Blizzard’s Diablo franchise is more popular than ever, with 2012’s Diablo III still going strong and the recent mobile hit Diablo Immortal grossing nearly $1 million a day at one point. Following its 2019 reveal, the action role-playing series is finally back with its fourth mainline entry, titled Diablo IV.
Everything that fans loved about the fantasy hack-and-slash dungeon crawler revolving around an ongoing war between heaven and hell is very much present in the new game. Up to four players can explore the incredibly vast land of Sanctuary that is currently under the heel of recently resurrected demon Lilith.
This time around, there is a choice for up to five incredibly different character classes, including Barbarian, Sorcerer, Druid, Rogue and Necromancer. Each of the classes has a distinctive set of abilities that grow over time and allow for dynamic approaches to battle.
Taking the series into the modern era, the entire five-region land of Sanctuary is explorable without loading times. When players aren’t exploring Sanctuary to defeat the army of Lilith, there are plenty of procedurally generated dungeons to explore, side quests and even live events that can take dozens of hours for completionists. Leaning more into the community aspect than ever, Diablo IV allows players to complete quests alone, with friends online (or via couch co-op on consoles) and even join clans.
Diablo IV is launching for PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC on June 6, and we completed a playthrough on PC. Here are our thoughts on this year’s highly anticipated release after playing over 40 hours.
Editor’s Note: This review may contain some minor spoilers for Diablo IV.?
Diablo IV is a true return to form for Blizzard's popular action role-playing series, delivering an excellent story, gorgeous visuals, first-rate combat and enough content to keep you occupied for dozens of hours.
What we liked about it
Phenomenal story and world-building
Following a gorgeous cinematic opening that introduces players to main antagonist Lilith, players are introduced to Diablo IV central protagonist The Wanderer through the five character classes that can be either male or female. What happens next is an epic journey that takes place across the various regions of Sanctuary as heaven and hell battle it out while dealing with their own internal politics.
From the first act alone, Diablo IV introduces the concept of how everyday citizens of the area, also known as the Mortal Realm, are handling the current situation. One of the first quests involves players trying to escape a cannibalistic cult who begin worshiping Lilith before getting introduced to ally Lorath who returns from the Reaper of Souls expansion pack in a bigger role.
Lorath represents one of three main allies, including adventurer Neyrelle and high-ranking official Donan. They all have specific motivations for wanting to take down Lilith while having enough personality for forming real bonds over the six acts. Even Lilith’s reason for wanting to take over Sanctuary becomes understandable throughout the course of the main campaign once her true relationship with rogue angel Inarius is revealed. All of this leads to a grand finale that is equal parts triumphant and heartbreaking as our leads give their all to fight one of the most captivating villains in the Diablo series yet.
Every corner of Sanctuary itself is filled with so much history and lore that it can sometimes be overwhelming. From the starting area of the snowy Fractured Peaks to Dry Steppes’ desert and Hawezar swamplands, getting lost in the wonder is easy. This world feels like a real living, breathing place. Between the main campaign, side quests, dungeons and end-game content, there’s so much to explore in Sanctuary.
Combat, loot grinding and character-building are first rate
Barbarian, Sorcerer, Druid, Rogue and Necromancer classes all feel distinct enough to bring a real nuance to combat encounters. During our playthrough of the main campaign, we chose the Necromancer, who can create a group of skeletal warriors from slain corpses of enemies. Though players began with the ability to only summon around five undead henchmen, this can grow into a full-on army of various types. That doesn’t even count the various types of magic a Necromancer can weld, such as bone, blood and shadow. We found the Necromancer class not only works well during co-op play but can be the most entertaining during single-player.
That doesn’t mean that the other classes aren’t fun to use, though. Barbarians are still great for those who just want to have access to brute strength. Players who want to balance both melee combat prowess with a serious magic touch may appreciate the shape-shifting Druid class. Sorcerers are great for players who want to lean completely on magic. Rounding out the classes is the hyper-mobile and tricky Rogue class, which can be deadly at close and far ranges.
All of the class choices contribute to combat that is visceral yet tactical. The fast-paced nature of the combat even makes death a lot less frustrating. Dying just places players at the last checkpoint with the consequence of losing weapon durability. Though the amount of enemies you fight at one time can become a bit overwhelming in the main campaign’s later portions, it looks and feels absolutely great once you get into a rhythm. The mayhem is enhanced further once three other players get involved. For those who have trouble finding friends to play with, there’s even an in-game system to join clans.
Like previous games in the series, almost every victorious battle feels very rewarding in terms of experience points and loot. Almost every other battle will have players swapping out weapons, armor and jewelry to make their character even stronger. Those weapons can be upgraded by visiting blacksmiths at various towns and some may have sockets that can be filled with stones for buffs. Adding to that feeling of constant character development is the expansive skill tree that can provide new skills alongside buffs for them once players reach a new level.
Incredible visual and audio presentation
Compared to Diablo III’s more colorful aesthetic, Diablo IV purposely looks dark and depressing. The art design here is wonderfully dreadful, from characters to the world of Sanctuary, and it gives off a situation that feels utterly hopeless. All that is truly brought to life through a phenomenal engine that allows for not only the series’ first true open world but also visuals that look fantastic from gameplay to cutscenes. Besides loading times that come when entering dungeons, each region blends smoothly into the next without delay. For the first time in the Diablo series, there are various elevation types outside of stairs, which adds more depth to areas. As a nice touch, some areas even include the option to look at various vistas as a way of showing scope.
