Try as I might,Diablo 4’s endgame always remains just out of reach.
My second, a wild sprint to still-not-quite-the-finish with a new Barbarian, remains ongoing.
you might only buy cosmetics there, nothing that impacts gameplay.
To talk straight down the lens for a second then, here’s the plan.
We’re aiming to follow up on Diablo 4’s endgame in proper depth further down the line.
For now, I’ll focus on what I’ve seen already.
But what to make of the Diablo 4 that’s just Diablo 4?
And that what’s good now comes with a lingering sense of compromise.
The compromise comes from the kind of tangle you get into with games like Diablo 4.
This is a series about - among other things - the barbed hooks of grinding loot.
There’s nothing wrong with that!
you’re free to’t finish a Diablo.
And when a Diablo gets into your system, it’s much harder to get it out.
This is why the highs come with the compromise.
A loved one bursting in and thrusting initiate the curtains to let in some light.
The grind doesn’t matter.
The rewards of one battle are the rubbish of the next.
The numbers will never stop going up.
Diablo 4 is more than this though.
It’s a game made in service to richness, to lavishness and luxuriousness.
There’s so much game here, and it comes from so many directions.
It gives way, admittedly, to a story that’s told with a kind of out-of-place clunkiness.
But that hiccup aside - phwoar.
And no game sounds like this.
Somehow, the Platonic ideal of a thunk.
This is classic Blizzard.
The authentic sonic boom of levelling up.
Hear those and try not to salivate.
My first Necromancer, meanwhile, was entirely ability-based, focusing on, er, blood stuff.
This is the difficulty with min-maxing games like Diablo.
Still, the breadth and depth of options is remarkable - a luxury like so much of Diablo 4.
It’s amplified by the mechanics of the mid-to-late game, as Legendary items work their way into play.
Re-speccing your build by refunding skills is cheap and perfectly doable, but never encouraged or rewarded.
This is the real sticking point.
Take the tone and atmosphere, the visuals that’ve been reduced in fan conversations to ‘art style’.
Fine crafted faces trying to smoosh themselves through some kind of satanic goo.
Grey stone, brown fields, beige deserts, putrid swamps.
So much self-seriousness for something with the texture of a pre-formed chicken nugget.
Again though, the gore really isn’t the problem - it’s an attitude thing.
The entire packaging of Diablo 4 fits that, the more you look at it.
Diablo 4 obeys the sacred rules.
Skills must be part of a classic skill tree.
The endgame must be fully-fledged at launch and provide a platform for infinite future ‘content’.
Diablo must be grim and dark.
You must not be able to play it without the curtains closed.
Starting with Season 1, available for 8.39 this July.
I love it in Diablo 4.
