Diablo IV Review: Gameplay Impressions, Videos and Speedrunning Tips

One of gaming's pillars returns with Blizzard's Diablo IV, by far one of the biggest releases of 2023.

Sure, Diablo II got a remaster and the mobile Diablo Immortal came out fairly recently, but Diablo IV is the first mainline installment in the hack-and-slash looter series since 2012's Diablo III.

The action role-playing game (ARPG) and looter series right there from the very beginning hasn't been hibernating while monsters like Destiny arose, though. It returns with the usual procedurally generated dungeons, extensive character building and more, yet blazes into modern trappings with an open world, PVP elements and so much more.

With this game's approach across the board, it's clear there is potential for Diablo IV to create a new highmark for the series, swiping the crown from Diablo II, which released in 2000 and has a dedicated playerbase to this day.

Achieving that would make Diablo IV quite the feat in the current gaming landscape, but it's apparent the lofty goal is right within reach.

Graphics and Gameplay

Diablo IV is a moody, immersive experience that lives in the gothic grays and shadows where little brightness ever breaks through the glum.

And it's delightful for that very reason (and a thankful departure from the colorful Overwatch-lite of Diablo III).

This is a powerhouse of a game visually, with stunning lighting effects and physics. The dashes of gore and major visual emphasis on special attacks is a joy. So too is the sheer detail baked into every environment. Zooming as far in as possible reveals a game that visually can stand tall next to nearly any game on the market, even though players will most often be zoomed farther back for gameplay purposes.

That zoomed-out state plays massively into the power fantasy, though. Enemy density can grow to staggering levels, but ripping off special attacks and watching the mobs erupt into red mist by the bunches is a neverending feeling of reward for the time invested in building up characters.

Exploring the world (now possible on summonable mounts), its cultures and overarching five regions is a joy, too.

Fractured Peaks is a good example of each area's depth. It's absolutely massive, bordering on MMO-zone levels. Sure, the name seems to suggest it all. It's indeed a snowy land where footprints quickly fade in the storm and all sorts of fitting monsters patrol. Varied weather patterns seem to obscure vision. But there's also an extremely dense set of cave systems and side dungeons to stumble upon.

Each region is aesthetically pleasing in varied ways. Scosglen is forested near a coast, while Hawezar is a dense sort of swamp with mists. Each feels like its own character, with Dry Steppes telling a story of the extremes its inhabitants have gone to in order to survive and Kehjistan passively illustrating the downfall of a civilization.

Even the presentation of the story deserves kudos. There are an impressive number of in-depth cutscenes early in the game that are drop-dead gorgeous. And when it goes for in-game storytelling, something as small as diversifying camera angles really makes things always interesting and varied.

The sound design oozes excellence, too. Voice-acting is top-notch, with even early side characters turning in some awesome, immersive performances. The score is gloomy, as expected, but the game really sells its environments with fitting ambient noise. Battle sounds are impactful, not just accurate, giving weight to damage inflicted and received.

At launch, Diablo IV has an amazing mixture of classes from throughout series history.

The basic Barbarian returns from the second and third games and is something of a weapons expert with an Arsenal system permitting four weapon slots. The Sorcerer, last seen in the second game, is a mage wielding all sorts of deadly elements and boasts three additional "slots" via Enchantments that permit extra passive skills. The Druid, returning from the second game, can wield two types of magic and shapeshift between human, werewolf and werebear forms. Transformation is now temporary and tied to skill usage, which feels better.

The Rogue, finally back from the first game, is the super-fast knife-based combatant when not employing a bow from range and has a unique combo system to amplify attack strings. And back from the second and third installments, the Necromancer leans into dark magic, including the highlight that is summoning an undead army for battles.

Attributes play a critical role in a character's effectiveness. One as basic as attack power gets tied not only to class, but equipped gear. Likewise, for defensive attributes like elemental resistances.

There are three new attributes (affixes) worth a highlight—Angelic, Demonic, and Ancestral Power. The first two influence the time spent under positive and negative effects, respectively. The latter increases the odds of applying status effects to others.

Navigating the map itself is now a big part of combat, too. Properly timing dodges, choices of attack, avoiding harmful enemies or environments and the farewell of regenerating health in favor of potions that drop on the ground takes ARPG autopilot largely off the menu, keeping players more engaged in the moment-to-moment action.

