DIABLO 4 REVIEW
A live service action RPG that almost buries everything that makes it great.
Diablo 4 tries to ground us in its dark fantasy world, but that's an impossible task in a game where you can pull a legendary two-handed axe out of a wolf. The storytelling is as subtle as a Marvel film and about five times as long, and no matter what Diablo 4's cast of dour characters tell you, you are a superhero born with an empty inventory and the desire to fill it.
The title of Blizzard's latest action RPG hides what's really going on: Diablo 4 is a reboot. An unnecessary reboot, but one with a recognizable goal: to reconfigure the series' strengths into a modern live service format that fits into the lives of players who probably have a handful of other games to play. Once you finish its campaign, its glorious depth reveals itself, but the overwhelming grind restrains the creativity in its intricate RPG systems.
Today's prevailing live service structure, exemplified by Destiny 2, might seem to be a good fit for Diablo's historically replayable co-op design, but it actually requires a huge structural shift. Diablo 4 begins like a story-driven adventure, but it's not until you finish the campaign that its best parts start to unfold. Entire features, like the MMO-inspired Grim Favors quests or the almost roguelike Helltide events, are held back until you've suffered through a 10-hour storyline that tries to reset the over-the-top tone from Diablo 3, but goes overboard with the grimdarkness without fundamentally changing what a Diablo game is about (killing demons).
[...]
Conclusion:
Diablo 4 is packed with powerful class builds and exciting loot to find, but clouds its most creative aspects with an overly bleak world and restrictive endgame systems.
Score: 85/100
