Diablo IV Review: You’re In For A Hell of a Good Time

It’s hard to believe it’s been over a decade since Diablo III emerged from the depths of hell to steal away countless hours of our lives in pursuit of gold, glory, and gobs of shiny loot. Now, eleven years, one remaster, and an ill-received mobile entry later, Blizzard Entertainment has returned with a proper numbered entry in the long-running hack-and-slash series with Diablo IV. Ditching the divisive cartoonish aesthetics found in Diablo III in favor of the gritty gothic style of its predecessors, Diablo IV is a hellish homecoming for the franchise, delivering an enchanting mix of sublime dungeon-crawling, punchy combat and an utterly addictive gameplay loop that will leave you under its spell much like the game’s horned antagonist, Lillith. If you’ve been waiting for a game that has what it takes to pry you away from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Diablo IV just might be the one.

She Sells Sanctuary

Diablo IV’s story occurs fifty years after Diablo III: Reaper of Souls. You play as The Wanderer, who, shortly after assisting the inhabitants of a snowbound mountaintop village, finds himself double-crossed by the locals and prepared as a sacrifice to Lillith, the co-creator of Sanctuary, the realm where this latest adventure takes place. It’s a brutal starting point punctuated with a bloody rampage through the village that perfectly sets the tone for the grim journey ahead. What follows is a trek through a vast land teeming with crypts to crawl, vile demons to vivisect, and so much more as you travel the realm in pursuit of Lillith while clashing with her crazed cultists.

Diablo IV’s world of Sanctuary is massive. Consisting of five sprawling, interconnected zones, you’ll navigate swamps of blood, arid desert wastelands, snow-capped mountains, and other bleak locales throughout its campaign. Each of these areas is absolutely brimming with cellars (optional challenge rooms which, once completed, reward you with treasure), Altars of Lillith (which grant you permanent stat boosts), dozens of side quests, and other world events to help satisfy the most discerning completionists among us.

This dreary realm is mostly blanketed in perpetual darkness. Still, there’s a superb sense of visual identity that makes each new area you encounter feel unique and exciting to explore. And given the fact you’ll primarily be mashing the attack buttons for dozen of hours, this bit of variety is most welcome and helps keep things engaging despite Diablo IV’s rather formulaic design.

Of course, this is hardly a knock against the game. Diablo IV is nothing if not familiar. But what it does, it does exceptionally well, delivering smart evolutions rather than radical changes to the series’ established formula. From its five distinct classes to choose from, each with massive skill trees that encourage frequent experimentation, to world events that pit armies of players against monolithic monsters, Diablo IV has no shortage of content to keep players glued to their controllers for months to come once they’ve polished off the sizable main course that is its campaign.

As a longtime fan of the series, I’m far from immune to the dopamine rush which ensues from hacking and slashing my way through hordes of hellspawn in pursuit of the next rare weapon or another shiny trinket to add to my burgeoning inventory screen. Thankfully, in Diablo IV, duking it out with the legions of the damned has never felt better.

Knee-Deep In The Undead

Diablo IV puts a dizzying amount of freedom at players’ fingertips with a robust skill tree that grants players plenty of room to tailor their avatars to their liking. Of the game’s five playable classes, I chose to roll as a Barbarian for my review playthrough, a beefy brawler skilled in swords, axes, maces, and other pointy armaments. Not only was this class great for tanking hordes of monsters thanks to its sturdy armor and near-bottomless health pool, but it also had incredible DPS potential thanks to the various buffs and stun abilities available further down the skill tree. At first, I was content to just bash my opponents into a pulpy paste. But as my repertoire of abilities expanded with each level, I found myself focusing more on stunning my opponents with mighty stomps and delivering powerful death blows before they could find their footing. Of course, the Barbarian’s ability to spin around with his giant war hammer like a top of terror didn’t hurt, either, producing showers of broken bones as I barreled into hordes of rampaging skeletons.

Suffice it to say, I had a blast playing as a Barbarian. But other classes are just as exciting to dive into. So if you feel like amassing an army of undead warriors, lumbering golems, and spectral mages to fight alongside you, the Necromancer class has you covered. Or let’s say you want to channel your inner werebear and maul the hell out of the opposition. If so, you can’t go wrong with the Druid. Each class affords so much freedom that you can find various ways to play each one. And with painless respeccing, you’re more than welcome to tinker with your build to your heart’s content to hone your perfect playstyle.

