NMD system is not the slow, backtracking, boring old NMD from yesteryear. This new NMD is bonkers, it’s crazy, there’s a whole not of randomness chaos, challenge, surprise, and jaw dropping action going in this new system. Where to begin?
First there were a ton, ton more affixes added to NMDs that weren’t in the patch notes. There are also other random surprises added; not mentioned in the patch notes. The affixes change in each ‘Esc’ tier randomly and the final Tier where we fight Astaroth has it’s own boss specific and loot specific affixes that make the fight more rewarding and challenging. One such affix name was very vague, so I opened the menu to see what it did exactly and all it said was “Uh oh! Something doesn’t feel right about this place…” No spoilers!
The Strongrooms feel improved on 1,000% from the PTR, they feel more natural, intuitive and rewarding. There are a lot of mechanics to it that I won’t go into detail. But in the PTR the assets were copy/paste from the base game but they redesigned the monster to be like mummies alluding to Tal Rasha’s tomb from d2 Act 2. The entire dungeon within a dungeon feels like an ancient Egyptian crypt as suppose to the bland old cave from the PTR. The timed event feels natural and rewarding. It doesn’t ruin the flow of the game but instead enhances the experience of the NMDs.
Using group finder to party with 4 players to run the escalating NMD in T4 was a very fun and addicting experience. It’s not the kind of ARPG fun that you’d expect from sitting in town and crafting with the slot machine all day, No! This is the moment to moment fun that feels addicting, challenging and engaging purely from gameplay/combat perspective that really emphasizes the A in ARPG. Pairing this system with a meta progression system in the expansion would feel really nice. But with the added Affixes to Sigils, NMDs finally, actually feel like a rewarding, viable, worth while form of content to obtain anything in the game you’d be after. D4 is turning into a ‘play it the way you want to’ type of game.
When I made my fresh character at the start, I was level one in an open world, I could go anywhere and level/gear my character how I wanted. I wasn’t bottle necked through a mandatory, linear campaign that progresses my character on rails. It was the smoothest ARPG leveling experience in my 18 years of playing ARPGs. Apart from maybe lag spikes, I had no major issues with bugs once I was able to update my driver, the lag went away.
Some might complain about Astaroth being a “used asset” -Hawg, from the campaign. The fallacy of that argument was that Astaroth was an amazing boss fight, arguable the most memorable boss fight from the campaign and it was a shame that we didn’t get to fight him again in the endgame. All we had in NMDs were the monster family themed mini bosses like Tomb Lord and Blood Bishop (yuck), but Blizzard didn’t just bring back an iconic boss from the campaign and Copy/Paste him into the endgame like GGG does, No! They redid the entire Mechanics of the fight, plus the fight has zero invulnerability phases. It’s also a very challenging fight but it feels very fair, IMO it’s the best fight in the entire endgame. The mechanics are that interesting. In addition to that, whatever affixes you end up with might change the fight whether it’s a random Butcher joining in on the fun (T4) or meteorites raining from the sky.
Then players complain about the seasonal powers: I am complaining that these powers aren’t a permanent addition to the game. This season’s powers are the deepest form of power customization we have had yet, and in addition to that the jewels add a nice touch of extra customization.
I highly recommend Season 9. Season 9 did to NMDs what Season 4 did to Helltides. If Blizzard can deliver on remaking a terrible endgame system into a fun and addicting dungeon crawl then I am hyped for season 10. I can’t wait to see what they have been cooking for Inferno Hordes. Inferno Hordes are already one of the best designed game modes so it would be interesting to see where they take it. Hats of to Blizzard this time. Season 9 is actually a win despite my Deep worries that this season would have been a pass. I guess I will stick around and play it longer than the original 2 weeks I intended.