They say that the one good thing about hell is that you’re always guaranteed a warm welcome, and so it goes for Diablo IV. In fact, the demon-battling action-RPG series has never been so easy to get into or impossible to leave. As Dante said, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here”. Quick sessions have a fiendish habit of turning into all-night marathons, leaving you looking like a hollowed-out lost soul in the morning.
Its developer, the legendary Blizzard Entertainment, established what worked back in 1997 and hasn’t gone crazy trying to mix things up since; it’s still a fantasy RPG with all the tiresome brainy stuff pulled out. You pick a hero, roam the wilderness and dungeons, and barrel through every imp or undead horror that has the gall to get in your way. Killing monsters and completing quests grants you experience, so you level up and gain more powerful abilities with which you can kill more monsters.
Meanwhile, every rotting revenant and giant spider seems to be festooned with loot and magic trinkets, while the chests scattered liberally around the map contain an endless supply of new weapons and armour. The more you slay, the more it pays, and the better stuff you get to slay monsters with. It’s one of the most stupidly addictive gameplay cycles that anyone has ever come up with, which is often imitated but rarely bettered.
The long-term fans who grumbled about Diablo III’s brighter visuals and cartoon colour palette won’t have anything to moan about here. Diablo IV’s aesthetic is as dark and gothic as a heavy metal album cover, only this time the wildernesses and dungeons are rendered with an incredible eye for detail.
Stare down into the depths below a crumbling stone pathway, and you’ll see tentacles writhing or babbling streams of blood. Spooky moorlands teem with natural and supernatural life. The landscapes are bleak and frequently rain-soaked — even the coasts and canyons of the West look menacing — painting a picture of a world on the edge of doom. Only here there’s still hope where overpowered heroes stomp across the land.
There are five such heroes to choose from, all customisable with different faces, body types and hairstyles — and with the potential to be built up into dozens of variations as you play. Pick a Sorcerer for example, and you can focus in on fire spells or lighting spells. You can cleverly combine perks and energy to amplify your damage, or try a more balanced approach, selecting spells to cover you for different situations as you fight.
The same goes for the fearsome Barbarian, the shape-shifting Druid and the speedy, sneaky and hard-hitting Rogue. As for the Necromancer, when they’re not summoning a small army of skeletons to do battle, they’re letting rip with spears, spikes and missiles forged from bone. Diablo IV is just that kind of game.
The world you roam is no longer sectioned into tidy parcels, with one for each of the six acts, but has one sprawling map you can travel around at will. It’s vast, yet packed with monster camps, optional dungeons and creepy cellars where dark secrets lurk. You can spend hours traipsing around these and battling evil, without tackling the main story quests. Luckily, fast travel points and — later — horses, stop getting from A to B from becoming a chore.
The story here is the strongest of the series, told through powerful cinematic cut-scenes and a mass of juicy, well-acted dialogue. The world of Sanctuary — never the safest spot — is once again the battleground for a war between fallen angels and the fiends of hell, as Lilith, demonic daughter of Mephisto, returns.
Both the villains and the good guys have personalities and motivations, and even the bosses show signs of nuance, which makes them weirdly more satisfying to slay. And while Diablo’s fantasy realms have often seemed strangely static, with little real impact on the villages and cities from the hellspawn that’s settled in nearby, Diablo IV’s events transform the world around them. The game’s all the richer for this.
Most of all, Diablo’s core gameplay loop has never looked or felt this good. The combat is fast-paced and spectacular, pushing you to keep moving, control the mobs of monsters and use your most fearsome abilities when you need them most. A few hours in and you’re a sword and sorcery superhero, scattering your demon foes in all directions or scorching them to ashes with a blazing serpent made of magical fire.
The makers have worked hard to remove almost any source of friction, making it easier to manage and recycle your now obsolete gear. There are always ample signs and markets to help you to complete your mission or find the next one.
The game also goes easy on its approach to multiplayer. This allows you to play solo, with a friend or three, or switch between single-player and co-op as you like. The world and quests reflect the progress of the lowest-level player. Diablo is fantastic on your own, but a demon-slaying riot shared, and you can play with one other player on the same console.
And when the campaign’s done, Diablo IV isn’t done with you. You can restart the story with a new hero and their skills, or open up the world without the campaign quests and battle through its 120-plus dungeons and side-quests. There will be strongholds — super-dungeons ruled by super-tough bosses — that you won’t have had the skills or powers to clean out on your first run through. Giant World Bosses stalk the landscapes, beckoning teams of heroes to come and duff them up. Seriously, there’s enough bloodletting and brimstone here to keep you going for years.
Blizzard promises future seasons of adventure with new trials and challenges to beat. And, while there’s still a shop with cosmetic items, we’re a long way from the microtransaction nonsense that marred Diablo III’s endgame in its early days.
This is a game built for a wider audience, but Blizzard has been listening to the fans, creating a dungeon crawler to die for — and a demon horde that’ll do its best to make it so.
