The sun rises over Lorath’s cabin, located on top of an ice-covered mountain, accompanied by a howling blizzard. He tells me that I ingested the blood of Lilith, the main antagonist of Diablo 4, and now we share a strange connection that could drive me crazy. At dawn, we head into the dawn with our eyes fixed on Kyovashad, the kingpin of the RPG. A few deer and their young scatter on the rocky path as we go. They later reappear, now dismembered before a horde of Fallen, their limbs spilling blood on the fluffy white carpet of nature. Everything is as it should be in Sanctuary; evil corrupts even the most innocent beauty.
And Diablo 4 is beautiful. Exploring the fractured peaks in our Diablo 4 gameplay preview, seeing them in all their glory without overlays or forced speech synthesis took my breath away (although I miss “argh, *die*”). Threat lurks around every corner, the Butcher randomly drops into dungeons, darkness closes in as I make my way through the wooded maze that hides the Horadric Vault; everything wants to kill me, but for Inarius, I can’t help but want them to try.
This time my character is a necromancer, one of Diablo 4’s newly awakened classes. Although I have always stuck with melee DPS characters or, in Diablo 3, my beloved wizard, after speaking with Vice President of Diablo Rod Fergusson in London, I was drawn to the chilling aesthetic of the class and its penchant for all things deceased.
I wasn’t running the best version of Diablo 4 Necromancer; instead, I only picked abilities that I thought looked cool and suited my playstyle. While I stray from the recommendations, I found the Necromancer to be very, very powerful; almost too powerful, in fact. My Rogue pales in comparison, and while My Witch can easily mow down a mob with a well-placed chain of lightning, when playing Necromancer, your skeletons do all the work. You can place four of them and then upgrade them using the Book of the Dead. Eventually, I ended up with four reaper skeletons and three undead mages attacking enemies from afar with bolts of darkness. The bosses I fought in my Rogue became a piece of cake, and the mobs disintegrated before my eyes, even Diablo 4’s world boss Ashava crumbled before my undead armies.
And, I’m not going to lie, I kinda hated it. I played World Tier 2, the one for slightly more experienced players, and found everything to be fair Also easy. It reminded me of my Witch Doctor in Diablo 3, with whom I managed to complete the campaign without dying once, and that was on expert. For me, the Necromancer took the fun out of getting close to Lilith’s hordes, which meant my overall experience was pretty poor. Necromancer is clearly not the class for me, and that’s fine; I’m not here to tell you that the course is “bad” because it doesn’t fit my style.
However, what was irritating was the fact that the skeletons themselves were quite buggy. Of course, this is a beta version; errors are inevitable. One got stuck on a rock (poor thing), others struggled to keep up, and when I went from one area to another I experienced a pretty nasty lag, especially at Kyovashad. Of course, that’s because the area is heavily populated, but when I threw some of my undead friends into the depths, I found things worked out better. It’s just an initial problem, I’m sure, but it was really, in reality irritant.
I also had some weird bugs in the dungeons. My favorite underground location from my early playtests was The Black Asylum, which looked like something straight out of Diablo 2. Chains dangle lifelessly from the walls. You must defeat the ghost of a child who has been cast into the depths by an absent father; the whole place screams cruelty.
Unfortunately, there’s a weird dead zone between the two different shafts next to each of the main door mechanisms. I couldn’t cross them at all and had to take turns going around them. Of course, this is a minor inconvenience, but since I also saw a dead zone on one of the bosses during my initial test, it seems to be a recurring problem. Where it’s just a downside here was reducing the area you had to dodge, which isn’t great during a boss battle.
Minor gripes aside, however, there is so much, Next a lot to love about this iteration of Diablo. You’ve probably seen players sharing their characters on social media, and I’m life for that. My Necromancer is a slightly emaciated gothic queen with black and red hair and matching armor, with “tattoos” drawn in fresh blood covering her body. There are a lot more styles and customization options since I first played, and this character felt a lot more like my Rogue.
Although I haven’t had a chance to play Druid, I’m also very excited to see how inclusive Diablo 4 is. Druid is tall and bulky, a seasoned forest warrior who values more than animal spirits. that surround it. be torn apart by raising huge axes and felling enemies. There’s a body for everyone in Diablo 4, you can create a character that’s truly representative of yourself even though Sanctuary is so far from reality. Is it right there? It’s really special.
Everything in Diablo 4 is special; It’s true. I said in my game preview that Diablo 4 “is everything Diablo is meant to be”, and I want to say it again. It’s scary, it’s bloody, but it’s new and fresh, like the blood that adorns my Necromancer. The beta is closed, but I want more: I’m like Krystyna’s husband, Feodor, but luckily my soul is intact.
As the sun sets on a truly amazing beta test, I can’t wait to see what Blizzard has up its sleeve. Fergusson told me during our London exclusive that “we’re just getting started, we’ve got three months to launch and we have a lot of great things to come.”