Our Diablo 4 review reveals that the old formula not only survives in 2023 – it thrives.
I arrive in a remote village, my body beset by numbing cold. To my relief, the villagers welcome me, and, after I help them with a pesky demon problem, we share a few drinks. It’s a relieving, feel-good moment, which would be more than enough in a traditional fantasy story. However, Diablo 4 is its own beast.
I pass out. It turns out that the village is full of cultists, and I was drugged at the drinks celebrating my heroism. A priest, whom I’d written off as a panic-stricken civilian, comes to my aid, and the two of us fight our way out of the village – make quick work of the duplicitous locals with whom I’d broken bread not moments ago.
I survive, but there’s a grim feeling in the pit of my stomach that I just can’t shake. Threats are everywhere in the world of Diablo 4, and safety is fleeting. This pervasive sense of peril adds a sense of sharpness to the decisions you make – a sense boldly reinforced by the game’s commitment to an eerie and repressive gothic art style.
Diablo 4 opens up like a flower, a fractal of decision points and satisfying choices that stem from humble origins. At the very beginning, Blizzard’s ambitious and latest attack on the internet’s best RPG lists asks you to pick a class. This is everything: instrumental in deciding what tools you’ll have for interacting with the game’s meticulously crafted systems. Even at this early stage, you are given access to a decision tree with meaningfully divergent paths.
Each class is lovingly curated. The Rogue is agile, subtle, and cerebral while the Necromancer is wreathed in blood, bone, and darkness. Crucially, however, the classes in Diablo 4 are not ends in and of themselves but are means to an end.
