Hey, Red Team I recently had the opportunity to play Diablo 4 and I gotta say, I really enjoyed it! So I wanted to share what I thought about it, especially coming from someone who is not a fan of Diablo. This is to mean, I never touched a Diablo game until @AFKG-Curtis forced me to play Diablo 3 with him. Then when we tried to go back and play Diablo 2, I honestly hated it and refunded the game pretty much after one session.
My biggest concern when reading up about Diablo 4 was simple: Would it be more like Diablo 3, or Diablo 2? Well, I'm happy to say, after playing the BETA, it is more in line with Diablo 3 - but definitely with improvements both visually and in gameplay.
As a Barbarian, I got to level 25 and completed the 1st Act. The core Barbarian meat shield and spin-to-win tactics were very apparent in the BETA, and for some people like myself, this was great. I found the new weapon switching and weapon mastery system to be an interesting and unique experience for the Barbarian - however, I did feel that with 2x 2H weapon slots and 2x 1H weapon slots, I didn't care which weapon was assigned to which skill (you can manually assign or have the game pick the best). So I never felt like my choices mattered as to what I slotted in, if it had better stats - it went in. However, with legendaries and set pieces down the road, this might change.
Now, let's talk about what I really enjoyed in Diablo 4:
- The game was "darker" and more focused on exploration and customization compared to Diablo 3. This added an element of immersion and made the game feel more engaging.
- I really enjoyed how there were a lot of open-world events to experience, especially with the feeling that this game was supposed to be more social and cooperative. Rewarding people for completing events together and even more so for joining up. Also I tried to take on a stronghold by myself, bad move.
- Adding the replayable dungeons was cool. Not only as a fun way to earn aspects for your classes but to have varied and challenging content. For example, adding in RNG to encounter bosses like the Butcher in a dungeon made it more exciting.
- I enjoyed the addition of the dash system; lots of enemies had skill-based attacks that you could mitigate through a smart dash.
- Completing Act 1, I never felt that anything was too repetitive, and there was enough variety to keep me interested. I also enjoyed the classification of Core Quests, Story Quests, and Side Quests. It made the game very non-linear.
- Treasure Goblins are back, which means more loot!
- The world boss was a lot of fun, and definitely something unique for Diablo! I did feel though that it was just a DPS challenge. Sure there were opportunities to avoid attacks, but at the end of the day, you were just hoping to DPS as much as you could to beat the timer and die only enough times that people would not get bored of resing you.
However, there were a few things that I didn't enjoy as much:
- Character strength, at least from what I noticed in the Barbarian, is extremely dependent on gear. It didn't matter how many points I put into certain skills - I felt like it didn't make a huge change.
- The traverse system is just a fun gimmick in my opinion, it doesn't add anything of value - but I don't mind it being there.
- The map was really large, and it took a long time to get to where I needed to go. Especially with quests being all over the place, I felt like I spent a lot of time just moving.
Overall, I had a great time playing Diablo 4. The game has a lot of potential, and I'm looking forward to exploring more of what it has to offer.
The BETA at least for me was enough to make me consider preordering it and adding it to my play roster when June comes around.
If you played the BETA, would love to know your thoughts!
1 Solution
With @AFKG-Curtis on board, we just need to convince @Amber_AMD or @Sam_AMD to help us slay the demons of hell.
❤️
