If you don't want to read through my (probably longer) review of the game here are the various points narrowed down to numbers:
Story: 4/10 Gameplay: 6/10 User Interface: 5/10 Visuals: 7/10 Sound: 7/10 Items & Loot: 2/10 World: 5/10 Dungeons: 4/10
Diablo 4 was released less than a year ago for a premium price. I used the chance to play it in March 2023 during the open beta and was not impressed and therefore refused to buy it at that price. Now that the game was added to the Microsoft Gamepass which you can try out during the first month for 1 Euro I though I could spend that much to give it another chance and as you can see with the numbers it didn't turn out that well.
My goal was somewhat to go through the various acts and finish them one by one in order focusing on side missions first before completing the main story line and hopefully getting a somewhat complete picture of story and lore in the game.
Unfortunately most of the side missions early on already are so benign in terms of story and repetitive in nature that I grew tired of them quickly. It's just filler that doesn't really add much to the main story. Also I reached level 50 halfway through act 2 which is somewhat the barrier of what enemies will reach while you're playing through the main campaign on difficulty 1 or 2. Higher difficulties with higher enemy levels and better items only unlock once you complete the campaign (or skip it through the menu) and complete a specific dungeon. I had somewhat useful equipment to make my build work by towards the end of act 1 and afterwards for the next 20+ hours while I focused on completing the campaign barely got any upgrades for my character.
Here is already the main problem with the game. The current item system is awful. It feels like I'm digging through piles of trash to find something that is not complete garbage. Once I have a build completed with a couple of items that actually have somewhat useful stats on them (somewhere around level 30) and usable legendary bonuses I'm basically stuck with these items for ages because 99.9999% of what I find is useless and just makes it frustrating to even spend time looking at the inventory. I started collecting legendary items (usually 3-4 per full inventory from level 40 onward) and just put them into my storage after looking at them initially and rating them as useless. I stored them just in case I might need the legendary bonus to transfer it to rare items with better stats. It some point I filled my storage and required crafting items from dismantling legendary items to upgrade others or transfer legendary aspects to them. Just looking through these items to decide what should go into the shredder was giving me a headache because I basically wanted shred everything and not even look at the items with these completely goofy stats on them. It's like imagine pulling a slot machine in a casino and every wheel has hundreds of completely randomized stat types and numbers on them and out of a thousand times you pull the level you're not even winning a single cent. That's how D4 feels. You're just picking up turd after turd.
Then you have the main story which early on sets some things up where you think they could be cool. You have the father of the world, you're traveling through - the angel Inarius who hates his former lover Lilith who is the mother of that world. He's being set up as arrogant and pretty vile hidden behind an angelic facade protected by a fanatic religious cult who worships him. All that happens in the first act. What are they doing with it in the story? Nothing really. The character ends up being completely wasted and just killed off in a video sequence. It looks pretty but is completely wasting the character that could be turned into a nice boss battle. His worshippers as well are mostly ignored during the later parts of the story and are also just killed off in some video sequences and minor battles.
In terms of characters as well there are to many minor ones that are useless within the story but get unnecessary screentime to get an introduction and after they've fulfilled some minor task they just get thrown to the side never to be seen again or simply killed off. In addition the main side characters that are supposed to lead you through the narrative area also mostly either useless or are handled poorly. Donan who is a pretty important character through various sections of the story towards the end gets killed off in an absolutely hilariously bad way. It was so obvious at that point that they only did it because they didn't have any further use for him and wanted to turn his funeral into some kind of emotional moment. But it was such a stupid meaningless death that nothing afterwards related to him could be taken seriously.
The girl Neyrelle who is introduced in the first act has basically nothing to do after her initial part outside of yelling at some of the other characters about not being a child and then setting up the expansion. If she wasn't in the story nothing would be lost and her parts could've been easily replaced with other characters. Lorath is the only character that I somewhat had sympathy for but even he couldn't save the story overall. The antagonists also after getting a strong start ended on extremely weak notes. Elias turned out to be more of cockroach than a serious threat. You kill him various times (easily) but he just doesn't die and the killing blow then is being done by another character in a video sequence.
Lilith gets a single two-stage fight that also is the only remotely interesting boss I've seen throughout the campaign btw. And then just dies without having to do any extra steps. If anyone remembers there was a whole thing about prime evils not actually dying in the previous games but having to be captured into soul stones to guard them and just hope you can keep them away for a while until they break free again. This also mentioned various times here related to Diablo, Mephisto and Baal. Lilith on the other hand? Apparently she can easily be killed by a mere mortal that my character is supposed to be. That makes her a less threatening antagonist than the ones from the previous game.
Anyway the game has very lacking story.
When I look at the various features outside of that which are supposed to keep you playing it's just a bunch of check boxes to go through. The open world has similar issues compared to other open world games. It's just a large map where you're supposed to run to the "unexplored" sections to find mostly useless stuff and fill some statistics. There's a bunch of repeatable events at every corner to farm items to then farm more items which though then goes back to the initial problem with awful itemizations...
Most people will likely just look for guides to find the "hidden" collectible stuff (altars and side missions) to get enough renown and unlock skill points and potion charges. After the campaign you then have some seasonal content which is just centered around one mechanic plus some repeatable farm content and then to get to level 100 and defeat the final version of (Uber-)Lilith. For me I'm not even sure I will make it that far as I'm losing the will to even log in rapidly.
