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The field-of-view is weird. Seems less isometric and more top-down and too zoomed in.
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As a Sorc, the design and animations of the spells suck. Chain lightning looks weak af and not fun/OP, like how it was in D2. Hydras in particular look atrocious, even the D3 Hydras looked better.
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I constantly run out of mana, preventing me from spamming my main spells and enjoying playing as a Sorc. D2 had mana issues as well in the early game, but at least you could stock up on mana potions and have them available as a hotkey. Even without a mana potion mechanic, D3 was still pretty fun to play as a Sorc and you could still spam spells, but I’m just not getting that feeling of fun yet in D4. I cast a Hydra and a couple of chain lightnings and I’m out of mana, and have to go back to the lame main spell, which is very unsatisfactory.
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The font seems cheap and not Diablo-y. Seems like they literally just used Times New Roman for everything, and I don’t get why, just makes the game look like a cheap and generic ARPG that we’ve seen these past few years. The fonts used in D2R shows that the classic Diablo font still looks awesome, same with Project Diablo 2 with their new S7 graphics and HD fonts.
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The music so far has been very unremarkable and again, not dark and Diablo-y. I miss the Diablo 1/2 music, the haunting guitar strums, the middle eastern desert themed music, the dark Indian chanting. Music play a big part in creating atmosphere, and that is missing from D4.
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Same with other audio effects and monster sounds. Why are the Fallen no longer praising Rakanishu or Colenzo?
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The new attribute and game mechanics isn’t really clear. For starters, I’d like to be able to adjust my attributes like in D2, like say what if I wanted to try out a max-block build? Or one that emphasis on greater mana availability at the cost of vitality? The effects of items also aren’t really made obvious. Like, what the heck is “Item power” on an amulet supposed to mean? Also, if I equip a staff that gives an INT boost, shouldn’t the damage I deal go up? But I don’t see the damage number changing when I swap weapons with different INT, does that mean INT no longer affects the damage? If INT still affects damage, what if I equip a weapon with a low damage value but high INT, would it be better than a weapon with no INT boost but high damage?
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I miss the old transparent overlay automap. With the new one, I find myself constantly checking the big map and switching out, because the minimap is too zoomed in and kinda useless (why can’t I zoom it out?)
Overall it’s been pretty unsatisfying and not worth the hype for me. I’ll begrudgingly complete the campaign though since I bought the game, and go back to playing PD2.
I also enjoyed it far less than I wanted to. Re: Your 2nd point : I find this really funny as I just started a sorc the other day and one my first reactions was how terrible the spell animations look for a modern game. I’ve been tempted to re-install Diablo 3 just to compare them, as I remember them being much better.
I finished the campaign as a Druid and am now tinkering with the other classes, so nowhere near endgame, all my feedback is just from the above.
- The writing is bad, laughably bad. Not like, bad grammar or sloppy prose bad but just like…written by a really edgy teenager and then heavily edited by adults who weren’t allowed to change any of the actual plot points bad? There were some good ideas (trying to avoid spoilers), but (for me) none of them ever went anywhere. And there were so many just…dumb/silly things…nevermind all the cutscenes rendered with the games engine that look laughably bad/amateur compared to Blizzard games like…what is going on with those??
- D3 items were a hot mess of garbage compared to D2 and I think these might be a tiny bit better, but still seem overly messy and the mod pool is too big. I also don’t think I found a “real” unique yet? They all seem like RNG trash just there for the aspects to be extracted? I could be wrong here, maybe the real uniques come later but if so that’s (more) bad design imho.
- frequent lag
- agree on the automap. Quest interface also seems poorly designed and very frustrating to use.
- the whole thing feels aggressively like a console game ported to PC, not vice versa. I strongly dislike that in my PC games.
FWIW, I’m enjoying playing my sorc more than the druid, but we’ll see. By the last 2 acts, I could close my eyes and hold two buttons and kill any of the bosses (except the last boss where you have move 3-4 times).
I constantly run out of mana, preventing me from spamming my main spells and enjoying playing as a Sorc
Couldn’t agree more. Problem is when I have mana and my CDs available, my damage output is insanely high. But once I’m out of mana and CDs are off, I just walk around like an idiot lol. My build takes out basic spell too so I literally have nothing else to do but walk around. It needs a rebalance, I don’t want to have such high burst dps but a more constant gameplay with stable dps output.
Woah cool seeing a reference to PD2 here on beehaw already when I’ve only just joined. I’m one of the devs for it, glad you enjoy it!
I’ve been playing Diablo 4 with a different mindset, treating it more like a non Diablo arpg and with that I’ve been enjoying it. The story is better than previous Diablo games and the gameplay is decent (though I agree that resource management makes me use the basic skill way too much). I also agree that the music isn’t quite as good as D2’s. It’s a bit over hyped for sure and the MTX skins on a paid game sit wrong with me but for a generic arpg, it’s not a bad experience.
Nothing will be as good as Diablo 2, but I’m liking playing Diablo 4 as a chain lightning sorcerer far more than Diablo 3 in any way. The skill tree allows for much more creativity than 3. They’re a bunch of different, interesting builds. The basic mana-free skills are useful. The dropped resources give you something to do while waiting for mana to refill. There are items that incentivize alternating between core and basic skills.
Overall, I think it feels a lot more similar to Diablo 2 then Diablo 4.
Seems less isometric and more top-down
Isn’t isometric another way of saying “top-down”?
Does it have that boring cartoon look of III, or is grit at least back?
Cartoon look is gone for sure. Art style really seems to nail what most people were looking for in a Diablo game.
That’s good, at least. Maybe later I’ll consider pirating it.
When I can play it (or rather, when it’s playable), it’s pretty decent. My problem seems to be that the PS5 version apparently has some connection issues. So I spend most of my time lagging.
I’ve really been enjoying it…
Same here, though I’m only able to play an hour or two a night (dad checking in) and am only around level 30. I played the beta and the server slam and have tried a few classes. I agree that the camera is too close but I’m constantly impressed by the build variety - Diablo 3 was lacking in that regard and while I lived D2… it obviously wasn’t very friendly to experimentation last the early stages.
I watched MrLlama’s (popular d2 speedrunner) videos about d4 and decided I will most likely hold out for a sale or deep deep sale before I get the game. From the sounds of it d2 is still just straight up superior in most categories. Especially with the new remake making it look almost as nice. And since I still have d2r and still haven’t gotten my enigma yet, why not go back into to it?
If anything d4 has made me want to play d2 more lol. I am glad people are enjoying d4 though. Much different song and dance this time around than when d3 released.
My current biggest gripe is that I am fearful Blizzard is somehow going to take a perfectly functional game and somehow ruin it, since it is a live service game after all, and it is Blizzard. Thus the wait for a sale.
Enigma
Yep, been playing this game for two decades and have yet to see a Ber rune drop lol.
