Demo Time: Diablo IV (VSD)

Diablo IV

Systems: PlayStation 4/5, Windows, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X

Release Date: June 5, 2023

Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment

Developer: Blizzard Team 3, Blizzard Albany

During Steam's recent Fall 2023 sale, Diablo IV was offered as a free trial. However, I admittedly did not read all of the fine print on that, so I was a little surprised that the game stopped and a pop-up ad, popped up when I reached level 20 and prompted me to buy the game, effectively halting all progression I had made up to that point.  So this is a "brief" story about my shortened experience playing Diablo IV on the Steam Deck.

My first order of business was to decide what class I wanted to play.  In the first Diablo, I usually go with the Warrior mainly so that I can survive long enough to level up a few times.  The last time I played Diablo II, I went with a Sorceress and focused on ice magic because I liked the idea of slowing down enemies while being able to either run away or to continue peppering them with spells.  In Diablo III, I played as a Monk because I had never played one before.  In Diablo Immortal I created a Crusader because it just felt like a decent class to start out with my first attempt with a touch-screen Diablo game.  This time around, I decided to ask the Internet what the worst character class was to play in Diablo IV and the consensus seemed to be either a Sorcerer or a Druid.  I was really tempted by the Druid, again because I had never played one before, but there seemed to be a lot of animosity towards the Sorcerer, although there were quite a few articles stating that once you reach near the end of the game, the Sorcerer is an absolute powerhouse in dealing damage.  Since I knew that I wasn't likely to reach the end of the game within the week I was playing, I decided to go with the Sorcerer.

After creating my character, I sat through the opening cinematic, and was actually pretty impressed, despite feeling pandered to with the obvious similarities to the original opening to Diablo.  I really liked the sense of horror that was present in the opening cinematic and while there was significantly more gore than I was expecting, it didn't really surprise me that a lot of that visceral imagery ended up being pretty front-loaded compared to the rest of the game; and by "game" I mean the first 20 levels that I played.  But coming from Diablo III, I felt never had that same level of fear and horror that had been lacking, really since the first game.  From that opening shot of the ramshackle town and the desecrated church, I felt hopeful that this would be a return to form, and by form I mean the the tone and atmosphere from the first Diablo game.

After the initial opening and Lilith was revealed, we then watched another cinematic, this one actually featuring our sorceress character as she rides her horse through a bleak snowy landscape.  We watched as our horse was taken in the middle of the night, right out from under us only to find it seconds later disemboweled and dismembered by whatever it was that was also stalking us.  We finally take control of our character after another day of wandering in the mountains amongst a ceaseless blizzard (eh!?) after waking up in a cave.  Now, possibly because I was playing as a squishy sorcerer armed with a little dagger and a short-range spell, I was a little anxious about surviving each encounter with the wargs that excelled at equine mutilation.  This was not playing the same as Diablo III where I actually found myself dozing off while holding down the attack button and feeling nearly invincible, so I was genuinely relieved when I came upon the first town and my character automatically put away their weapon.

As I was playing, maybe a few hours in, I began to regret deciding to play a seasonal character, meaning that at the end of Season 2, my character would be eliminated and I could create a new character for Season 3, assuming that I would buy Diablo IV then and there.  Had I created a regular character to go through the game as I was doing, my progress would be saved for whatever cross-platform play I would later decide to partake in (or at least cross between my laptop and the Steam Deck).  Essentially any progress I made in the game would be erased and I then felt that I was not going to actively progress through the story, having already cleared the first story-related dungeon, I was okay with that decision because I came to realize that I would likely end up not buying Diablo IV for a couple of years and at that point, would I even remember what it was that I had been doing?

I had also decided pretty early on that I was not going to try to min/max my character and instead roleplay what skills and passive abilities I would decide to learn.  I thought that since I gained my first level and thereby first real spell while trying not to freeze to death and surrounded by snow and ice, that I would learn the basic Frost Bolt spell.  I also learned the Ice Orb spell to supplement my ice spells.  Later, my character was rescued from a burning church and I soon after raised another level, so I chose the Fireball spell.  I also later picked the Flame Shield spell (being the fourth of four spells I chose) because I liked that it added a brief immune status, increased your running speed (so I could further run away from danger) and further developed it into a healing spell because I like to not die.  I did die three times though, and part of me blames the potion system in this game, which is akin to how potions worked in Diablo III and Diablo: Immortal, in that you have a set number of potions and a cooldown timer (very MMO-feeling in my opinion) although enemies will sometimes drop immediate use healing potions, but it was possibly also because I chose the sorcerer.

Two things I want to mention because my experience wasn't all cherries and fudge. I guess it didn't dawn on me that this was an online all the time game so you can occasionally see other players running through your screen, which also meant that there were a couple of times I ran into significant latency issues but they didn't seem to interfere with my game or my lootz.  Being online all the time also meant that there were a couple of times I rant into significant latency issues.  In one instance, I actually died because my character was not attacking whatever it was that was attacking me and my inputs were not being accepted.  Shortly after respawning, my movement was all over the place with my character moving where I had directed them to go with the joystick five to ten seconds after I had made the actual inputs.  Thankfully Diablo IV is not a game that will let you fall off cliffs or take fall damage so all I really found myself doing was just running into the same rock wall or copse of dead trees.  I think what I am complaining about is the fact that it forces you to be online to play (nothing really new in 2023, but at the same time, I want to play a solo game, not an MMO, otherwise I would), not the fact that there were latency issues which could be chalked up to being too far away from the router or just having a bad wifi signal for about five minutes.

The other complaint was that this game was a massive drain on the Steam Deck's battery. On a full charge, I could usually get just over an hour of play time before the battery dipped down to 10%. And then, usually within a few minutes, I received the 5% warning, at which point I needed to either manually exit the game or the system would shut down within the minute.  This is in contrast to games like Final Fantasy XIII or even the Lies of P demo where I could play upwards of 2+ hours and maybe get the battery down to 10%. 

I did have a lot of fun over the three or four days I played Diablo IV, and I can honestly say that I will be buying the game through Steam at some future date during some future sale.  It's not that I don't think the game is worth $59.99, it's just that I have my Steam/Switch queues and I don't feel that I need or want to play this game as immediately as possible.  And since there will likely be DLC at some future date, I will likely be able to buy a GOTY edition or Complete Collection edition that contains everything so I can play everything all at once.

So here is my sorcerer Jaquonæn, level 20, and will likely never be seen again because they were a seasonal character, to only exist in Season 2 of Diablo IV.

I know their look is pretty ramshackle, but that's how I like my characters to look early in their career.  Just cobbling together gear that doesn't match all because it has higher and better stats than the piece of clothing that replaced it.  It's usually my favorite part of many RPGs where your look changes based on the gear that you wear.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Du liegst in Ketten bis zum Weltenbrand

P.S.  I think I would like to do a run-through, maybe in Diablo III because I have that on the Switch, where I see how far I can get with a particular class, say the Wizard again for simplicity's sake, where I just learn all of the spells. Like, not trying to specialize in any one tree/lane, but just learn everything, or as much as everything as I can.  Granted part of that would be wasting skill points since you can only have so many skills equipped at a time unless I constantly respec, which would kind of not be the point.  I dunno, just spitballing here.

P.P.S.  Also, this game was an 89 GB download.  I guess I haven't played a newer PC game in a while because that shit is bonkers.