I’d like to preface this by saying that I’m not a Diablo veteran. I played Diablo 3 briefly, got bored and quit the game. This one was able to hold my attention a lot longer, but to be fair the time limit of the Beta might be a good incentive.
Now, some of the good:
- The story being presented here is fantastic. I was reading the extra tidbits of info found in the levels just to get more background lore, for example the subtle implications about the angels and demons not being what they initially seem. And I really appreciate that these are small, instead of a usual exposure dump. The overall darkness of the world is great.
- Graphics are incredible. While my own taste is more towards stylization, this is doing so well that I am convinced regardless. The amount of set dressing done is staggering.
- Voice acting is very good.
General issues:
- World tier 1 was comically easy. This could be fine for story-only players, but the game was not clear that’s what it’s intended for, and presents it as the default option. I have little Diablo experience, so I picked as a recommended non-veteran option, but it was so easy I got annoyed. The default difficulty should be 2.
- There were a lot of disconnects and lag. The rubber banding of my characters was intense. And sometimes even the interface lagged, to the point where sometimes an input never got through. This I presume is a Beta thing, but I suppose it should be included in feedback regardless.
- The way the game loads levels and areas is kind of strange. Usually, the speed is determined by HDD/SSD choice, but in this case it seemed to be RAM? I installed on HDD and have 32 RAM, while the person I played with had SSD and 16 RAM. We have very similar videocards and processors btw. So usually in this situation, I would expect my own game to load slow, but it was the other person having ridiculous loading times. He checked the load and his RAM usage was to the max all the time. While it’s good that the game runs well on my HDD, I do think this load should be distributed evenly, or dynamically, between the disk and RAM, because having 32 RAM is a crazy high requirement.
- First thing I tried when I opened the game was WASD controls. I KNOW I KNOW the Diablo games and the community are hellbent on mouse movement, and that’s fine, but I’d like WASD to be an option because that’s how I play every other game. Several friends I played with also were annoyed WASD wasn’t an option and switched to controller. The thing is, controller support already works great, so transplanting that to WASD should not be a big deal. Please make it an option. There’s plenty similar games who have this.
- There was too much loot. I was constantly clogged up with all the stuff I vacuumed up, and I felt like I had to repeatedly go back to town to get rid of stuff, which hampered free exploration of the world. Also, when opening chests, the loot sprays out like it’s a mobile game, and that felt extremely jarring with the dark and serious atmosphere of the game. It just didn’t look like it belonged when it happened in the first dungeon.
- There were unexpected difficulty spikes. The main story stuff was easy, and the open level stuff was ok, but sometimes I would come across a random stack of enemies and it would kill me in 2 hits.
- The first area has a lot of different enemies there that make no logical sense and are too epic too quickly. This should be a slow-burn game, starting off with spiders and wolves. It does do that, but also throws in these large treants, and some goat demons and stuff, but they sort of come out of nowhere, making it seem like the first region is just constantly infested with crazy demons and no farming at all could take place and humanity would be dead in just weeks.
Smaller issues, potential bugs:
- The bear form is wrong. I repeat, THE BEAR FORM IS WRONG. In all the marketing materials showing the druid turn into the werebear, the bear looks very close to a normal bear, just large and angry. I saw it and chose to try to druid because of it, but the moment I chose the skill and tried it, I was super disappointed with the bear form. It now looks diseased and naked. I see how it is closer to the wolf form, so maybe that’s why it was changed, for a smoother transition, but I really don’t like it visually at all, and neither did my friends I played with (they said ‘ew’ when they saw it, sorry). The previous marketing material bear fits way more to the fantasy of the bear shapeshift because it looks like a proper bear, while the werewolf transform makes sense to be mangy because that’s a common depiction of a werewolf. Please bring back old bear.
- The wolf summons rotate/wiggle weird when standing on uneven ground. Their animation seems to play fine, but it seems like the root of the wolf is being bobbed back and forth, rhythmically.
- The wolf summon pounce on the target ability has very weak impact. They just sort of jump and awkwardly land. I want a bite or scratch effect/noise.
- The werewolf basic attack and the first energy-consuming ability, have way too similar animations. I could barely tell them apart, making it difficult to see if the ability was being responsive.
- I got the raven summon, and the description said that there would be a raven flying above me and attacking every 5 seconds, but I got no raven. The active ability worked, but just the passive seemed to be missing.
- There are some people on this forum disliking the druid form because of its size, I have to disagree and say I do like it, it’s more interesting than everyone looking the same. And it fits the bear transformation. BUT, I do find the available faces unsatisfactory. All of the faces have a very worn look, while I’d like an additional option that is smoother and younger looking. The other classes can be anywhere between pristine and battle-worn, the druid options were only battle-worn and quite dwarf-like. I had an established character of mine that I wanted to be a druid in the game, but I could not make the look I wanted.
Cheers, hope this helps with the development.