Some of the actual game objectives won't shock veteran players of Diablo and otherwise. Defend this place, wipe out "x" number of enemies in this dungeon, trigger this mini-event by taking down a boss, here's a bonus reward tier for doing it in a certain amount of time, etc.

But there's a catch—it's layered amazingly and hard to predict just what a player might stumble upon. One "side" dungeon early in the game took upwards of 45 minutes because it was massive with multiple things to do before clearing.

Even for veterans, progressing through the world will feel refreshing in what should be a good way. The story unfolds in non-linear fashion because this is an open world. To compensate, enemy levels now scale to the player's level, permitting players to navigate the regions in any order they choose. It's a nice, modern bit of freedom to have, although running into higher-leveled enemies can result in a brutal time.

Similar story with combat, including named bosses. A boss health bar will often be split into segments, whittling down the health to the next one will kick off a new phase. Some bosses spawn enemies at each phase, others require taking down shielding allies before the boss is damageable and other genre staples that keep the gameplay fresh and challenging.

One of the OG looters, most gamers should feel right at home with the game's rarity system for gear and weapons. The higher up the scale, the more an item modifies not only simple attributes, but adds effects.

Adding another layer of fun complexity is runes and runewords. Crafting these permits bonuses not only in a basic sense, but situational passive benefits for a wide degree of gameplay elements.

How about another layer? Games like Diablo and Destiny have had problems with "blues" not mattering. To combat this, and rather successfully, players can add more affixes to blues than in the past, so they're worth at least examining. Also new even for veterans is the presence of new stats tied to items, such as weapon speed.

Overall, the actual looting feels really good at launch. Some players are not going to love the rate at which legendaries and higher drop as they progress, but one could argue that's because other similar games like Destiny make it rain in this regard. Big drops in this game feel earned and are often so strong beyond what the player already has, at least before endgame, that it's always a thrill.

Diablo IV doesn't have any issues tackling modern customization, either. It feels like players can tweak everything, including the character portraits and even mounts. As a bonus and as expected, customization is no longer tied to class.

Even the initial character creator is surprisingly in-depth, permitting the tweaking of facial features. And there's transmog for weapons too, as taking a good-looking item to a blacksmith and getting it destroyed will add the look to the glamour wardrobe, meaning players can apply the look of it to other weapons.

The end result is an immersive experience with varied, addicting gameplay of the good variety. Controls are snappy on mouse and keys or controller and the world and combat itself is richly dense and rewarding, positioning Diablo IV as the best-feeling ARPG gameplay on the market today.

Story and More

Diablo IV takes place roughly three decades after Diablo III on the world of Sanctuary as the demon Lilith, daughter of Mephisto, comes back with a vengeance.

In the past, Lilith and an angel Inarius created Sanctuary together and the player character actually falls under the offshoot race of Nephalem, which helps to explain some of the narrative beats nicely.

The story is refreshing in the sense that it veers away from its predecessors. Some might love the high-fantasy tropes and political strife, but this is a simple everyman tale and the more grounded storytelling is just feels properly authentic.

It's important to stress just how much there is of it early, too. Gone are the days of just reading text boxes and maybe stumbling upon a coherent plot later. This is an immersive, gripping tale with world-building context littered throughout in a way other games should strive to emulate.

It wouldn't be an open-world Diablo game in 2023 without sidequests and the game offers them in droves. When not say, visiting an Alchemist to upgrade items or something similar, players will find their exploration rewarded by stumbling upon blue exclamation points. These are worthwhile sidetracks for better gear and the tasks range from "hey go cheer up my troops with a tutorial on how to emote" to much, much bigger.

While traversing that overworld, players will stumble upon other players, often helping them with public events or even inviting them to their party. In a nice immersion-boosting touch, big cities will show the player many other players, while deserted outposts will show them very few.

It's not a major ordeal, but it's a little disappointing when some of the procedurally generated side dungeons look very same-y especially early in the game (like lots of similar cellars). But even that feels like a minor nitpick given the vast number of things to explore in the game, but players should just set expectations accordingly. Like in the past, players can tweak the difficulty of the overworld to their liking, too.

The game boasts easily one of the biggest skill trees in a game to date. They're so big that, just eyeballing it, it sure feels like a player will only unlock about half of their classes' skills by endgame. That's a boon for replayability, experimentation and actually feeling unique despite the game "only" boasting five classes by definition.

