I have a lot to say here. Most of it is positive, but there’s definitely a lot that the devs can improve to make the game better to play. I’m a low vision (nearly blind) user and I find the game fun and engaging. The accessibility features are always on, and they mostly do their jobs to help me play the game proficiently. The screen reader on PS5 mostly does well to read me the information I need to know about loot, stats, NPC characters and more. The map is serviceable in most cases, and the menus are fine to navigate. The sounds that are supposed to play when near loot or healing items are fairly good indicators, and the compass arrow and sound for navigation direction are successful in most areas.
With all of that said, there are several things here that, after two weeks, I can see need improvement in order for a totally blind person to be able to solo content if they wanted to. First, I’ll talk about the menu navigation. Most things read well, but at times the social menu headings don’t want to read when you press the triggers to toggle to them. For example, on PS5 it’ll just say “menu item” instead of “friends list” or “local players”. On the map side of things, the reader does well telling you when you’re on an icon of a waypoint, whisper, or whatever your cursor is on. However, there are times where I will search for whispers and can’t find them on the map because they’re randomly placed by design. I’d like to see another section of quests for these whispers that you can bring up in list form and pin it that way. The same would go for dungeons, town waypoints and other important items that are missing this property at the moment. Finally on the map, the grim favor progress is not read aloud at any point, so I have to look and see how many favors I have. That luxury wouldn’t be there for a totally blind player.
In the gameplay itself there are several things to mention. While the arrow for the compass and the accompanying sounds usually work, there are times like in the desert dust storm mission, the swamp, the lower mine by black lake, or in Hell where the arrow either leads me into a wall, or the sound doesn’t play at all to guide me. Furthermore, dungeons are even worse. They have absolutely no ability to compass pin a location, so there’s no arrow and no navigation sounds for help. I get dungeons are supposed to be more confined, but some of them still have maze-like areas and can be hard to remember where you’ve been at times.
When dealing with items and loot, the audio features are mostly good. However there should be a couple of changes if we want totally blind players to succeed. With the healing potions (and most other things) you have to step on them to collect them. There should be an option to auto collect anything you have room for in your slots, especially healing items, if they’re anywhere on the screen and the range should be fairly large. The game’s reader also doesn’t read the number of heals you have, so I constantly find myself wondering if I have the max number because I use them and pick them up so often. In the heat of so much combat that’s not a good thing. Another thing I see is that the reader will not tell you how many cinders you have for hell tide, and that’s very important since you can get tortured mystery chests with them. One final thing I’ll say about the screen reader in general across all things is that it for some reason reads apostrophes wrong. For example, the reading should sound like this: “Mother’s Chosen” but it instead sounds like: “Mother and apo s Chosen”. This leads to a bit of extra time the reader spends on something, and it’s not much, but when combat is so fast paced and you’re expected to play with no delay in response, it can be all the difference. It also reads quotation marks as “end quot” and it’s just a bit weird and it shouldn’t do that.
One more idea under gameplay is that the reader doesn’t tell you a boss’s health level or even when you’ve reached a break point or stunned them with the stagger bar. If the reader can’t do that, could there at least be ambient sounds for that sort of thing? And speaking of ambient sounds, when you’re asked to find an item or person in a general marked area, there should be a sound that pings slowly and gets faster as you approach your target, seeing how the compass arrow drops off when you hit the quest area. That should also apply to the map. If you could select the type of icon you want to find, a sound could alert you when you’re near one or more of the icon type.
In conclusion, I think Diablo IV has tons of potential and is already a great game, seeing how I’m engaged and I play a lot. However, there are a lot of features within the screen reader and the audio and navigation features that can use serious improvement so that totally blind players can succeed alongside their sighted counterparts. Finding friends and doing content together is always a choice you could make, but I’m also trying to consider what it could be like to have to solo the content since people aren’t always conveniently around, or the blind player isn’t interested in too much of a social experience at the time. In advance, thanks for reading and considering what I wrote here. I know it’s long and some of it is kind of all over the place. I’m just trying to get as much out as I can and provide a perspective on something that doesn’t get talked about enough in the gaming world. Take care and happy slaying!