Little bit background. I am not even casual gamer. My familiarity to genre is limited to playing previous Diablo games. I played World of Warcraft to level cap before the first expansion and then stopped soon after expansion was released. I wasn’t sure if I would like Diablo enough to pay full price. I had Diablo 3 which I had not finished. First week in Sanctuary was with it. Then on second I played story mode of Diablo 4. Played both with barbarian and started with easiest difficulty. I was at level 51 when I finished the story. I farmed renown to claim all three rewards before world tier 3 on four regions.
It was bit of a culture shock to start Diablo 4 day after finishing Diablo 3. I died twice in Diablo 3 after setting difficulty to hard. I don’t remember using even one health potion during playthrough. Those deaths occurred in same place before I realized what I need to avoid. Diablo 4 was more difficult and fun. Difficulty wasn’t only thing causing culture shock. Diablo 4’s story is masterpiece compared to Diablo 3. In Diablo 3 antagonists are evil just for sake of being evil.
In Diablo 4 characters have reasonable motives. There were points when I wanted the player character to do what Lilith wanted. That felt better option than what player character did. Ending left me feeling did we actually do the right thing. After Diablo 3 I was clad it was over. I had enough of antagonists being plain evil. Really looking forward to expansion to expand the story. It ended with not a real cliffhanger but small set up for next chapter or act like Diablo’s want to call them.
Diablo 4 could be great game with some game play fine tuning. My main issue was that enemies attacked when npcs or something on environment started to talk and talking could start middle of fight. I wanted the lore but this prevented me from getting it. Difficulty varied too much. This is open world game and you can enter zone your character is underleveled. This happened to me few time. Even in story mode. I had to take break from the story and level my character to survive a boss fight. Everything scales up but won’t scale down. I think there were UI updates which started to show which is lowest level you should be on area. Don’t remember seeing those first time with that boss. When I got back to it I saw I was many levels too low first time.
Game has two memorable boss fights “Price of Knowledge” and “Anguish Incarnate” those were only boss fight in story where I died. I was under leveled when I got to Price and in Anguish my character didn’t have correct skills for boss fights. After I tuned character better suited for boss fights I didn’t have problems with them after that. That was the point where I should have changed to world tier 2. I don’t think these fights were memorable only because I died in them. Those were only fights I remember where I couldn’t go to boss and just spam attacks. There might have been one other but I am not so sure about that one. It was part of sixth act which was boss fight after a boss fight.
I hope Diablo 4 will get more boss fights like Price and Anguish and more variety to events. Events started to feel like work because there wasn’t enough variety and you have to do them to get gambling currency. You need gambling to get the good gear in lower world tier. I tried strongholds and dungeons once both but found out I was underleveled for bosses. Open world with other players is nice most of the times. There are some problems. I died once when someone else started side quest where I was and there was explosion. On the other hand you can get easy gambling currency if you come to event someone else has started.
I enjoyed these two weeks in Sanctuary. Will be spending more time there in the future. I don’t try to hit level 100 or start to farm gear. Next goal is to do not completed side quests, find missing Altars of Lilith and clear rest of the map using world tier 2. Maybe unlock world tier 3 soon. There is about month to season 1. Want to do those before it because it will give best starting point for season 1. I expect more quality of life updates to come to make the game better by then.