Diablo 4 review: The gothic action-RPG enters its open-world MMO era

Denysov, in the tired village Yelesna hammers at a wooden fence with a couple of stakes. “Been working on this door for days,” he mutters. “Not much else to do ’round here.” He doesn’t have anything to sell, he says to no one in particular, and this door should fetch a nice price. It’s a simple dream, but Denysov, who probably hasn’t ventured far from Yelesna, has no idea how many doors my Wanderer routinely annihilates on the path to gold and glory. In a kinder existence, perhaps Denysov would be a busy carpenter, living off the constant destruction of the Eternal Conflict — the unceasing war between heaven and hell — and the humans trapped in between.

But in this small, dark corner of the map, Denysov’s unfinished portal just might be one of the most overlooked cornerstones of Diablo mythology. I don’t mean the hypocrisy of the High Heavens or the comically doomed faith everyone has in the efficacy soulstones. Diablo 4, like its predecessors, is a game about doors — pausing on the threshold of an open maw, bathed in unholy light and anticipation before you meet whatever’s on the other side.

When you think about the existential infrastructure of the game and its visual language, it’s doors all the way down, from humble gates and fiery red portals to ornate stone slabs and yawning caverns. I’ve funneled hordes of monsters through doors to create bottlenecks and pick them off at a distance. There’s a ritualistic, rhythmic power in piercing a series of gates before a major boss, running headlong toward a fate you can’t see until it’s too late. In the first episode, the Butcher. DiabloThe most memorable encounter was probably trapping him inside a locked door.

A character rides a horse up to the ledge of a ravine separating an arid landscape from a gloomy expanse in Diablo 4

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

Diablo 4 has, on the surface, all of the right ingredients for a Diablo game: A lone Wanderer gets caught up in an existential war and becomes the last line of defense against all-consuming doom; this time it’s Lilith, the Daughter of Hatred, who created Sanctuary with the angel Inarius. You’ll find ominous, glowing gateways as well as self-righteous, zealotry, bad parents and children. And those horrible strings of flies which instantly kill. Not long after exploring Act 1, it’s clear that Sanctuary has embraced a return to moody gothic horror. It’s worth checking out if you want to know more. Diablo 3 was a somewhat sterile attempt to maximize loot churn and make us love seasons (as well as “revolutionize” in-game spending via the short-lived real-money auction house), Diablo 4The same themes are present, though with better graphics. It’s unreasonable to hope that corporate Blizzard will ever roll back on gacha-fication and commodified satisfaction, but at least it’s leaning back into the macabre.

For starters, there’s an aesthetic return to the guts of the series: the infinite grossness of weird little freaks from hell and the viscera left in their wake. It’s a glorious comeback to fetid, bloody obscenity. You can find some really sexy videos. The 120 Day Sodom vibes to the broken bodies piled up in one of the game’s major cities — ordinary but imperfect souls who believed in the Cathedral for salvation, whose bent limbs and flayed buttocks speak volumes about the indifference of power and the spectacle of flesh. The ossuary-themed dungeons are my favorites, with gorgeous detail and lighting; I live for dank, squelchy environments with entrails and eggs, and corpse “trees” that contort themselves into brittle, strained explosions.

A character fights off enemies with fire-based attacks near a bulbous growth in Diablo 4

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

This is also the first open-world Diablo game, and to that end, “civilized” Sanctuary is much more than the fixed hub it was in previous games. Residents of Fractured Peaks are visiting the swamps of neighboring towns as medical tourists looking for exotic cures. There are backwater towns caught up in their own drama, and parallel mythologies to the Eternal Conflict that soften the rigidity of Sanctuary’s historically binary lore. In-jokes, pop culture references and other insinuations are common. Game of Thrones, which is understandable, given the overwhelming influence it’s had on medieval-style fiction over the last decade). Across this vast continent, there’s a powerful sense of distrust among the smallfolk, whether they’re fanatics ready to scream “heresy” or villagers just trying to preserve their traditions against the Cathedral’s brutish influence.

But in stretching the intimate, deliberate claustrophobia of Diablo’s original one-town scope to fit a whole world, it’s lost that taut sense of terror that so beautifully defined the series’ smaller and You can find out more about us by clicking here. vulnerable spaces. There’s now a fixed overworld map for the continent of Estuar, and it’s enormous. The procedurally generated dungeons don’t vary much in layout and feel like missed opportunities to have fun with randomized architecture — and no, adding more dungeon to a dungeon doesn’t necessarily make it better or more interesting. Capstone dungeons — multi-stage trials that function as gear/level checks between difficulty tiers — feel like a non-solution from a sadistic bureaucracy instead of an invitation to get rich or die trying.

A new addition to the series was a horse. I avoided it because I didn’t want my Wanderer, who is a delicate little meatball, to be distracted by her environment. It’s a treasure hunt game, so while it is possible to loot while on a horse, the feeling of Diablo FOMO that comes with skirting around monsters can be intense. Still, given the size of Estuar, once you’re past the initial leveling and basic gearing stages, four legs do help to speed up the drudgery.

