I did not think the game would be so bad that I’d have to refund it – never did that for a game before, but wow. This is something else… (Also, this whole post is a rant. Sorry, just gotta get it off my chest. Feel free to sound off and/or tell me why I’m wrong.)

I grew up playing Diablo-1 and Diablo-2. Dumped a lot of time into Diablo-3 when that came out, too. I really, really hoped D-4 would be better after the FUBAR they committed with D-3. (Remember when your character was basically a Terminator, walking through the halls of heaven and destroying everything in its path with zero effort? Good times, great worldbuilding, very wow, much impressive.) But JFC, right from the start, D-4 seems to be the least demanding, most ridiculously casual game of the entire franchise.

This is a rant. Feel free to close it. 🙂 If this helps at least one other person avoid purchasing the game, cool.

To start, the graphics were amazing. That first cut scene? Wow. Also, the character customization window was excellent. As for the rest…

  1. The sorceress starts the game with zero spells. Her only weapon is a stick that also doesn’t cast spells. 🙂 That’s not a sorceress – that’s an over-confident applicant to the mage school. (Compare and contrast D-2 at least giving you a rudimentary magic staff from the start.)
  2. No option to chat or even listen to the mysterious delirious stranger whose very presence kicked off a quest. Why? Just…. why? At least let me hang out and listen to his ravings. But nah, zero freedom.
  3. Can’t loot any of the animals I killed. (Killing a goddamn bear with one shot was pretty funny.) Can’t harvest their hide, or blood, or horns (that deer had so much potential), or souls, or teeth. Lame. Wasteful, even.
  4. Novice-level spells cost zero mana and can be fired non-stop. O_o That turns the dynamic into a plain old “point and click.” There’s zero tactics involved – and I made sure to play on the “experienced” difficulty level, not the newbie level. Remember how in D-2 you had to run around and conserve your mana while a bunch of mobs chased you? Yeah, so there’s an infinite source of basic-level magic now, apparently.
  5. Speaking of running around: no stamina bar anymore, either. Every character is now a marathon runner, woot!
  6. Somewhere after Diablo-3, the world lost the belt technology. 🙂 Shame, really: I guess they all wear suspenders and/or togas now. You can carry a ridiculous amount of gear in your inventory now, but gods help you if you decide to carry more than 4 potions on your person.
  7. The first big boss (X’Fer or some similar cliché fantasy name, all X’s and apostrophes) got defeated just by clicking on him, holding down the button for a couple of minutes, and occasionally stepping aside. Smooooth. Compare and contrast with the horror that was the Butcher in D-1, or how ridiculously difficult it was to kill Blood Raven in D-2.
  8. Accidentally clicked on the non-obvious exit right after killing the boss. The game wouldn’t let me to climb back inside the tower to pick up the loot. Why? Just… why? Skyrim came out 11.5 years ago, and even that gave you the freedom to backtrack, unless you specifically jumped off a ledge. Seems like the future gameplay will also be straight and one-sided like you’re a one-dimensional character.
  9. Again, the cut scenes make for nice eye candy, but that’s wayyyy too much cut-scene material for just the first 30 minutes or so of gameplay. (Compare and contrast: in the TV show Heroes, it took 9 episodes of build-up before they even showed the face of the villain Sylar. Here, we have the big bad monologuing at the very beginning.)
  10. Speaking of monologuing: the British accents in the intro cut scene (three looters and a scholar) were kind of amusing, though kind of cliché. But what was up with everrrryone in that village trrrying theirrrr best to do a strrrrronk Easterrrrn-Eurrropean accent? It felt so damn cringy, almost like watching “Orange is the New Black” again. Maybe my memory is failing me, but I don’t recall such an overabundance of thick ethnic accents in any of the previous games. Characters had foreign names, yes, and each NPC’s voice conveyed some aspect of their personality, but can you imagine the inhabitants of D-2’s Lut Gholein doing super-thick Middle-Eastern accents just for the fun of it? JFC…
  11. The leveling is way, wayyyyyy too fast. Five levels just for clearing out a ridiculously easy boss and a few skeletons?.. I logged out in disgust and got my refund ASAP, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I also scored 10 achievements along the way. (“Newwww achievement! Your character met their FitBit goal for the day by walking 50 steps!”)

tl;dr – shoddy writing, poor gameplay design and worldbuilding, zero challenge or tactics involved, and the dev team probably had fewer RPG players than the dev team that created D-3. 😦