Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.

Evil is stirring in Sanctuary once again, the realm that is caught in between the Eternal Conflict between the High Heavens and the Burning Hells. This time the threat is not from the Prime Evil Diablo, but instead by the mother of Sanctuary itself Lilith. In the world of Diablo, Lilith, the daughter of the prime evil Mephisto was in love with an angel of the High Heavens Inarius. The two of them created the first Nephilim in series lore, in Diablo 4 Lilith has returned to Sanctuary making her way across the land hoping to put an end to the Eternal Conflict once and for all. The story in Diablo 4 is massive and has quite a few twists and turns. Due to the way the review was set up, and the fact that I got sick I couldn’t complete the narrative, but I played through the entire first act and most of the second. In that time, I was introduced to new characters, some returning characters and put down legions of evil scum along the way.

Diablo 4 has some of the best atmosphere that I have seen in a dungeon ARPG in a long time. Blizzard made a conscious design decision to go back to Diablo’s more gothic horror roots with this entry, what that means is the more ‘action’ approach that was prevalent in the 3rd outing is gone. One of the major ways this is felt is through the removal of the ‘God of War’ like dodge system with the right stick if using a controller. Each class has a dodge mechanic now, but it does have a cool down which prevents it from being spammed. This means that even dodging will have to be used wisely to escape tricky areas of effect damage pools or just putting some space between players and the surrounding horde. Also out is the mini map overlay that has been available in Diablo games since two, this would enable players to superimpose a large transparent overlay of the map which makes dungeon navigation a lot easier. Now when navigation the gigantic world of Sanctuary and all its various dungeons’ players will have to press a button to bring up the map for directions before venturing out. This is not a huge deal, especially since the developers took the feedback about the dungeons requiring entirely too much backtracking the beta; but it’s just odd to see something that has been a staple removed for really no reason.

MSRP: $69.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, PC
Price I’d Pay: $69.99

Speaking of staples though, the return to a more horror forward game is indeed a welcome one. Each area is dripping with atmosphere, be it dungeons with wriggling legs hanging off walls, to the abandoned towns full of burnt-out buildings with trails of blood in the snow and caked on floors. Every location gave off a creepy feeling of something not being quite right, which is in a land where evil roams the land like deer; this is exactly how someone should feel. Blood and gore are the name of the game, and I couldn’t be happier. Each monster seemed to die in a dramatic and messy fashion based off of how they were killed. Playing as a Necromancer I commanded an armor of skeleton warriors and mages, when an enemy died from ice magic their bodies freeze and parts explode as they shatter like glass. Use fire on a crazed bear and watch the flesh sizzle and burn off its bones leaving a charred and sticky mess behind, harnessing the very elements has always been the Diablo way but seeing how each of these can affect an enemy differently added a lot of variety to each murder session.

Speaking of combat and abilities, Blizzard has long since mastered the various skill trees of its classes and that continues in Diablo 4. Each character class has a skill tree that is packed full of active abilities and attacks as well as super beneficial passives, some defensive and others offensive. The skill points can be refunded for free up to level 8, after that it will cost gold to refund. Players have the option of refunding everything or can go for the most recently unlocked and refund them going backwards. From what I can tell it won’t be possible to max out the skill tree completely, the max level is 100 but each of the active abilities have 5 levels to upgrade, not including the offshoots of each which will modify the active attack. For instance, my necro’s corpse explosion ability can be modified to leave an area of poison in addition to the explosion, causing each enemy to receive damage over time. Each of the abilities has 2 modifiers that will change or buff the attack, players don’t have to put the point to activate these, but it just goes to show the level of options available for players to decimate foes.

Diablo 4 adds another layer of strategy for player builds by introducing the Codex of Power. This compendium will house players ‘Aspects’ which can be earned for completing dungeons, these aspects can be added to a rare or legendary item and are usually locked to a class. These will help to tweak various playstyles and builds as each aspect will provide a boon for each class, things like adding and extra field of an AOE attack, or it may add damage reduction to an ability. The nice thing is the game will indicate and tell players what class the aspect is for in a dungeon, so if you want to only make one character you can target those specifically. But let’s be honest, Diablo is all about multi characters and if you unlock an aspect for a character that you haven’t made yet, when you go to create that character you will have it already unlocked; just like the stash where players can store armor and weapons and transfer them between characters.

Combat in Diablo 4 has been sharpened down to a razer sharp edge, with the combination of various moves and abilities players are free to express themselves through a beautiful ballet of blood and guts. Each of the abilities my necromancer wielded felt deadly and usually resulted in explosive results. While my playthrough for this review was done with the necromancer class, I was able to play in all the beta’s and tried all the classes. Each of them brings something exciting to fights, be it the ‘mancer’s skeleton armies, the sorceress mastery of the elements and of course the sheer tankiness of the Barbarian’s whirlwind attack there is a class for everyone. I used a controller for my time in Diablo 4, so each of the attacks are mapped to the face buttons and bumpers and triggers. Players have the freedom to change the button mapping which is a godsend, as some of the defaults don’t make sense.

One of the things I was really interested in seeing with this review build was the MMO like functions that Diablo 4 has to offer. Outside of my time playing some co-op with ZT I never say another soul in the game, which meant that the various world events I had to do solo and some of them I was unable to complete due to the difficulty. However, in the beta I did experience this, and can say that outside of being in a main town players will not often see other people. I know that this is important to some to maintain that element of ‘lone hero vs evil’ type of thing that Diablo games are known for. As players move through the massive world, they won’t see any loading screens but may experience slight glitches as they transition to a new server. At no point was its immersion breaking and when it happened it was a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ moment. I imagine that the launch version will function much like the betas and players will only ever see a handful of other adventures running around their world. Diablo will allow for players to group up with others who are lower or higher level than them, though if players are in different parts of the campaign; progress will only follow the leader, but the others will take any levels and loot back to their own worlds.

I couldn’t test out the deep endgame that Diablo 4 is promising to have, nor was I able to look at the already announced Battle Pass. So, I am unable to say what these things will add to the overall experience, but the rumor is that the battle pass items will only be cosmetic and won’t be items that can make players more powerful. Based on information that the developers have released before after completing the campaign proper the endgame is going to unlock numerous things for players to experience. This will include world tiers, which will allow players to fight harder monsters but also grab some of the best loot available in game. Also, players will unlock a paragon skill tree that will allow players to “personalize their overall direction of their endgame experience”, this was a quote from a developer. I can’t speak on it as I was unable to even go to the paragon tab as it was locked. For those that are interested in PvP combat, Diablo 4 is going to offer The Fields of Hatred which will kind of work like ‘The Division’s’ Dark Zones. Players will go up against other players and monsters in these zones, they can earn shards which will need to be ‘purified’ before they can be redeemed back in town. Other players can stop the purifying process and steal your shards in a bit of ‘extraction shooter’ flavor. Again, I wasn’t able to check this out, but I am interested in this mode when the game launches.

Diablo 4 is a massive game dropping in a year chock FULL of massive games. 2023 has already seen Nintendo’s behemoth drop by way of Tears of the Kingdom which has been dominating charts and peoples’ times. Now Diablo 4 is going to come bursting in and demanding that same type of time commitment with a sprawling game world to explore on foot or horseback. Between dungeons, world events, side quests and even the main quests players will never be too far from something interesting to inspect or kill in Sanctuary. Diablo 4 feels like a wonderful homecoming, with its darker tone and sublime cutscenes which Blizzard has always been wonderful at; the whole game just feels like a love letter to us fans who have waited so long to return to Hell and defeat its denizens once more.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.