Diablo IV’s combat is immensely satisfying no matter which class you choose. Playing on the game’s default difficulty of World Tier I, players probably won’t have much trouble button-mashing their way to victory in pursuit of Lillith. However, dial up the difficulty to the higher World Tiers, and Diablo IV begins to offer a perfect mix of strategy and spectacle as you battle a near-bottomless bestiary of baddies. Boss fights are especially exciting, as they demand quick thinking as you dance around waves of AoE (area of effect) skills, wide sweeping slashes, and waves of supporting mobs looking to crash the party.

We Got Served

As is the case with most live service games, Diablo IV isn’t without its inherent issues. While my time spent in Sanctuary was overwhelmingly enjoyable, with the action flowing at a rock-solid 60 frames per second, there were a handful of unfortunate technical, network-related problems that reared their heads from time to time to spoil the fun.

The most frequent of these problems was a weird tendency for the game to start rubberbanding endlessly when trying to enter a new zone. Sometimes this could be resolved by simply waiting outside of the entrance for a few minutes. Other times, the effect acted like an invisible barrier, forcing me and my party to find an alternate path into the zone. Is it game-breaking? No, not really. But it was certainly annoying and caused me to waste time re-treading old ground when I wanted to be pushing ahead on my adventure.

Less easy to overlook were the few occasions where the action would completely seize up in the middle of a fight, only to resume after my character had died. Playing in standard mode, I only lost a bit of progress and had to pay a 10% cost to my equipment’s durability. However, had I been playing in the game’s Hardcore mode, which features permadeath, I would have lost my character forever and been far less forgiving. Unless this issue has been sorted out since launch, I suspect other players will likely suffer a similar fate, many of them in the game’s Hardcore mode, and man, do I feel for them and the controllers they’ll likely be hurling into the drywall as a result of dozens of hours of lost progress.

Problems like these made me wish Diablo IV had an offline mode so those rolling solo could avoid the headaches the game’s always-online nature sometimes brings with it. But that’s not to say connectivity issues were the only situations you’re likely to encounter during your time in Sanctuary. Sometimes Diablo IV can feel surprisingly unbalanced. The difficulty spikes come abruptly and can be brutal from one minute to the next, turning an otherwise manageable dungeon into a bonafide battle of attrition at the drop of a hat.

Infernal Majesty

In terms of presentation, Diablo IV is nothing short of breathtaking. As I said at the outset of this review, Blizzar’s latest offering smartly eschews Diablo III’s World of Warcraft-inspired visuals to deliver a grim masterpiece. The world is dark, dreary, and immaculately designed, with lushly detailed dungeons, a striking overworld, and excellent animations. The creatures you’ll encounter are especially striking, with some of the boss creatures stealing the show as they deliver spectacular displays of power with particle effects and hellspawn filling the screen. There’s also a fair bit of in-game cinematics and CGI to push the story forward, and they both look great and really add to the experience.

On the aural front, Diablo IV is exactly what you’d expect from the franchise, right down to the haunting acoustic guitar melodies that are sure to entice series veterans to stay awhile and listen. Add to that the familiar sounds of healing potions being consumed, the clamber of steel hitting stone as loot rains from freshly-cracked treasure chests, and the guttural roars of demons lurking in the shadows, and Diablo is a feast for the senses—especially those nostalgic for the early days of the series.

Conclusion

While its always-online nature can occasionally result in headaches, Diablo IV ultimately delivers exactly what fans of the franchise deserve: a meticulously crafted action RPG that’s great alone and even better with friends. With a sprawling world to immerse yourself in and near-limitless room for experimentation, thanks to its excellent progression system, Diablo IV is a worthy successor to Diablo III that shouldn’t be missed — and these are just the early days! I can’t wait to see where it goes from here.

Final Verdict: 4.5/5

Available on: PS5 (Reviewed), PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC; Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment; Developer: Blizzard Entertainment; Players: 1-4; Released: June 6, 2023; ESRB: M for Mature; MSRP: $69.99

Full disclosure: This review is based on a copy of Diablo IV provided by the publisher.