D3 + 1 (Diablo 4 launch impressions) [7/12/23]
11 years ago my friends and I would go to GameStop after school all to pickup the most anticipated game that their older siblings had ever sold us on; Diablo 3. Over the next 5 or 6 years we would reinvest our time into the game periodically especially after the release of Reaper of Souls. Now as I approach the age of 30 I’ve put another 60 hours into Diablo 4 and I’m ready to talk about how much fun it is to still care about the world of Sanctuary.
In Diablo 3 I had started with Sorcerer, but quickly fell in love with Monk before I eventually tried Crusader and never turned back. My first playthrough of the Campaign was on a Necromancer and I am so happy to say that he will be remaining my main character for the foreseeable future. I won’t be going over spoiler related details in this essay but I do think that there were a few really cool nods to my character as a person throughout the campaign just because he was a Necromancer. Besides the class quests, I’m assuming all classes got this treatment from relevant NPC’s but I felt so much more immersed in the world when some of the slower build ups respected my character.
Speaking of slower moments, I think my only complaint about the story/campaign of the game is the pacing. In contrast to Diablo 3, I do think that Blizzard was able to create a good story post Act 1. However; they also developed a bad habit of hastily finishing up an Act with big boss fights very quickly after mostly slow rolling build up events. This could absolutely be a well thrown together solution to having cut story moment for the sake of the development timeline, but it did feel like emotional whiplash as I got farther and more invested into the overall story.
Overall the story does represent the most consistently good Diablo campaign Blizzard have put out to date. One thing that I did think was really cool is that players are able to choose to go work on Act 2 or 3 before Act 1 is even complete. I believe you can technically do this with 4 and 5 as well, but it works surprisingly well given that Act 1 and 2 almost work parallel with Act 3 to set up Act 4. The structure works well and I think they did a wonderful job of running players through the primary locations on the map while leaving plenty of room to explore during post campaign play.
Speaking of which, I am loving the post campaign play of Diablo 4. Immediately after defeating the final boss, players are introduced to Whispers; mini-quests and events around the world that provide Grim Favors which can be used to purchase boxes of slot targeted and level appropriate loot. The purpose of this loot is to bolster players loadouts as they take their skills and experience from the end of campaign and throw it at completing their first Capstone Dungeon to unlock World Tier 3 and the true endgame.
While World Tier 1 is for basic learning and 2 for practice, World Tier 3 is for advance learning. While Whisper quests are always active, there are also now Helltides. Areas of the map are invaded by the forces of Hell where players can take on open world group content with pretty good XP gains and a great flow of gear. WT3 also introduces the Nightmare Dungeon system that allows players to run harder versions of dungeons with great loot, but not as great of XP as one might expect. I’m pretty sure that Nightmare Dungeons are meant to be more useful in WT4 but they are really fun even freshly into WT3.
Now, I don’t want to assume that every player completing the campaign on World Tier 2, but I do appreciate that World Tier 3 requires being unlocked by playing on World Tier 2. The endgame feels like it’s a separate product from the campaign and I think that was the correct choice given that most casual players might be ok playing for a little bit after the campaign, but they will eventually need a finish line.
Unfortunately this game has many finish lines and starting on July 20th 2023, we will even having moving goal posts complete with Seasonal Content. Diablo 4 WILL be using a seasonal content model, but with some big differences compared to games like Destiny, namely in the way that most of the actual content will be free while the seasonal BattelPass will have semi traditional Free and Paid Tiers. I do love when a new game can mix up the paid cosmetics conversation but at the end of the day Blizzard is just playing it safe with a model closer to Apex Legends than a nonstop feature rich money hole like Destiny 2.
At the end of the day I’m going to keep playing this game for a good year or two. I can’t see how Blizzard isn’t able to keep my attention with this title aside from any big time investments with Destiny 2, FF14, or even WoW as my primary MMOs. I think I’d like to write some more pieces about the Gearing System and Endgame flow especially once the first season drops, but for now; we grind.
