Diablo IV (PC) - Part 2

This week on Super Adventures, I'm writing a little bit more about Diablo IV.

I'm using the game's original red logo colour for part 2 as the updated green logo makes it look the official video game of Monster energy drink. Though I miss the old logo from the first two games, with its beautiful animated flames. This one's not terrible, but it doesn't have any fire at all and it looks like something heavy landed on top of the letters and did some damage.

It was probably due for a redesign to be fair, seeing as Diablo 4 came out 11 years after Diablo 3, which came out 12 years after Diablo 2. Oh, plus there was also the free-to-play MMO Diablo Immortal in 2022, for fans who had phones and $200,000 lying around to afford to max out their character. I don't have any immediate plans to play that one.

Alright, there are three things you should know before you read any further:

1. This is part two, and you can find part one HERE.
2. There will be SPOILERS for stuff that happens in the first few hours.
3. I actually played this in January so a lot of things could've changed in updates since then.

---

Okay, what am I looking at here? What's the game showing me now? Oh, it's a battle pass! I've heard about these. I think I opted into this when I selected to play in the Seasonal Realm instead of the Eternal Realm.

It seems like there are three tiers: Free gets me 28 rewards, Premium features 90 rewards, and Accelerated would allow me to skip 20 tiers! I don't think that's something I even want, so I'm definitely not paying extra for the privilege.

I'll have a free pirate coat though! It says I need to "Earn Favor by killing monsters, completing quests and completing objectives in the Season Journey," so it seems like all I need to do is carry on doing what I'm doing. I suppose the catch is that if you're don't put enough hours into the game before the season ends, you're going to miss out on stuff. I've got 10 days left, I'll see how well I do.

Alright, previously in Diablo IV, my poor hero got drugged in a tavern, was fed the blood of the demon Lilith, and was about to get killed before being saved by a monk called Iosef. Oh plus he got lost in a storm and his horse got eaten by wolves, so he's been having a bad week.

Iosef pointed him to a hermit called Lorath, and now the two of them are a mission to stop Lilith from doing whatever it is she's doing. Though Lorath's going off on his own to the Dry Steppes to investigate something, so now I'm pretty much free to go wherever I want. I've even got a new horse and a dog!

So I decided to ride off in a random direction, where I found a mysterious cave.

This place is creeping me out with all the writhing tentacles sticking out of its crumbling walls.

I like all of the loot spraying out of the chests though! It would've been helpful if the gold landed in one big pile, but I try not to complain much about free money.

The level can get a bit messy with all the loot and enemy health bars everywhere, but the first Diablo has transparent walls and the map overlaid across the entire screen, so this a lot more readable by comparison.

The enemies here are a bit cleverer than the ones I've faced before, as they're hitting me with area of effect attacks. When a big circle or line appears on the floor I need to click to move somewhere else before the hurting starts. I'm doing a lot of backing away in general, as the enemies are like a tide flooding in.

Fortunately I upgraded my arrow attack to do knock-back like a movie shotgun, so that helps. In fact I should upgrade it further, seeing as I've levelled up since I last checked my skill tree. I keep forgetting.

The game has decided that my quest here is to 'Slay all enemies in the Ghastly Depths' so they're showing up as red dots on the minimap and now I can see just how many of them there are. There are a lot of them. I haven't seen any other players down here though. They show up from time to time around towns, but it seems like I get the dungeons to myself. Works for me!

I feel like the game really wants me to unlock another skill already, but I've got a left mouse button move and right mouse button move and that's as complicated as I need it to be right now. Especially as there's no cooldown on them worth mentioning and every move I have will be running off the same stamina pool.

It regenerates fast, by the way. Sometimes I press the attack button and nothing happens so I have to wait a second, but that's rare.

Damn, I've filled up my inventory with blue coloured loot. I don't mind dropping a regular item to free up space, they're not worth so much, but I'm not leaving anything blue behind.

The game's the opposite of of something like Baldur's Gate when it comes to weapons and gear, as much of the gear I'm picking up from regular combat is better than what I have equipped, and there's no lore attached to make magic items feel special. In fact there's so much stuff to through, that I've been using the price to decide what to wear, as it's simpler than trying to work out if 2.7% extra critical chance is better than +7 dexterity, or whatever.

