So its been like 24hrs since the official launch for non pre-order ultimate “victims” and I was wondering how people are finding it.
I dont typically buy AAA titles until the hype has died down and patches have released - usually a month or two after launch but I have watched a few live streams while cleaning my toenails and the open world and generated dungeons seem pretty good/interesting to me. The rest seems typical of either Diablo or the Arpg genre so our usual comfort food.
Anyone hands-on with some first impressions?
ps. To clarify - Impressions about the game itself - not the pricing / store / Blizzard etc.
Most noteably I don’t see it as this hulking leviathan that will bulldoze over the ARPG market in the long run. (as many made it to be the past couple of weeks/months).
Game is very polished and feels good, as expected from Blizzard.
The sprinkeled in MMO Aspects are complete non-sense to me. Doesn’t add anything to the game, rather dimishes the experience.
You (the player) are the “chosen one” and yet there are hundreds of other chosen ones running around slaying mosnters as you are.
They could easily scrap that from the game (and adjust some of the difficulties for World Bosses and other group “open world content” etc.) or at least make it an option to not see other players.
Endgame loop is pretty much the same as D3, just with a different package. (This is neither bad nor good, its alright)
I know you said you didn’t want to hear something about price, but I feel like its important. I think the game is totally worth the price, you get enough content from it with just one char, if you play 2 or more chars you can get even mroe content out of it, even without grinding endgame. There is a good 50-100 hour content with 1-2 chars without exessive endgame grinding.
Some bullet points
The Good
Polish/Combat
Looks very good and transports the dark atmosphere across
Actual Character is used in In-Game Cutscenes, some of which are pre-rendered
Transmogrification System is pretty good
The Bad
MMO Aspects seem unnecessary and don’t add anything
Skill System is very basic, similar to D3, very plane but in a different way then D3
Itemization is not very deep
The Maybe
Paragon Board (The board themselves are hand-crafted for each classes and bring decent flavour, but some of the traveling long paths seem unnecessary). There are also not board for every possible playstyle of the class yet
Endgame system feels too similar to D3. This will likely slightly change when seasonswill bring more different activities
Endgame grinding with marginal stat increases starts very early. You get your build together very quickly (Getting the most relevant Aspect Effects), after that its literally just % more dmg and % more tankyness.
TL:DR Its a solid game, but nothing mindblowing that will change the genre
The skill twig isn’t awesome, but the paragon boards are deep, the overland stuff is down to taste isuppose, i dont mind it in all honesty, there is always something to do, and you can switch activity so you dont get burned out on that 1 thing.
Unlike in LE for example, gear matters, which is where you get a lot of power from.
Visuals are stunning, combat is extremley well done, music is banging and very on point, but then this is a blizzard game and they are top of the tree in that regard.
MP aspects are once again on point, very little lag, easy to join groups, not some system where you have to hump through hoops just to join someone.
Game pace is nice instead of the zoom zoom its a slower pace.
Out of 10 i give it a solid 8. with more things to come down the road, like seasons and exapnsions can see this being the juggernaut its meant to be.
I took a week off to play and in the middle of no lifing and about to hit lvl 80 on Druid, games really good, as a launch entry with a very good foundation of a ‘base’ game without season mechanics and general changes the game is in a good spot
Theres a lot I could say but one thing that stands out above all is this game actually has meaningful combat which PoE/LE/TI dont have. PoE knows its clunky in some ways so they let you blast ie spamming the same skill and clearing packs quickly
LE currently fails as it tries to be like D4 but isnt as fluid or weighty in what its trying to do, and the variable boss damage reduction and endless corruption scaling is awful and ruins the game as you never really feel you get much stronger where it matters. I struggled on D4 when going to Torment underleveled but I kept leveling and gearing and now im basically destroying the base content
Now if I want challenge I can do Nightmare dungeons to level up my Glyphs and do harder content and there is up to 100 tiers but its still capped and has an end
Also the MMO part is good for me as I dont play MMOs and I can group up with people for 2-3 mins without partying to kill mobs in events/bosses and its just smooth
Its a really nice game , with good flow , great ambiance (graphics , music , style , etc) . Combat feels really fluid and the classes feel very different .
On the not so good side , it’s hit and miss on the mmo kind of content , the itemization is not very deep , the skill tree feels meh , crafting is very shallow and despite having lots to do it feels a little repetitive .
For me it has been worthy and fun , and mostly needs a polish to make it a little more complex, improve the crafting and hopefully some more mechanics and stuff added .