Playable and non-playable characters all feature great detail that shines during the many in-engine cutscenes that play throughout the main campaign. Texture quality simply looks splendid and is full of details from the various customizable pieces of gear to walking surfaces. Even animation is top-notch during these moments and while in combat. Lighting is marvelous as the regions have day-and-night cycles that can change the look pretty drastically in addition to lovely shadow effects. That doesn’t even count various weather changes that can take place in different regions. Playing Diablo IV on a gaming PC with max settings is most definitely a visual treat.
Combat ran smoothly regardless of how many characters, how many effects and how much destruction was happening on screen at once. The PC version we ran only experienced slowdown due to server issues a few times, but that’s understandable. Frame rates remained consistently high during our playthrough, thanks to great DLSS implementation for those who have the latest Nvidia cards. Previous-gen console owners are all locked at 30 frames per second (fps) with resolutions of 900p for Xbox One, 1440p on Xbox One X, 1080p on PS4 and 1180p on PS4 Pro. Current-gen console players can enjoy native 4K/60fps (an ideal mix of fidelity and smoothness) on both Xbox Series X and PS5. Finally, Xbox Series S owners will get 1440p/60 fps performance.
Regardless of where you experience Diablo IV, you can expect a superb experience from a design and technical standpoint.
What we didn’t like about it
Some bigger battles can get out of control
During the earlier portions of Diablo IV’s main campaign, it’s fairly easy to keep track of what’s going on in combat without getting lost. This definitely changes as the stakes get higher. Battles become so epic to where it was difficult for us to see our character in the midst of large enemy groups, allies, destruction and magic. Sometimes, this leads to a lot of unintentional deaths due to lack of visibility. Most of the time when this happened, we were in a small space like a dungeon or indoor area. Deaths like those usually didn’t happen during battles taking place in Sanctuary’s more open areas.
Having some sort of tracking system for combat outside of when players are in front of an object would be ideal. This feeling gets even greater during some of the game’s later boss fights, as they can range from singular human beings to huge monstrosities.
Outside of the difficulty in having a clear visual awareness, things can get truly frustrating when a boss enemy starts to use bigger area-of-effect attacks that can take off significant chunks of health. Like mentioned previously, at least all of the action happening on screen at once doesn’t hurt how smoothly the game runs.
Side quests and end-game content can get a bit repetitive when playing solo
Pushing players forward in the world of Diablo IV is the main campaign story and addictive need to get better loot. At around 30 to 40 hours, the main story missions are filled without enough variety alongside the captivating story that works well on its own. There are enough combat scenarios to maintain engagement as your character gets better gear and gets stronger through the skill tree.
Players who want to venture off the main story path and tackle side missions or dungeons can also find themselves in a better position to handle the harder missions that come later in the game. Dungeon crawling is probably the best way to do that, as many side quests usually revolve around fetch quests for items or non-player characters (NPCs), defending NPCs and battling certain enemies for a certain period of time.
Missions that show off the incredible combat are totally fine. It’s just that many of the fetch quests break up the pacing a bit too much to where things can get repetitive over time. Because of the isometric camera angle, it can sometimes be difficult to find important items or NPCs since there isn’t any camera control. Thankfully, users can also access plenty of travel points and have their always-on command horse to get to various locations quicker by the time users get near the end game. Of course, those issues all can be remedied by playing with friends as the game supports cross-play and cross-progression as well.
Bugs and glitches at launch
For the most part, Diablo IV features an incredible amount of polish when it comes to presentation, gameplay mechanics and performance. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any bugs or glitches.
Because the game has an always-online requirement (even when playing solo), there were moments where the characters and enemies would get stuck in place during large battles before reverting back to normal with low health. Like mentioned previously, this is either a server issue or possible internet issues. This makes sense if you’re playing online, but it can get frustrating when playing solo. It didn’t happen enough to make the game unplayable, but it was noticeable during the later half of the game when battles got increasingly intense.
Then there were other bugs, including issues with the gear menu. Part of the loot game is managing gear that’s received on the field by either holding on to them to sell at stores or just simply getting rid of them considering there are limited spots available. Sometimes, gear that was sold wouldn’t leave the item menu and wouldn’t leave the menu. There were even moments where dropping an item wasn’t an option either. There were workarounds to this by resetting the game, though. Outside of that, there were a few visual glitches, but that didn’t distract much from the overall experience.
Bottom line
Diablo IV should serve as a grand reintroduction to one of the greatest action role-playing series around. It does a great job catering to veterans of the Diablo games while being incredibly accommodating to newcomers. As an added cherry on top, there are also a slew of accessibility options.
Unifying all of those approachable details is a game that balances remarkable presentation, visceral combat, addictive looting and character-building and a story that’s enormous in scope. Some of the additions like the open world and real-time cutscenes really help the world of Sanctuary come to life.
Even if side quests and end-game combat can be a bit repetitive when played alone, there’s so much to love about this dark fantasy. Players have the ability to put in well over 100 hours searching every nook and cranny of Sanctuary as they wait for the eventual downloadable content possibly coming down the pipeline outside of frequent live events. There’s so much value packed into Diablo IV that players will have a hard time putting it down even after reaching the level cap.