The Paragon board in Diablo 4, showing sockets and their corresponding abilities on a busy grid

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

Nightmare Dungeons are the new Rifts. They’re ordinary dungeons that have been “enhanced”, with Nightmare SIGILS, to allow players to enhance their Paragon builds. Nightmare dungeons are the new rifts — they’re ordinary dungeons “enhanced” with Nightmare Sigils, and they allow you to improve your Paragon build with a rather obtuse glyph system that I still don’t fully understand (I did my first Nightmare dungeon a few hours before the review-period server went down). The events and dungeons all use the same few mechanics, which have a deafening effect. For example, you can fetch items, activate pedestals, etc.

Some quest items are removed from your inventory if you move away from the area of the quest (not ideal for series in which users have infamously disconnected at the most inappropriate times). The long arm of the law has finally come for town portals — the portal will now close as soon as you leave town, so you can’t experiment or “bookmark” a location for later. In the context of a MMO that encourages player creativity, it feels like a bit of a sour pill.

On the unintentional front, the review build was spectacularly buggy — I had to re-clear several major quest areas multiple times for the game to log my progress. Evening events were also poorly timed, and I had to help a colleague resolve a problem that made him have to form a group to leave the server. Occasionally, you’ll come out of town and see someone riding an invisible horse. The wait to find out if the game crashed or if my lag was too high was amusing and frustrating. However, the bright side was that this was an account I created for a review. I would lose all of the money I had saved.

A character rides a horse in a swamp-like area covered in fog in Diablo 4

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

Because my character got nuked so much before the launch of the game, I chose to only play the Sorcerer. (For the open beta I played a Necromancer). It was fun to play around with old favorites like Frozen Orb, Blizzard and other multi-element builds. I finally found a legendary staff which boosted pyromancy and prompted me go full-on fire. By the time I hit level 40, my boosted Meteors and Inferno (the pyro’s “Ultimate” skill) easily obliterated most bosses, and I was able to complete the first Capstone dungeon, the Cathedral of Light, several levels below the suggested 50 (albeit very carefully). It took me a while to get used to the new skill tree, especially until I realised that I could press S instead of scrolling endlessly down zigzag lines in order see my build.

The new legendary system is also an acquired taste — in Diablo 3The Horadric Cube was used to extract the powerful attributes of legendaries. Seasonal meta builds tend to revolve around the synergy between gears and legendaries that defines endgame. The endgame experience is defined by gear and legendaries. Diablo 4You can extract these aspects to imprint on rarer items that have better stats. But instead of being stored in a permanent “library,” these aspects now reside in a special inventory tab as one-time consumables.

For instance, if I find a Runic Orb of Engulfing Flames — a legendary off-hand weapon that gives extra Burning damage — I can extract its Engulfing Flames aspect and imprint it onto a ring with high Intelligence and Pyromancy skill stats. I can’t extract the aspect again from the imprinted ring — the only way to make a new Engulfing Flames legendary is to find another runic orb with the same effect. The same goes for aspects acquired from class-specific dungeons — they’re kept in a Codex of Power, but consumed after use. All of this translates to an inordinate amount of labor (and luck) to re-find one specific legendary — it forces the player to try other builds to progress, but it also means a whole lot of grinding, which, at lower difficulties, is grim work.

A character uses a whip-like lightning attack in a dimly lit room in Diablo 4

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

As soon as I exit the Cathedral of Light, and reach World Tier III (the third level), things begin to improve. I start getting decent drops. Helltide’s ultimate gachafest involves collecting Helltide only currency and unlocking Helltide exclusive loot boxes in a race against time. After passing the first Capstone, I feel a hunger that had been buried for a while. Now, Sanctuary is becoming more MMO and I am settling into it quickly (mixed emotions, really). I admire the details on each hellbound giant and wet intestinal-snake in my surrounding. Denysov is working at his front door, in the perfect bubble of ignorance. He’s just trying to survive in an economic system where doors are supposed to make him wealthy. His presence is obviously a little joke, but in a world predicated on an endless celestial cycle of conflict and the never-ending grind for one side to come out on top, it’s actually a lot funnier than the average throwaway line.

I even forget that in a few hours, my Sorcerer will be gone, and I’ll have to start over again at launch, but it’s OK — I tell myself this is just involuntary Hardcore mode. Estuar constantly regenerates doors, gates and chests that need to be crushed. I’m there to witness every one. Diablo 4 doesn’t even have to be a Good Game for me to crave playing it — it’s the intrinsic lizard-brain appeal of magic-finding and getting more powerful that’s kept the third installment alive for so long. It’s the pure uncut result of gamifying the “god, why must you give me your hardest battles” memeWith one of my favorite action adventures of my generation. I can almost feel Lilith cradling my face, calmly explaining that not only am I Sanctuary’s weakest hero, but this is only Nightmare mode, and I have many, many more doors to obliterate before reaching Torment.

Diablo 4 The game will be available on 6th June on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Windows PC. Xbox One and Xbox Series X are also included. Blizzard provided a code for a PC pre-release to review the game. Vox Media maintains affiliate partnerships. Vox Media earns commissions from affiliate products, although this doesn’t influence the editorial content. This is where you can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.

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