Skill trees start with basic skills and attacks, then move to core skills that use a class-specific resource, then moves to other class-specific skills, etc. Each skill (six equippable at once) unlocked can hold five skill points, for example, buffing the basic left-click attack five times for enhanced damage.

What's fun here isn't just building powerhouse characters within a class. There are mixups in the form of either/or picks, really letting players dial into unique gameplay experiences. It's not easy to sacrifice a tantalizing skill due to picking another on the node, but it's the smart cost of doing business.

That sounds intimidating, but the game gives players an out with a respec option available at all times for a handful of gold that they will earn with ease through sheer experimenting with a new build, anyway. The cost does go up as the story progresses to add meaning to choices, but it never felt totally unfair.

Also modernized is inventory management, thankfully. Every piece of gear now takes up the same space in the inventory. It's a little thing, but players won't have to disrupt gameplay any longer to try and make every little thing they pick up fit in the past convoluted menu systems.

Beyond the main story, which will take a massive time investment in its own right, is the all-important endgame. This is the lifeblood of a release in this genre for hardcore players and while some get it right, even Diablo hasn't always stuck the landing.

On first pass, Diablo IV does. The Paragon system returns, giving players a way to better outfit characters in creative ways to tackle increasingly difficult challenges. Endgame staples such as Nightmare Dungeons, modifiers that boost enemy difficulty, randomized world objectives and PvP zones will occupy a player's time.

If that's not enough, there's a Hardcore mode and a permadeath feature, where only the bravest (or foolish?) will wander. It will provide one of the biggest rushes in video gaming possible, as it has in past games.

For players who don't outright vibe with the endgame, the campaign is meaty enough to justify checking things out anyway. And there's plenty of reason to suggest post-launch support could diversify the launch endgame, too.

It also wouldn't be a modern game without a seasonal content model with a battle pass, though that doesn't have to be a bad thing. Planned support far down the road beyond the playerbase keeping things afloat via replays isn't a bad thing. And at launch, microtransactions appear to be cosmetic only in nature.

As if all the above weren't enough, there's a big detail sort of tucked behind everything else—the game even offers local co-op, splitting the screen and enabling fun play sessions.

Diablo IV also predictably goes heavy in the options department. Those expecting the usual get it, plus quite a bit more. Helpful user interface (UI) details like the positioning of the action bar on the screen is a great addition. Key rebinding and so much more round out perhaps the best options suite in gaming. Another quiet, but big detail—cross-platform multiplayer has made the cut, too.

Speedrunning Tips

The Diablo series has never had a hard time maintaining healthy speedrunning communities, with its sizeable campaigns alone usually taking hours for world-record runs, difficulty level pending.

With Diablo IV, what feels like the biggest campaign to date could take even longer.

But players aren't without help. Skipping dialogue and cutscenes, proper world routing and leaning into fast travel will cut down times. So will proper inventory management, like knowing when to skip picking up drops in order to avoid fast traveling back to a town just to unload junk. Only targeting optional content with necessary listed rewards for the intended run is a must, too.

When it comes to classes and builds, it's really hard not to recommend Necromancer for speedruns, even when inevitable-feeling nerfs come into play. Turning dead enemies into reanimated allies that draw aggro or even ticking timebombs, among other feats, is a really efficient way to play.

Still, something like the Druid is really powerful too, even early on while, for example, chaining lightning attacks to stun groups before pulverizing them as a werewolf.

If speedrunning with friends, having a Druid get in there and command enemy aggro while a glass cannon like a Rouge inflicts massive damage from afar is an optimal example of efficient synergy.

Conclusion

Diablo IV is a stunning accomplishment in modern gaming in that it dramatically improves on its historic predecessors while outmaneuvering the majority of its modern so-called competition it helped create in the first place.

It does this by flexing the best storytelling and combat in the series to date, which is no small feat in itself. Neither is the fact it feels like nearly every step unearths a depth and richness of content not often seen in games.

While the game isn't perfect and will have inevitable missteps of any live-service game these days, the current foundation and future planned support suggest this is the closest thing gamers will get to a Diablo II-styled powerhouse that spans decades.

An absolutely massive game in terms of scope and literal size, Diablo IV launches as a success and easily charts as a Game of the Year favorite—though its ambitions and potential beyond Year 1 are somehow more tantalizing than that limited window of time.