izigame.me

Let me start by saying that I played D1 on PS1, Diablo 2 on PC, Diablo 3 (both pre and after ROS), also Path Of Exile (although i stopped playing long time ago, so my current knowledge about PoE might be lacking), Grim Dawn, Last Epoch, and some other smaller diabloids.
I heard a lot of trash talk about D4, and let’s be honest here - a lot of criticism is absolutely justified, but the game is nowhere near as bad as some people paint it to be (comparing it to overwatch 2, for example). Yes, season 1 was pretty damn bad, but season 2 improved _alot_ of aspects and made game actually fun. It’s like playing D3 before and after RoS.
I’ll start with good parts here, yes, there are good parts, and a fair share of them.
1) World design. It’s beautiful and very suitable for the Diablo universe. Awful grotesque creatures, blood, pieces of bodies as elements of decor… Overall grim atmosphere is here, and after D3 it really feels like a Diablo game. I’d even say it’s better than PoE, which has great world design too.
2) Story. It’s great. Loved almost every minute of it. Memorable characters, some emotional moments, some good revelations of Diablo lore. Some side quests are also pretty nice and interesting to do
3) New skill system actually allows players to play a very wide variety of builds, and while some might feel weaker than others, they all feel playable (well, at least on Druid. I Haven't tried others yet).
4) Lots and lots of QoL changes (UI optimized for controller when it detects controller, search function in stash, separate tabs for quest items / elixirs / keystones, lots of adjustable UI and UX tweaks, and so on)
Next, we will go with polarized opinions, because, well, it’s matter of preference:
1) Migration to an MMO-styled system. I know, I know, some people hate it. But you’re still mostly progressing solo or in party (nightmare dungeons), and you only meet other randoms in events, world bosses, helltides and so on. Personally, I enjoyed joining random people while doing open world stuff, they also don't seem to care if you’re a bit underleveled or your DPS is on a weak side, and can easily carry you if needed for that sweet sweet XP boost.
2) Aspect system. It’s… an interesting take on traditional legendary system. Previously, you was forced to farm specific legendaries or set items to make your build work. Now, you can run some dungeons, open some aspects (they will always be the lowest roll, though, so you still need to keep an eye on legendary items you need), apply them to rare items - and bam - you have a semi-working build already!. There are also unique items, which have pre-set rolls, higher drop rate from certain enemies, and often boost your damage by a lot. Personally, I love it, but I see how more, uh, dedicated players see it as making the game more casual, since it allows faster start.
3) Legendary devalue, as a result of the aspect system - it kinda removes your excitement when legendary drops - you just farm them all the time. And you spend more time looking at rare items to use as a base for your next legendary. On the positive side, you can trade rare items with your friends - especially nice if you run the same class. However, it makes game a bit slower overall, since you need to look at every item to see if it can provide you needed stat boosts. But to be fair, you got tons of legendaries and set items in D3 at the end of rifts, and majority of uniques in PoE is useless trash too - your main source of upgrades were... yes, rare items!
4) Always online. While I understand where it comes from (Diablo 3 on consoles had offline mode, at least on switch, and leaderboards were full of cheaters, blatant stuff like gems where they shouldn’t be, turbo boosted stats, and so on). Still, causes networking issues and inability to play offline on steam deck.
5) Endgame. Some people say the D4 endgame is “lacking”. But really, look at any other diablo-style game - it’s all the same shit. D1 - farm the same levels again and again. D2 - same bosses again and again. D3 - same rifts again and again. PoE - maps, again and again. Last Epoch - monoliths, again and again. D4 - nightmare dungeons again and again, but there are also world events like helltides, seasonal events, world bosses, legion events, and etc. Yes, endgame is grind. Always been, always will be. Complaining that d4 endgame is grind doesn’t make sense, because those games were always about minmaxing with grind.
And last, but not least, negative ones:
1) Price of the game - just personal opinion - too high. Blizzard doesn’t seem to care about regional prices, so it’s pretty much 70$ everywhere.
2) Price of cosmetic stuff. Same thing. You need 2800 plat for a skin set, which is the price of almost 3 seasons passes. So… 30$ for a single skin set which you can only apply on a specific class? That's just bullshit.
3) Season mechanics not going to the main game. Ok, I _kinda_ understand why they aren’t - each season introduces some big mechanics, it’s not like PoE where you usually get “smaller” mechanics (like strongbox), which are easy to move into “permanent” game mode. This is not the case with Diablo 4, or we will have like 6 different skill trees in a year or so.
4) Helltide. I do not hate helltide as a mechanic, i hate that it's available only every 2 hours. And you need reagents from helltide for rerolling stats on items, to summon endgame boss and so on. So if your playtime is limited and you're playing hour per day, you're SOL. Time gates (especially for progression) are insanely bad mechanic.
5) Bugs and networking issues. They’re fairly rare, but they happen. The most annoying part is rollback issue - where your character gets kicked out from the server, you can’t login for some time (biggest i had was like 20 minutes), and when you login, you see your progress rolled back by about 20-30 minutes. This is a really big problem that needs to be fixed ASAP. There are also desyncs, some issues with damage registration if you end up on some bad server with 200ms+ latency, and similar network-related issues.
5) Lack of set items. I guess they will come back in some season. But ATM unique + aspects covers all of your needs, so maybe, just maybe set items are redundant.
6) Paid seasons in general. Yeah, yeah, it’s just cosmetic stuff, and some of it is free, but I just hate season passes in general. Playing on FOMO is not nice.
Smaller nice things to mention:
1) Actually nice seasons mechanics, D3 pretty much stalled after they introduced horadric cube
2) Works great on steam deck, UI auto adjusts for controller, no messing with settings needed - it just works out of the box. Performance seems to be pretty fair too, if you sacrifice some graphics fidelity, you can easily get 60fps. I prefer medium settings, FSR set to quality, 45 FPS lock and TDP set to 10 - allows you to squeeze around 3 hours of playtime.
3) There is system called “renown” which is basically map exploration (side quests, dungeons, altars, etc). You get some really nice bonuses from it (significant stat boosts, free paragon points, flask charges and so on). Sounds boring, but you only need to do it _once_ on softcore / hardcore. Progress carries over, and your next season will be started with nice boosts - no need to grind renown again!
4) Steam version is proper port to steam - it doesn’t launch battle.net launcher, it just boots straight to game. Props for Blizz to not going “lazy” mode and actually working on steam release