Diablo IV Review (PC)

After more than a decade of waiting, we, Diablo fans, finally get to play another great Diablo game. The fourth major installment in the series is on par with what many consider the masterpiece of the franchise, Diablo II, which means it’s a lot better than Diablo III.

The intense and atmospheric cutscenes, along with a well-crafted story are back once again. These have always been a staple for the entire series, but their magic kind of faded away with the release of Diablo III and its expansions.

Diablo IV made me fall in love with the franchise once again. Although the game’s not perfect, it does bring back most of what made the beloved series so popular among action-RPG fans. More importantly, Diablo IV is a clear evolution of the franchise and a huge step in the right direction.

Story-wise, Diablo IV rather disregards the events that happened in the previous major chapter, although there are certainly characters from Diablo III that are mentioned in the new game. For the most part, Diablo IV’s plot happens in Sanctuary, a world created by Lilith and Inarius, a demon and an angel who were fed up with the never-ending war between the two primordial factions.

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The creation of the world gave birth to hybrid creatures called nephalem, who were to become more powerful than demons and angels. After preventing the extermination of her children, Lilith is being banished from Sanctuary for killing those who wanted to harm the nephalem. Inarius decides to attune the Worldstone, the wondrous item that was used to create Sanctuary, to slowly reduce the power of the nephalem until they become almost humans.

Everything that happened in the past is slowly forgotten or becomes legend. However, Lilith has never forgotten that Inarius denied her children’s future and banished her from Sanctuary and decides to return to the hidden world and reawaken the long-lost power of the nephalem. It’s at this point that the protagonist, you, comes into play. Just like in the previous Diablo games, your main objective is to track down and kill a major demon, in this case, Lilith.

However, things aren’t as simple as they seem at first glance. After the first few chapters it becomes clear that both factions, angels and demons, are willing to do anything to prevent the others from winning the hearts and minds of the nephalem. Because if you can’t destroy them, you can try to make them join you.

In your hunt for Lilith, you’ll be visiting major cities and smaller settlements across Sanctuary, looking for allies and trying to uncover the demon’s plans. Sanctuary’s map is huge, but the number of side quests available for players to complete is even bigger. Upon reaching a certain renown with a settlement, you are offered various rewards like skill points and gold. It’s a fine incentive for players who want to maximize their leveling, but that doesn’t impact the quality of the side quests.

I confess, I like to read all the text when I’m given a side quest and I really liked some of them, but I’m 100% certain that the large majority of them are simple fetch quests. What makes this bearable though is the gameplay loop. I have created a character for each class just to try and see how they play and whether or not some are more powerful than others.

I love my necromancer because I just stay behind my minions and shoot enemies with bones. I also like my rogue very much because he’s very agile and can dish out tremendous damage by using one or two skills. The sorcerer remains my favorite though because it’s one of the few classes that can do more damage while standing still rather than moving. Barbarian is spin-to-win even after the patch that nerfed some of its abilities, while druid is another amazing class that offers a couple of playstyles.

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In Diablo IV, every class is viable and offers very different playstyles. If you’re the type of player who likes to min-max, you’ll be happy to know that you can refund skills instantly if you want to try our different builds. It only costs a little bit of gold, but nothing that you should be worried about.

Every combat mechanic is polished to the extreme making Diablo IV one the smoothest action-RPGs that I’ve played to date. There are a bunch of stats, gems, enchantments, aspects and imprints that must be taken into consideration for each build, which makes the game even more interesting.

Now, Diablo IV isn’t perfect and if you’re a math person, you’ll soon realize that there are a lot of things that aren’t balanced at all (to the player’s detriment) or missing altogether. The same goes for some quality-of-life improvements that I wish the game would have at launch.

For example, I would have liked for the gems that drop to not take a slot in my inventory. Diablo IV has different inventory tabs for elixirs and quest items, but it’s missing one for gems. These are fairly common items that drop from chests and enemies, so they will fill your inventory very fast.

Another major oversight is the missing shared map. If you finish the story with a character and spend time exploring every nook and cranny, the next character you create will not have the map fully discovered. You’ll probably get a few portals appearing on the map, but not the full map.

Despite these minor issues, I’m fairly confident that Blizzard will add them at some point in the future. Perhaps a loot companion like in Diablo III would be a nice addition too.

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The Good

The Bad

Conclusion