Oh, oh! I just realised that I have infinite town portals. That's not just an instant trip to the shops, it'll also give me a magic door back here again once I'm done offloading my loot. Where was this when I needed it in games like Dungeon Siege and... well, any RPG with limited inventory space really?

Whoa, I was not expecting it to be so bright out here. I suppose the game must have a day/night cycle

Oh no, I forgot that other players are roaming around out here. I look like a dumbass wearing the mismatched gear I found in that dungeon so I should hurry up and get back into a dark cave where no one can see me.

First though I should speak with Veroka and upgrade my potions to enhance their potency. That's what the quest under the minimap is telling me to do anyway.

I'm also playing around with the wardrobe and it turns out that I misunderstood how it works. I thought that when I scrapped a piece of gear it unlocked its colour as an option for new items of the same type.

How it actually works is that it unlocks that gear itself as a cosmetic choice. So I've got a whole bunch of different costume pieces to pick from and 17 different colours to dye them.

It's funny, back when I was playing games like the original Diablo I thought it was a shame that I couldn't see the armour that my character was wearing while walking around in game. Now it does show the armour, and I'm choosing to cover it all up!

I shut the game off to take a really quick break (because: always-online) and when I came back my town portal back to the tentacle dungeon was gone! I'll have to ride my horse all the way back over to the cave and then walk down to the floor I was on.

That's fine though as I should be getting on with the actual campaign already. I've got three choices to go with, but they're marked 'Act 1', 'Act 2' and 'Act 3' so I have an idea of what order they should be played in. In fact I should probably go to the quest that's right next to me in this very town.

I strolled into a beautiful cathedral with a fantastic carpet and had a chat with Reverend Mother Prava.

Hey it's my monk buddy Iosef! He's not happy that Lorath went off without me and it's thrown a bit of a wrench into Prava's plans as well. She was going to send him to investigate a demon sighting in Gale Valley, but since he's not here she'd appreciate it if I could go in his place.

So after I've finished admiring this rug I need to head to Yelesna and take stock of events.

I rode my horse south to Yelesna, ignoring all the enemies along the way, but once I arrived I got distracted by the blue ! on the minimap. It turns out that those are definitely side quests and now I have two of them in my journal.

One is about collecting a certain number of ghoul hearts, I'm sure I'll get that just by playing the game. The other is to help a woman called Krystyna find her husband and seeing as she's started tagging along with me I should probably get that done first.

I headed off on foot to the south east, to the blue circle on the map, inflicting great violence upon all those who would stand in my way. Seriously, I'm one-shotting the bad guys in this area, and I'm grateful for that considering how many there are.

Oh hang on, I've stumbled across another one of those ambush events, where I need to survive for a few minutes and hopefully keep the folks trapped under carts alive as well.

Damn, I was unloading all of the hurt I possibly could, as fast I as could, without any concern for my own safety, and I still failed the bonus objective. Either I'm just not equipped to deal out enough damage per second, or there's something I'm missing. Still, I did well enough to earn a chest at least. More loot!

I did eventually find Krystyna's missing husband, but it turns out he's gone a bit Hellraiser and has decided that he's into pain now. He's into it so much that he's had his skin stripped off and there's a dagger sticking out of him. I'll spare you the screenshot.

I chased the demon responsible and I was all set to get my ass handed to me, but I basically just held the left mouse button down and she dropped after a few arrows. Seems like I was underlevelled for the caravan ambush event and overlevelled for the side quest boss. I went back to Krystyna, who was very disappointed in her husband and told me to keep the dagger in his chest as a reward. Fun times in Diablo.

I really am going to get on with the main plot now though so I followed the quest marker to a nearby mine and met a couple of new characters. They must be important as they get an actual cutscene!

Neyrelle here claims that her mother went down into the depths with a horned demon woman, so it seems like I'm on Lilith's trail. The guard, Vigo, is not keen on getting involved with any of this and I don't blame him. I shouldn't be chasing the final boss at my level either!

Well okay, it's the next part of the main quest, so there's probably nothing down here I can't I can't handle. Unless I was supposed to do some side quests first.

