Where things get weird is Legendary Drops. Magic and Rare items aka Blues and Yellows are effectively what you would expect from any other game. The itemization is also lacking at least in what I have come to expect. I think it is probably a better game across the board.Īll of the Legendary Drops I have Seen So Far What I expected was honestly something that played and felt a bit more like Diablo Immortal, since there is deep parity between the systems of that game and this game… and quite frankly I would probably rather spend my time playing Diablo Immortal were it not for the egregious monetization strategies. Playing as a ranged Rogue felt a little bit more snappy, and I’ve heard tales that the Sorceror is extremely overpowered… so then that raises a whole other line of concerns around class balance. Admittedly most of my experience comes from playing the Barbarian but if you don’t nail that class… the most straightforward of Diablo archetypes… I have concerns. With Diablo IV I was three or four hours into the game and it still felt like I was fighting while mired in quicksand. Sure a Diablo III Demon Hunter feels awful for the first ten levels or so… but those are over in maybe ten minutes. The time to kill in combat feels sluggish and not exactly what I have come to expect from the ARPG genre. I think my core problem with the game in its current state is the moment-to-moment gameplay loop doesn’t feel amazing. It feels cool, but also a bit like any modern Assassin’s Creed or Farcry game with similar zone control mechanics.Ĭombat on the Barbarian showing a Legendary Drop This reminds me quite a bit of the area in Witcher 3 where after defeating all of the monsters in a town, the locals come back and set up shop again. After killing all of these it shifted into a big boss fight, and upon completing it the area turned into a town. Malnok for example required me to defeat a number of Goatmen shamen that were channeling into a boss in the center of the map. The coolest of these however is the Strongholds which are one-time completed events that will open up new areas to the players. So far all of the events I have tried can be completed solo, but simply go much faster with a host of randoms. Here you will stumble across events that are spawning constantly in an almost Guild Wars 2 style, where you and any players sharing your map can work together to complete them. So far all of the bosses in Diablo IV seem to be punitive towards a melee playstyle because my brief amount of time spent playing a ranged rogue saw me breezing through them whereas I had to play much more carefully on the Barbarian.ĭungeon delving however is just a small part of the gameplay in Diablo IV, and you are going to spend a much larger amount of time roaming around the open world. Bossing in general in an ARPG is probably my least favorite part of the game, and I gave up on progressing past the Searing Exarch in Path of Exile because I simply did not really enjoy building for that sort of mechanic. They feel a lot like fighting a Legendary mob in Guild Wars 2, so read… super tanky bag of hitpoints that will take you quite a while to whittle through while avoiding a number of other mechanics. This has more or less been true with all of the dungeon bosses I have fought as well. Every boss has 4 sections of their health bar, and whittling down a quarter will produce some sort of intermission mechanic or phase shift. The First Boss fight – X’Fal, the Scarred Baronĭiablo IV feels like it has doubled down on the “bossing” style of gameplay from Path of Exile. I am almost certain at some point during its development process someone uttered the phrase “the Dark Souls of ARPGs” even though it lacks the traditional soulslike trappings apart from “don’t get hit”. So for me at least it is way less of a contemporary of Path of Exile, Diablo II, Diablo III, and Torchlight and more a challenge-focused version of Lost Ark. Everything about the game feels much more akin to an Isometric MMORPG that you more commonly find on a mobile platform than what I have come to expect from a PC ARPG. It instead is a game with much more deliberate slow-paced combat and a world that is much more dangerous than I have come to expect from even Path of Exile. The core gameplay loop that I enjoy so much in a Diablo-style game, isn’t really the core gameplay loop of this game. If you stripped off the branding of this game and presented it to me from another publisher with a slightly altered setting and I am not sure if I would have described it as “like Diablo”. It is at the very least not the game I was expecting it to be. I have to be honest… at this point, I am not sure if I like Diablo IV. Diablo IV Barbarian in the tundra with a flaming sword
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