What’s really unpleasant with the sunk-cost fallacy is when you know you’re engaging in it but is too stupid and stubborn to stop. Anyway, Diablo IV is the most miserable time I’ve had with any action RPG in my life and I’ve still wasted 55 hours on it. I really should’ve refunded it in the first hour, but… I mean, it’s “Diablo” and I have positive things to say even about the third game, as it can be very enjoyable if shallow. But this… oh boy, this was horrible.
Who doesn’t know what Diablo is? Blizzard, apparently, but as far as the players go, you usually know what to expect. Action RPG with top down view, dark fantasy setting, lots of enemies to kill, experience to get, loot to grab. After the simple but strong beginning with the first game, that is still my personal favorite, Diablo II established lots of canonical elements that are still used with little change across numerous games of numerous genres. While the often criticized (mostly for good reasons) third game made each playable class feel truly unique, something that is mostly continued with this newest game.
The different builds within each class can also be very different. Although, arguably, the choice is more limited than with the previous game. This has been done, seemingly, in the attempt to answer the criticism of the skill system of Diablo III, where you just unlocked new abilities and could switch them on the fly, thus removing any choice and commitment to how you build your characters. But in reality, the change is mostly in terms of presentation – while you have to commit to a build, you can also refund anything at any point (it just costs gold to do so). Nonetheless, the basic premise of the skills and how they fit into 6 specific slots remains exactly the same – I think it’s perfectly fine, but there might be people who prefer the classic freeform approach instead.
Some of the ideas from Diablo II that were either absent or limited in the previous game return as well, although often in a changed form. Time of day is yet again dynamic, something that was limited to post-campaign in the third game. Instead of the run and stamina from II we get a dodge move that works on a cooldown and in the later part of the campaign you unlock horses you can ride. The overall presentation is yet again more subdued and dark fantasy, after the extremely exciting and explosive epic adventuring of the third game. The music is made to be reminiscent of the classic soundtracks by Matt Uelmen and sound pretty good at times. The potions are yet again limited, but restock in towns or from the enemy drops and work as an ability, not an item. They actually feel closer to one of the variations that were attempted with Diablo III, before it was switched to just one infinite ability on a cooldown. And, frankly, I feel that this change back to a limited number is mostly pointless in practice.
Some things have been changed or removed. The hirelings/followers mechanic is now completely gone. You don’t lose experience or money upon death – instead the item durability serves as the “punishment” and items only ever lose durability to deaths now. Enchanting and crafting has been reworked a lot and an item upgrade mechanic has been introduced. All of the combo mechanics from the previous game are gone while the Paragon system has been reworked into something that is vaguely reminiscent of the License Board from Final Fantasy XII.
But the biggest and most destructive change to everything is in the way the world now works. Every Diablo game until now had completely random locations with specific key rooms or areas that these random roads connected to in-between. And the pace of a Diablo game has always been to move forward. You mowed down enemies, completed quests, explored all on the way to your next goal. Never backtracking, never getting lost even in the most confusing and open levels of Act III in Diablo II. It was a focused experience. Diablo IV is not. It’s structured like an open world game or an MMORPG. And it’s designed without any understanding of what makes a good open world game or a good Diablo game.
The world is huge, not random and full of constant and most tedious backtracking imaginable. But at the same time, enemies and events respawn almost immediately after you go far away from them. With no flair like they did in the third game either – they just spawn out of thin air most of the time. Dungeons? Random, extremely long, tedious, full of instantly recognizable boring randomized patterns and tasks that are always exactly same. There are over a hundred dungeons in the game and about a dozen possible task variations they require and, I think, less than 10 possible boss fights in them.
I’ve never ever played a Diablo game where I wasn’t killing everything in my way. Up until this one. In this one I was running away from enemies 80% of my time with it. Not because there was any difficulty with fighting them, but because it was boring. I couldn’t imagine in the 90s that I would ever play a Diablo game and upon finding a new group of enemies, my reaction would be “ugh”. But that’s what Diablo IV is. There’s no permanence or meaningfulness to anything you do in the world for you to want to engage with anything in this open world. There’s no reason to explore dungeons that you find, because they’re boring and you might need to do this boring thing again later if a quest requires it, so there’s no joy in discovery. Map opens in giant chunks to prevent any clear understanding of where you were and where you weren’t to find hidden collectibles. And all at the same time, the main Diablo gameplay loop feels tedious when there’s no clear line, when enemies are not in your way because there is no way, just open spaces to get bored in.
And it’s not like we don’t have good action RPGs with a similar structure, as even going back to the Diablo II days there was Divine Divinity or Sacred that had an open world structure and Diablo-like gameplay. But they knew better to use Ultima as example for the world and Diablo for the fun mechanics. While Diablo IV uses tedious grind of a generic MMO as an example for all that it brings.
And yes it is, yet again, always online. And it’s inexcusable and pointless as it was with Diablo III. Except now you can’t even have a private playthrough as the other players are always present in some way in “your” world and this whole MMO-like aspect is baked into the basics of the game. And it sucks.
To give the game some credit – even though the story isn’t particularly good, it is trying and sometimes it even has great moments and main story quests. The focus on the orthodox church teachings in contrast to the catholic church from the previous games isn’t as interesting as the developers seem to think, but I suppose for players from certain parts of the world it would at least feel novel. And it does look nice – this visual style is far closer to how one would’ve expected the first two Diablo games to be if they were fully 3D than what Diablo III attempted. The occasional special traversal interactions are a nice addition. Different statuses that weaken or buff health for the player and the enemies are also a really good expansion of the formula.
But it’s just so so horribly boring. And every single design decision that it has seems to be based on the desire to make things slow, to make things grindy. And no update or expansion or anything can fix what is, at its core, and extremely unfun game. I despise this game and cannot in good faith recommend anyone to play it. Play anything else instead, including Diablo III – at least it tried to be exciting and not miserable by design.