Story: 4/10 Gameplay: 6/10 User Interface: 5/10 Visuals: 7/10 Sound: 7/10 Items & Loot: 2/10 World: 5/10 Dungeons: 4/10
Diablo 4 was released less than a year ago for a premium price. I used the chance to play it in March 2023 during the open beta and was not impressed and therefore refused to buy it at that price. Now that the game was added to the Microsoft Gamepass which you can try out during the first month for 1 Euro I though I could spend that much to give it another chance and as you can see with the numbers it didn't turn out that well.
My goal was somewhat to go through the various acts and finish them one by one in order focusing on side missions first before completing the main story line and hopefully getting a somewhat complete picture of story and lore in the game.
Unfortunately most of the side missions early on already are so benign in terms of story and repetitive in nature that I grew tired of them quickly. It's just filler that doesn't really add much to the main story. Also I reached level 50 halfway through act 2 which is somewhat the barrier of what enemies will reach while you're playing through the main campaign on difficulty 1 or 2. Higher difficulties with higher enemy levels and better items only unlock once you complete the campaign (or skip it through the menu) and complete a specific dungeon. I had somewhat useful equipment to make my build work by towards the end of act 1 and afterwards for the next 20+ hours while I focused on completing the campaign barely got any upgrades for my character.
Here is already the main problem with the game. The current item system is awful. It feels like I'm digging through piles of trash to find something that is not complete garbage. Once I have a build completed with a couple of items that actually have somewhat useful stats on them (somewhere around level 30) and usable legendary bonuses I'm basically stuck with these items for ages because 99.9999% of what I find is useless and just makes it frustrating to even spend time looking at the inventory. I started collecting legendary items (usually 3-4 per full inventory from level 40 onward) and just put them into my storage after looking at them initially and rating them as useless. I stored them just in case I might need the legendary bonus to transfer it to rare items with better stats. It some point I filled my storage and required crafting items from dismantling legendary items to upgrade others or transfer legendary aspects to them. Just looking through these items to decide what should go into the shredder was giving me a headache because I basically wanted shred everything and not even look at the items with these completely goofy stats on them. It's like imagine pulling a slot machine in a casino and every wheel has hundreds of completely randomized stat types and numbers on them and out of a thousand times you pull the level you're not even winning a single cent. That's how D4 feels. You're just picking up turd after turd.
Then you have the main story which early on sets some things up where you think they could be cool. You have the father of the world, you're traveling through - the angel Inarius who hates his former lover Lilith who is the mother of that world. He's being set up as arrogant and pretty vile hidden behind an angelic facade protected by a fanatic religious cult who worships him. All that happens in the first act. What are they doing with it in the story? Nothing really. The character ends up being completely wasted and just killed off in a video sequence. It looks pretty but is completely wasting the character that could be turned into a nice boss battle. His worshippers as well are mostly ignored during the later parts of the story and are also just killed off in some video sequences and minor battles.
In terms of characters as well there are to many minor ones that are useless within the story but get unnecessary screentime to get an introduction and after they've fulfilled some minor task they just get thrown to the side never to be seen again or simply killed off. In addition the main side characters that are supposed to lead you through the narrative area also mostly either useless or are handled poorly. Donan who is a pretty important character through various sections of the story towards the end gets killed off in an absolutely hilariously bad way. It was so obvious at that point that they only did it because they didn't have any further use for him and wanted to turn his funeral into some kind of emotional moment. But it was such a stupid meaningless death that nothing afterwards related to him could be taken seriously.
The girl Neyrelle who is introduced in the first act has basically nothing to do after her initial part outside of yelling at some of the other characters about not being a child and then setting up the expansion. If she wasn't in the story nothing would be lost and her parts could've been easily replaced with other characters. Lorath is the only character that I somewhat had sympathy for but even he couldn't save the story overall. The antagonists also after getting a strong start ended on extremely weak notes. Elias turned out to be more of cockroach than a serious threat. You kill him various times (easily) but he just doesn't die and the killing blow then is being done by another character in a video sequence.
Lilith gets a single two-stage fight that also is the only remotely interesting boss I've seen throughout the campaign btw. And then just dies without having to do any extra steps. If anyone remembers there was a whole thing about prime evils not actually dying in the previous games but having to be captured into soul stones to guard them and just hope you can keep them away for a while until they break free again. This also mentioned various times here related to Diablo, Mephisto and Baal. Lilith on the other hand? Apparently she can easily be killed by a mere mortal that my character is supposed to be. That makes her a less threatening antagonist than the ones from the previous game.
Anyway the game has very lacking story.
When I look at the various features outside of that which are supposed to keep you playing it's just a bunch of check boxes to go through. The open world has similar issues compared to other open world games. It's just a large map where you're supposed to run to the "unexplored" sections to find mostly useless stuff and fill some statistics. There's a bunch of repeatable events at every corner to farm items to then farm more items which though then goes back to the initial problem with awful itemizations...
Most people will likely just look for guides to find the "hidden" collectible stuff (altars and side missions) to get enough renown and unlock skill points and potion charges. After the campaign you then have some seasonal content which is just centered around one mechanic plus some repeatable farm content and then to get to level 100 and defeat the final version of (Uber-)Lilith. For me I'm not even sure I will make it that far as I'm losing the will to even log in rapidly.