Hello !
Enjoyed the Diablo series from D1 to D3, with the latest title to be definetly the weakest of them all, not going to speak about immortal.
In one sentence: It feels like Diablo, the potential is there !
So I played only Druid and Sorceror in the beta to get a deeper look into mechanics, the MMO aspects, graphics & atmosphere, sound & music, gameplay, balance and itemization. Also wanted to check the storytelling and the cinematics in my first playthrough.
1. Storytelling & Cinematics
To begin with: The cinematics are top notch and very well made. CGI is on point and really encourages the player for the lore. Thats just phenomenal work, what we expect from blizzard and a good diablo game. Its dark, grim, bloody and we first see the main antagonist: Lilith. What an introduction !
The storytelling is fine for me, its not something we have not seen before, but its doing the job. I like the change of perspectives in the ingame engine scenes. I think D4 will give us nice addition of lore packed into this game. When you read all the lines of text the first time, its well written also and fits perfectly into the world of a diablo game.
After one bossfight I really was surprised who actually hides beneath the shiny metal armor, no spoilers here. Well done!
If this level is kept through the entire game, thats going to be amazing: 9 / 10
2. Sound & Music
The music and the soundtracks are maybe not so memorable like the ones from D2, but theyre not bad either. Many of them fit the style and atmosphere of the game, or the location you are in.
In my opinion the transition between location and background music should be looked at, add some fading.
When in a battle, D4 shines with impulsive and strong sounds, its really enjoyable. I have no complaints here.
3. Graphics & Atmosphere
Hell yeah! Finally a good looking diablo game. It looks pretty good when all settings are maxed out. All the reflections in the water puddles, when you walk in the snow, you leave marks behind, even the skills affect the snow. impressive details, liked it very much, because these little details make the difference.
But I had some performance issues, even on a rtx4090 with the latest nvidia driver! game was capped to 60 FPS, sometimes in bigger fights with many enemies drops to 55 FPS. I imagine this is even worse on weaker hardware. Did not try the DLSS option to see if its better.
My biggest complaint here is actually the look of some of the skills ! Many just dont have the visuals that fit into this detailed world. Not all of them, but many. For example the frozen orb and blizzard. frozen orb does just not look like ice, instead like a flat thing that shoots projectiles. very disappointing. same for blizzard: the ice shards dont look very good, at least the frozen ground looks decent with some reflections.
Even worse is the meteor skill… it just looks so bad. Why not use the nice flames we have on torches in towns ???
Another example is the druids windshear skill or the tornados. that can be done better and more detailed in my opinion.
In general the atmosphere feels right, in combination with the graphics and details we see. The dungeons feel dark and grim, and from an artistic side of view very well designed. I will talk about the dungeon layout later…
4. Gameplay
The gameplay feels just right, battles are just good. when you hit something it feels very responsive. I like that the pace and speed of the battles is tuned down and not so chaotic like in D3.
There are many things to do: main quest, side quests, events, unexpected events and much more. this is neatly done, but some side quests were not skippable, that was annoying and should be fixed.
One most discussed topic is the UI: Its really terrible! the order of tabs that should go together is not logical, you can not hide the keymapping from the toolbar, WHY?
Whats also a step backwards is the world map. We should get a transparent overlay map like its done in every other game, and D1 and D2. Its totally breaking my immersion into the game when I have to look to the top right corner all the time. If not the overlay map then design a transparent map, so it does not disturb the players experience.
For the PC players please add a scaleable UI and skillbar, its taking so much space.
A hideable side quest icon would be highly appreciated as well.
To have a more clean experience Id suggest to replace “Dodge”, “Immobilized” etc. with just icons on the screen when youre in a battle. In big fights with many enemies it gets super confusing to differenciate which mob got what status effect, please fix that.
5. Balance
Comparing the druid leveling with the sorceror, it was really a pain to get him to lvl25. In my opinion there should be a kind of buff in the early game. Also melee felt very difficult in some boss fights compared to a class with range abilities like the sorceror. Making some adjustments would be the way to go.
Hard to say something here since there was no endgame, but the paragon board looks very promising to me, and its not only stat increases!
Next thing what bugs me is the skill tree. There are not so many options to choose from. even in D3 there were more skill modifiers than in D4 right now.
Boss fights were good and interesting, also very well designed. Also the boss stun is nice to have plus the different stages. I died even several times on veteran with my sorceror and the druid. Here to mention that it was very difficult with the druid in early game, since he has weaker skill damage overall compared to the sorceror. The skill " Earth Spike" is one of them, needs a buff for sure.
Damage numbers should be lowered, when reaching the endgame we dont need numbers in the millions and billions.
The automatic level scaling of enemies just destroys the feeling of getting stronger over time. Game is always challenging in some way, but this is a no go in my opinion.
6. Itemization
The items I found were in general useful and sometimes even a little bit build defining, which is a good point. Here to mention the legendaries with their aspects. Its a cool mechanic to have that rares are useful as a base for later on when you find your desired aspect.
7. Open World - MMO
Since I enjoy such games rather in singleplayer, I dont actually need the MMO component. Did not even join the world boss event.
For my taste the Open World was my biggest fear, but it was not that bad implemented. Only thing what really annoyed me and destroyed my immersion were too many players in town with their times really stupid names. If its instanced later on and we CAN actually toggle the names off, its fine.
Another contra here is the event system with other players. Some events are speedruned by others, I just collect the reward, thats it. Give us a choice here !!
Summary: The game Diablo 4 is better than expected from my perspective and I really enjoyed the beta besides the bugs and disconnects. If you listen to the community the game can really be a superb game.
Thanks for reading 