Well I've ended with up with both Vigo and Neyrelle in my party, so that's cool. Though the mine's lift is stuck so we're having to go down one level at a time, admiring the beautiful scenery and having a chat along the way.

They're definitely helping out in fights somehow, though what they're actually doing I'm never sure. I can't even keep track of what I'm doing in this mess. Sometimes I only know where I am because I'm always in the centre of the screen.

I'm having a weird sense of deja-vu.

It's not unheard of for an RPG to reuse dungeon maps, Dragon Age II is notorious for it, but at least that didn't use the same place within three minutes. Uh, don't think too much about the time in the top right corner. It's a Saturday, I can spend a whole night working through my game backlog if I feel like it. You want these articles to get published more often, right?

15 MINUTES OF CLICKING ON BAD GUYS LATER

Vigo eventually bailed, leaving me and Neyrelle to continue into the ancient ruins underneath the mine without him.

Now I'm fighting these little void ones. They like to teleport behind me, so I'm always finding myself surrounded. Fortunately I can always roll out to safety. Well not 'always', as I have to wait for the cooldown. I'm not going to lie, it's kind of frustrating.

Enemies don't seem to respawn on a floor by the way, so it seems like I can clear a whole place out and then walk back to check for loot I missed in peace.

Every now and then we reach another note or another vision that tells the story of what Lilith and Neyrelle's mother have been up to down here. It seems that her mother has been getting more corrupted and more receptive to Lilith's agenda over time, like the guy in the intro was.

I can admire a search for knowledge, but when a demon asks you to bleed for it, maybe take a step back.

Neyrelle knows a bit about magic herself, but that means I'm the one who has to protect her while she spends 40 seconds unsealing this doorway. Man, I really hate escort missions. I hate them almost as I much as I hate 'defend the object from waves of enemies' missions.

But this actually turned out to be alright, as the enemies all went after me instead of her. I don't mind it when I'm the target, I can do something about that.

We found Neyrelle's mother Vhenard at the bottom level of this ancient nephalem city, drawing symbols in her own blood and too far gone to listen to reason. I should've known that she'd turn out to be the boss I'd have to fight at the end of this dungeon.

The game's gone a bit bullet hell with all the stuff that Vhenard's minions are throwing at me, but only a bit. I just keep putting arrows into them until she sends out the next wave.

I made the mistake of touching the steps at the side of this tiny boss arena, they can be fairly deadly, but otherwise I've been doing suspiciously well here. I'm starting to think that 'normal' difficulty should've been called easy mode.

I defeated the mother and her hell spawn in self defence and her daughter kind of almost forgives me. But she ain't happy. She knows what's going on... and she's going to complete her ritual to find Lilith and get revenge! Eventually. There's other stuff that needs doing first.

Well I'm happy to turn the game off here, except I just hit level 15 and I can apparently get some extra class specialisation or something now. So I need to go collect my present.

EVENTUALLY, IN SOME FORSAKEN QUARRY

Damn, I like this! I found a shrine that turned me into "the storm's fury made manifest" for a bit. Now I can surge through enemies to unleash my chaos.

Though the enemies here are taking a lot more punishment than I'm used to and I'm actually having to use my health potions to deal with the damage they're inflicting on me. I can tell this dungeon has been tuned for players who are exactly level 15.

This is my class specialisation quest by the way, I met up with a rogue for my training and we went out to try to solve some murders. It turned out her student used a magic coin that drives you mad and she was the one who did the killings. Then she killed herself in order to end her own killing spree, which should've resolved the situation, except she was so badass in life that her ghost came back to kick my ass!

Anyway, I won the fight and I have my new class ability now. It's the ability to... do a bit more damage with my arrow flurry move after I've done the regular arrow three times? Something like that.

It's a bit of a disappointment to be honest. Not really the downer I wanted to end this on.

Hey I finally did enough to unlock my pirate coat!

I like how it changes to suit the different classes. Here, I'll show you how it looks on my rogue during gameplay.

Well, the scenery looks good at least. No seriously, I think this place looks really nice in game, when it's in motion and filling a monitor screen.

