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Diablo IV
Diablo is the king of dungeon crawlers and Diablo IV is a worthy new installment in the famous RPG series. The game opts for a style that is more reminiscent of the dark style of Diablo II, but with the necessary innovations and improvements that bring much more depth than in the third installment. This ensures that players can vary widely, even within a certain class, in how they build their character and this benefits replay value. In any case, it’s very strong, because Diablo IV has a great load of content, some of which is also procedurally generated, so that undiscovered content remains for days to come. Other than a few minor criticisms, we don’t have much to complain about with this game. We can’t wait for the game to release next week and we can go on another adventure in Sanctuary.
“My God, what a year huh? Captain, it’s only June.” If, like me, you sometimes think in terms of memes, you will undoubtedly see the photo of Tintin and Captain Haddock. Over the past few weeks, I’ve thought of this beautiful image many times as I roamed the dungeons of Sanctuary, enjoying all the best Diablo IV has to offer. After all, when the exam period started, I had just finished The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and just before that was Star Wars: Jedi Survivor. A little while ago I was playing with the PSVR 2 and Horizon: Call of the Mountain and there was Hogwarts Legacy in front. There have been years with fewer top games than what 2023 has given us in the first six months and if you shoot June you can also include Street Fighter 6 and Final Fantasy XVI. Perhaps less.
Diablo IV is no longer uncharted territory for many players. Blizzard hosted several beta tests and server stress tests to ensure the game runs smoothly after its release on June 6th. Whether this succeeds remains to be seen. For this test we were able to play the game for ten days, on servers that were almost turned off. We’ve encountered another player maybe two or three times over the dozens of hours in-game. When asked, Blizzard explained that wasn’t necessarily the intention either. “Diablo IV was not designed as an MMO,” Zaven Haroutunian, the game’s associate director, tells us. it’s your own adventure.
Marks will follow later
Alright, that’s fine, but in the beta we certainly saw a lot of other players walking through licorice and that wasn’t the case now. In short: to judge whether Blizzard has succeeded in its objective of making the game reliable and stable, we will have to wait a little longer for the release. After this period, we will also publish an additional article in which we will take a closer look at performance, with a particular focus on the PC version. During the review period we’ve only tested the PlayStation 5 version of the game. So far it’s technically holding up: the game runs in 4k at 60fps and it runs fine, but we’ll see also this build after release to see if pressure on servers is still affecting performance. In any case, the first impression was good in this area, apart from a few bugs, like for example that our gamepad seemed to stop working at a certain point, which required a restart. There isn’t much else to say about it at the moment.
So what can we talk about now? Finally, everything else, starting with the decor and the story. If you participated in the tests, you have already played the intro of the story and you already know that Diablo IV revolves around the arrival of the evil Lilith in Sanctuary. The player can, on behalf of the cathedral, find out what Lilith is up to and how to stop her. It seems a little simple that way, but the story has enough fun twists and colorful characters to keep you captivated from start to finish. We don’t really want to say more, because every little spoiler is one too many.
Beautiful cutscenes
It’s funny: when we spoke to some developers, they said people play Diablo for the story. I had no idea at all. For me, Diablo III was more of a game that I played many times with friends, just because it was fun to do. I barely remember the story. It’s different for Diablo IV. This is mainly because the game has strong cut scenes, in which beautiful visuals are combined with excellent acting by the voice actors. The result is that films grab you and deliver audiovisual highlights. An interesting detail is that your character also plays a part in the story. You are there, you participate in the conversation and are therefore not just an anonymous spectator who happens to be present. Yet you don’t experience the story entirely in first person. The various Acts are introduced and closed by the narrator, which works well.
The cutscenes are a step up from the rest of the game, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the game isn’t quite as polished. For starters, every conversation in the game is fully sound and the voice acting performance is also good. This makes the quests, whether they belong to the main or not, all interesting: they’re short stories that you get sucked into and are portrayed in an atmospheric way, thanks in part to the actors. In no time, you’ll be lost in the overwhelming gaming world that is Sanctuary. And then the game must really begin.
