There’s never been a better time to play Diablo IV

When we reviewed Diablo IV, the latest installment in the long-running action roleplaying game series last year, we said it was off to a hell of a good start. But ARPGs live and die by their endgame loops, and it was far too early at the time to accurately assess the game’s true staying power.

Sadly, after that confident first step, like so many loot-hunting games before it, Diablo IV fell flat on its face. I’ve seen plenty of boneheaded updates to live-service games, but Diablo IV’s first major patch, released a couple of months after the game’s release, was still pretty shocking. By that point, a consensus had emerged that the endgame was a bit barren, and getting to the game’s level cap of 100 was a tedious slog. But that’s the great thing about live-service games, right? Tweak some numbers, throw in a couple of fun high-level activities, and, baby, you’ve got a stew going.

Sadly, the game’s developers at Blizzard had other plans. The patch notes for that first update read like someone had systematically gone through the game and removed anything that could be considered fun. Almost every character build had been mercilessly nerfed, and worst of all, the game became even slower. Fans were incensed, and Diablo IV floundered like this for its first three seasons. I mostly lost interest.

On the release of the game's first expansion, Vessel of Hatred, we're checking in on the state of the game—and we're pretty happy with what we've found.

Game details

Developer: Blizzard
Publisher: Blizzard
Platform: Battlenet, Steam, Playstation 4|5, Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One
Release Date: Oct. 8, 2024
Price: $39.99

Loot reborn

There were many problems with Diablo IV's endgame, but the most pressing concern was the loot. There were too many possible “affixes”—random properties on pieces of gear—and they were way too specific. You’d have a sword that gave you, like, extra critical hit chance to enemies below a certain health threshold or a helm that gave you a chance (of a chance) of healing on hit. Players started calling these hyper-conditional affixes "damage on Tuesdays" effects.

And because any rare item—a misnomer, as they’re very common—could be converted into a legendary (the items you actually want), you had to pore over every stat on every piece of gear to avoid missing an upgrade. Believe it or not, that was the tip of the iceberg—I’ll spare you an explanation of the game’s strange and infuriating implementation of “legendary aspects.”

It was all so confusing and tedious that looking through loot—what should mark a nice break in the action as you see if you got an exciting upgrade—became an impediment to playing the game. Often, when faced with a full bag of loot to sort through after some adventuring, I’d let out an exhausted sigh and log off.

Thankfully, Diablo IV got its “loot 2.0” update in season 4. (If you're remembering Diablo III’s Reaper of Souls expansion and feeling déjà vu, yeah, it was like that.) That season was focused entirely on fixing the loot situation, and… it actually worked.

Affixes were pared down to an understandable and easily scannable minimum, and the game added some light but engaging crafting systems to let players further customize their gear. It’s impossible to overstate how much the loot changes improved the game.

There were plenty of other updates, too. Endgame activities were added and tweaked (we saw a return of Diablo III's Greater Rifts in the form of "the Pit"), and the game generally found its footing. Now, Blizzard is going further.

Haters welcome

The cheerily named Vessel of Hatred picks up where the base game lets off. The story, told through the usual combination of cutscenes (both breathtaking and pedestrian) and fairly standard “go here and kill monsters” questing, is on par with that of the base game, which is to say it’s atmospheric and engaging enough, but you’ll probably play it once and then skip it in future seasons to focus on the monster slaughtering. I’ll be frank: I don’t care a whit about the story content of ARPGs, and I’d recommend looking elsewhere if that’s all you’re interested in. But it’s fine.

The new Amazonian-themed region of Nahantu brings a bit of color to Diablo IV’s intentionally drab and dreary map. As much as I enjoy the muddy fields and desolate wastelands of the base game, I’ll admit that a splash of color really livens things up. It still feels like Diablo, though, which is great.

Easily my favorite part of the expansion is the new class, the dexterity-based Spiritborn. The Spiritborn calls on the spirits of four creatures—jaguar, gorilla, eagle, and centipede—to rain down destruction on its foes. Any worries I had that the class would be too similar to the base game's animal-centric Druid class were dispelled when I actually got my hands on it. I didn't have time to try out all of its archetypes, but I specced into the fiery jaguar and poison-spreading centipede trees and found a lot to love.

There's a level of thoughtfulness and polish to the class that shows Blizzard really took its time in designing it. I'd love to see the company give all the classes some similar love—and while I'm wishing, I hope the next big thing Blizzard tackles is all of the game's skill trees. There are some mild tweaks in the new update, but the trees still feel a bit simplistic overall.

Also new in the expansion are mercenaries, a return of sorts of the "follower" system we had in Diablo III. Choose from four NPC mercs—a tank, a fighter, an archer, and a fire-wielding demon—to fight by your side, and level them up to unlock abilities and a new bartering system. I generally prefer a more lone-wolf style of gameplay in these types of games, but the mercenaries seem helpful, and they don't get in the way too much. I'll take their help.

Room for activities

Diablo IV's endgame activities had already reached a much healthier state before the new update, but Vessel of Hatred adds even more ways to get sucked in.

The Kurast Undercity, a new multi-stage time-attack dungeon, was a big standout for me. You start with a timer of 100 seconds or so, and you fight through several levels of a dungeon, killing specific elite monsters along the way to extend your timer and enhance your rewards. There are several ways to tailor the rewards to your liking, and the whole thing feels like a healthy burst of adrenaline.

I didn't get a chance to test the Dark Citadel, the Diablo franchise's first multiplayer "raid" experience, but it's a big leap for the series. There are three "wings" to the dungeon, each culminating in a boss fight, and you can complete a wing and come back later for the others if you want. But you will need a party to play—at least two people are required, and four are strongly recommended. Teamwork mechanics, the hallmark of any raid, are a big part of the experience.

Diablo is a distinctly single-player experience for many players, so this mode may fall flat with a large part of the audience. If you want to play with others, though, the game's new party finder will help you group up with fellow adventurers, and not just for the raid. You can specify activities, though this isn't automatic matchmaking; the finder just helps you find a group of like-minded players. Regardless of your thoughts on raiding (I'm generally not a fan), the party finder is something people have been asking for since the game's launch, and I'm glad to see it finally arrive.

2.0

The new version of Diablo IV is essentially a rework of the entire game, including progression and difficulty systems. The game now has eight difficulty levels (four standard and four unlockable "torment" difficulties), allowing for more granular control over your experience while giving you milestones to shoot for. It's a much better system than the convoluted "world tier" system we had previously.

The level cap has been lowered from 100 to 60, but there are now more points available for the Paragon system, which lets you continue leveling in the endgame. The Paragon system still feels a bit unwieldy to me, so hopefully Blizzard can continue to refine it in the future.

Vessel of Hatred also brings back Diablo II's "runewords," though the system is different in Diablo IV. Essentially, you can now slot two runes into any piece of gear that supports them, with one (a "rune of ritual") being a condition you need to meet to get a resource called "offering" and the other (a rune of invocation) determining the effect you'll get when you spend that resource. It's essentially a way to create your own skills. Cast a skill or travel a certain distance, for instance, to increase your critical hit chance or even get access to other classes' skills. The system seems fairly barebones at the moment, but there's plenty of room for expansion here, especially if Blizzard can balance all the effects.

Because Blizzard is once again shaking up several core systems, and because the community needs time to chew up and spit out the endgame, I can’t guarantee that hidden issues won’t start cropping up. I'm especially concerned about the fact that the game's pinnacle "ancestral" legendary gear seems to be a bit rarer than one would hope. Progression speed needs to stay snappy; no one wants a return to tedious grinds.