I decided to roam the landscape on my horse for a bit before turning the game off, to see if I could figure out how to get out of the starting region and travel to one of the other maps. No luck, I'm afraid, though I did get to see some variety in the scenery at least. Lots of variations of cold and barren.

Oh! I get it now. When it says Dry Steppes and Scosglen those aren't other areas of the world I can't reach yet, those are regions on this map I'm riding around right now. This map is all there is.

Well okay, the game's a bit smaller than I assumed it was, but that's not a problem. Especially considering how much of it takes places in the dungeons underneath. It's certainly a lot bigger than Tristram was in the first game! Though it seems like this takes place in a different part of the world than those other games I played, so I can't visit anywhere familiar and see how they're doing.

Somehow I feel like I already know how they're all doing. They're doing bad.

Anyway, there you go, that's what the pirate coat looks like on my rogue archer, when I've selected an appropriate colour scheme. It doesn't look all that piratey to me, but it'll do! And now I can turn the game off.

TWO WEEKS LATER

Hang on, I've heard that the game's just gotten patched so I have to quickly put it on again for a second to see what's changed. Retro games never mess me around like this! (Well, except for Doom, and I love it for that).

Wait, is this saying that I can choose to skip 35 level ups? Why would I want to do that? It'd be like choosing to skip winning races in Forza, or choosing to skip making lines in Tetris. It could be intended to get you ready to play the DLC content, but I don't own the DLC, so that doesn't benefit me much!

Anyway, it's optional so I'm going to opt out.

Here's what's changed in the patch: there's a new wardrobe screen! They've moved the window to the left and put the pigments on their own page. I still can't edit colours directly or anything like that.

I have to be honest, I don't really see the point of them doing this.


CONCLUSION

---

It's not uncommon for game franchises to chase trends and evolve to became unrecognisable. Duke Nukem, Syndicate and Fallout became first person shooters, Dragon Age and Final Fantasy are now action RPG series, Rainbow Six abandoned its single player campaign etc. But despite becoming an open world live-service, Diablo IV still plays like Diablo. Click on monsters, fill inventory, go home and sell gear, repair equipment, then go back to click on more monsters (again). It's just a lot less focused; there's so much to do!

Games like Skyrim have you exploring a world and choosing where your adventure will take you next, this has you wondering if you have the endurance to push through another side dungeon full of hurt. I really didn't play the game for long, but my kill count was in the thousands. Fights can feel like trying to empty out a leaking boat with a bucket. The enemies poured in and surrounded me and all I could do sometimes was keep doing what I was doing and hope it was enough.

Though your arsenal of abilities increases as you level up, adding just enough complexity to make me think I could've been doing much better, playing much smarter. I could've been using the dodge roll for one thing, though it takes so long to recharge I decided early on it wasn't worth the hassle.

You spend so much time wandering muddy paths and dank dungeons without anyone to talk to I'd say it'd make a good podcast game, but that'd spoil the carefully crafted atmosphere even worse than all the live-service notifications that keep popping up. It looks and sounds fantastic... kind of. I mean they nailed the graphics and art direction, but it's such a bleak and miserable world that they had to add an option to put highlights on characters so you can actually see them. And that's with ray tracing turned on. A lot of the time I lost my own character in the chaos and I had to fight blind, trying to judge where the middle of the screen was, as that's where they'd be.

I never reached the bad part though. I never found any reason to get frustrated with it. If you're in the mood to do violence to skeletons it'll keep you entertained for a few hours. It's even got a story, with characters and dialogue and everything, and it's been decent enough so far. Suitably dark for this setting. Nice voice acting. Though it's going to start losing its appeal if you replay the game with a new character every season to get the new seasonal content.

Unfortunately, like Diablo III it's firmly tied to servers and impossible to play offline even though it works just fine as a single player experience. It worked just fine as an online experience too I have to admit, I never had any issues with servers or my connection, but I don't like always-online DRM so I won't be buying this myself. I will just have to miss out on all the new content marked on the roadmap when it comes.

---

Thanks for reading! If you think you know what the next game will be, you should type your guess into the comments box below.

It's also a good place to write your own opinions on Diablo 4. Share your thoughts!