It has a lot of potential , but it’s not the behemoth arpg to dominate all
Visually the game is amazing, the combat is nice, this is subjective but I love the large world, the large towns in each area and the “you can do whatever tf you want” gameplay, I just enjoy traveling to random points on the map and doing objectives, I can’t really explain why but it feels way more engaging to me than following a yellow arrow or beating endless waves of enemies like in *cough* some other games *cough*.
As for the dreaded shop I never felt the need to even care about it because the armor sets look amazing already and there’s a transmog system.
And remember this is only the initial release, D3 was greatly improved over time, so D4 would probably only get better from here on.
One massive downside tho: ୧༼ಠ益ಠ༽୨ no paladin ୧༼ಠ益ಠ༽୨
Same! I like the MMO aspects. Assuming that’s what you mean.
So far I love the game but I have a lot of minor QoL issues, like inventory for nightmare sigils and elixirs. Seemingly being unable to use normal tier Aspects on Ancestral tier gear as well, so all the nice aspects I found are worthless.
I find the gameplay to be pretty amazing. Feels so good, smooth. Paragon boards are really cool. Skill point stuff is a lot better than I initially thought too. Lots of potential diversity.
I pre-ordered to be able to play early access. I played for about 2 days and ended up refunding it. It didn’t draw me in like LE does. I think the biggest negative for me was how simplistic the skill system was and how itemization didn’t feel that great, and to be honest those two things are the main reasons I’m into this genre. The animations and graphics were gorgeous on my RTX 4090. The storyline was great. In the end though that wasn’t enough to get me to stay.
Some of the things that D4 does great, I’d love to eventually see in LE. Perhaps some of that will be in LE’s future once 1.0+ rolls out.
All of that being said, I’m glad I gave D4 a try but happily back to LE trying out new builds and enjoying every moment of it.
I’m biased because I’m a D1/2/3 fan and a critic of recent trends in game development, but from what I’ve seen so far of D4, nothing in it has convinced me that I actually would want to play it. And that should be pretty easy to do, considering I pretty much play all ARPG’s just to see what they’re like.
The visuals, animations and color palette all look bland in comparison to D3. The skill tree might be interesting but the way it’s represented looks severely oversimplified. The enemies and bosses I’ve seen from the first few acts haven’t captured my imagination at all. There’s something corporate minimalist and mobile-game-y about the entire aesthetic down to the UI itself. It feels very of-its-time and I predict it won’t age well, like similar games haven’t recently.
I dunno. It’s clearly not for me. If this is what games are turning into, I think I’m going to skip an era or two. Wouldn’t be the first time.
I played the server slam and got to 20 and really don’t want to do it again. Nothing in the game sparks any creative juices. I don’t see the cool interactions that draw me to aRPG games. The blood mist auto corpse explosion thing was really neat, but don’t know if it is a thing anymore.
Do you remember all the gamer rage about D3’s “cartoony” graphics back when it was announced? And how some people modified some screenshots to basically make them greyscale?
Yes, and I had a little bit of criticism of D3 in that regard also, mainly aimed at some of the lategame equipment and how it looked too much like World of Warcraft. I also liked a lot of the really early artwork that was making the game look more gothic than it ended up being. I bet a lot of people don’t remember that at this point.
Even so, this is not what I had in mind back then. This is too much the other direction. This game almost looks unfinished in the degree to which they toned down and muted a lot of the environments and designs.
As an aside, I’m not proposing this as an ARPG aesthetic, but if you want an example of a game that kind of adds an intriguing gothic tinge to the WoW aesthetic, check out some of the character designs and 3D work from Allods. I was very fond of how that game looked and I’m still kind of bummed nothing came of it.
Got fomo’d into paying extra for EA, but I stand by the topic I made when the first closed beta came out, LE is by far the more competent arpg. The game looks and plays great, but you are shoehorned into one of very few options largely based on your gear. Currently starting WT3 with a rapid shot Rogue that kills everything with no effortt.
Fun game, but I dont see the lasting appeal here. Sad to see a franchise I once adored turned into Minecraft Dungeons on steroids.
I like the throwback skillsystem… more like D2, but with more options. Haven’t gotten into Paragon too much, but it looks better than D3’s iteration. The open/shared world is…meh…I could take or leave it.
My biggest complaint with it so far is how empty much of it is. It’s gorgeous visually, but many times feels more like a painting, than a video game, where I’m slaying the hordes of Hell.
and I was wondering how people are finding it.
