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Diablo IV

For hardcore fans of the ARPG genre, I think a lot of people had issues with some of the design decisions in D4. However, for the normal gamer I think it did a LOT of things right - especially if you come at the game from a "I'm going to play the main story then stop" perspective. I really enjoyed the main quest and my character. However, games like this are often judged on their depth and longevity. There were a lot of flaws with the balance of the game at release, and Season 1 hasn't changed most of that. If you're just looking for a mindless demon-slaying 40 hours though, I can highly recommend this. The production value and cinematics are great.

Pros

  • Looks amazing
  • It's accessible, while still having all the detailed statistics for people who want to get into that
  • The skill tree is well structured. Each node gives you access to a new choice of ability, and it looks like there are several different kinds that would all synergise with each other
  • Lots of dungeons. On completion, they award you with effects you can enchant your gear with
  • When playing multiplayer, everything is really smooth. You can teleport to each other from the main city, framerate stayed high despite 4 people all using their abilities, level scaling works really well. You share progress on open world things like dungeons
  • You can filter the skill tree for certain keywords. So if you're trying to build something around Lucky Hit, you can select it - and it will highlight all skills that use Lucky Hit in their mechanics
  • All characters can now evade (some equipment can increase evade chances, some skills can change how it works - so for a while I had teleport, and two evades that were also teleports)
  • Lots of different world events. Strongholds, cellars, sidequests
  • Option to skip the campaign on new characters once you've completed it
  • Mounts
  • 5 classes
  • Loads of options for builds and experimentation
  • Beautiful skill effects and abilities
  • The main quest is much longer than D3
  • Huge map
  • Lost of endgame content

Cons

  • I have the same problem with all modern ARPGs - you can't zoom out enough
  • Roughly half the time, clicking a dialogue option just closes the box instead of starting a conversation
  • No offline single player mode
  • They sell cosmetics in a €70 game
  • They sell "points" rather than items directly, which means you can never buy exactly what you want and have points left over, a dark practice making you spend more
  • Skins cost 25 EUROS
  • There are multiple versions of the game, at €70, €90 and €100
  • The €90 and €100 versions of the game came with "Early access" of 4 days. I notice their price hasn't gone down even though that bonus is no longer available as the game is out
  • There's a convoluted system of multiple battle passes and currencies to try and get you to spend more
  • Respeccing gets expensive quickly
  • Some of the events that happen in the game are truly disgusting and haunting
  • You lose quite a lot of quest progress if you don't "finish" the current main quest you're on. Twice I defeated a pretty difficult boss, then had to go offline. When I came back, it had rolled back to before defeating each boss and I had to travel across the map and do it again
  • You can't change your appearance in any way after character creation (especially annoying for druids, when hair colour affects shapeshift colour)
  • The balance is all over the place. Some builds are WAY more powerful than others.
  • There are a lot of junk stats on gear, which makes it difficult to optimise. For example, as a frost sorcerer, there are + Ultimate skill damage, + Core skill damage, + Frost damage, + Cold damage (cold damage isn't mentioned anywhere else in the game), +Damage to crowd controlled enemies. It's very unclear which abilities use which stats

Necromancer

  • You can't direct your minions to attack something
  • The heal ability isn't cumulative, so when you summon a new skeleton and you're at max skeletons already, they only heal 10%, then you wait a few seconds, then do it again. You should be able to consume all nearby corpses to stack all those heals.
  • You can only summon skeletons from corpses, which makes it pretty much worthless during boss fifghts

Sorcerer

  • As a sorcerer, I can place any active power in an enchantment slot to gain a passive version of that ability
  • Fire, Electric and Ice all feel excellent to play
  • Chain lightning build is boring. I'm constantly out of mana

Druid

  • The biggest reason I can't bring myself to play a Druid is that Werewolf is a druid form. WHAT? Lycanthropy is a disease, not a shapeshift form. It's also a silly stand-on-two-legs upright humanoid werewolf instead of down on all fours
  • Body shape is tied to class. I don't want to play a huge fat druid.
  • You can't stay in a form. You just switch to it when you attack, then back to human a few seconds later, which is a huge letdown for a class built around shapeshifting
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