Jeremy Gallen's Game Reviews

Las Lágrimas del Reino

Back when my brothers and I were obsessed with the works of Blizzard Entertainment, we discovered the first of their Diablo series, with whose sequel and expansion I would spend significant time, given the multitude of classes. The third Diablo game wouldn’t see release until a decade after the second, and the fourth game, Diablo IV, would have a similar wait before it came out. The fourth entry, as a few other video game series in Japan and the West have, leaps into an open-world setting, like Nintendo’s Zelda and Pokémon franchises. Does it do so well?

The fourth game occurs half a century after the third in Sanctuary, where cultists summon the new antagonist, Lilith, daughter of the demon Mephisto, who seeks to fill the power vacuum created by the decline of angels and demons across the land. The narrative has varying cutscenes depending on which character class the player selects, along with plenty of texts that reveal backstories, sidequest subplots, and a well-developed central plot. A few narrative gaps still exist between the third and fourth games; however, the story remains engaging throughout the experience.

Players can select from five classes: Barbarian, Sorcerer, Druid, Rogue, and Necromancer, each with their unique ability trees, and choose a difficulty, accommodating to gamers of divergent skill levels. Regardless of whomever the player selects, all have a health orb whose depletion means death (in which case they can resurrect at the expense of a tenth of their equipment’s durability), a fixed number of potions with which they can recover their health (with upgrades to this amount found sporadically through Sanctuary’s dungeons), Spirit that the use of many abilities consumes (and which standard attacks can gradually recover), and many skills with a cooldown time before they can use them again.

Killing enemies earns the player experience, with foes frequently dropping money and treasure. Before reaching fifty levels, leveling gives players a point they can put into their class’s respective tree to unlock various abilities and bonuses. If players wish to do so, they can pay to reset points and redistribute them however they please. Players stop earning skill points when their character reaches the mentioned threshold. At that time, their Paragon Board unlocks, with its points acquired at fixed times while advancing to the next level and allowing for increased stats.

In towns, the player can repair their equipment (which doesn’t seem to wear down regardless of whatever combat they’ve seen, except upon death), replenish their potions and health, purchase new gear, and so forth, like in prior games. The mechanics work well, with plenty of quick action and rewarding exploration; however, players can’t pause the game, and the potential to waste a lot of time against bosses exists (though depleting their health to fixed amounts will cause them to drop health potions). Regardless, the fourth game nicely fuses elements from the second and third entries.

Control, however, could have used improvement. Among the primary issues is that one needs a constant internet connection and a PlayStation Plus membership to play Diablo IV in the first place, which is ridiculous since I had spent $60+ for my physical copy. Even so, there are a few quality-of-life features such as subtitles for the voiced dialogue, adjustable text size, helpful in-game maps with objective markers, the ability to skip cutscenes and through some dialogue (though the latter feature isn’t available during “cinematic” scenes), the option to exit dungeons instantly after completing them (though some exceptions exist), and readily-available teleportation across Sanctuary, even when the player is far away from a teleport point. As mentioned, however, the game is unpausable, along with other issues like the absence of an in-game measure of total playtime, the vagueness of a few sidequest objectives, and how the game doesn’t preserve the player’s current location whenever they quit the game and restart later. Ultimately, the fourth game could have interfaced better with players.

While the soundtrack features good instrumentation and has some callbacks to prior Diablo games, the fourth installment’s music is otherwise unremarkable, given the lack of memorable tracks and overreliance upon ambiance, which seems typical of most Western video games. However, the voice acting and sound effects shine brighter.

Diablo IV executes its visuals nicely, with realistic art direction for the human and nonhuman characters and players able to customize their protagonist’s appearance. Different equipment also affects character looks, with the environments and colors being believable, the weather and illumination effects gorgeous, and the critical story scenes having an engaging cinematic style. However, the typical imperfections of three-dimensional visuals abound, like poor collision detection, blurry and pixilated texturing, and occasional choppiness.

Given the lack of an in-game clock, assessment of total playtime is difficult. However, I sometimes used my watch timer and estimated I finished the game in over seventy-two hours, consisting of significant time exploring Sanctuary and completing sidequests, although advancing the main quest doesn’t take long. Replayability exists with the vastness of the game world, which I hadn’t fully mapped, countless sidequests, achievements, and so forth. However, the need for a PlayStation Plus membership to continue playing, which I immediately canceled upon finishing the main quest, will deter many from devoting additional time to the game.

Ultimately, Diablo IV was an ambitious production from Blizzard and nicely accomplishes its transition of the series to open-world format, in my opinion, even better than other major video game franchises that have done the same despite their “universally positive” reception. The gameplay is fun and rewarding, the narrative is intricate regarding its backstory and “present” plotline, the visuals are top-notch, and plenty of extra content can occupy players endlessly. However, issues such as the need for a constant internet connection and PlayStation Plus membership to play, various interface problems, and unremarkable sound prevent it from “game of the year” status. Despite its faults, it warrants a playthrough from those who enjoyed its predecessors and is one of 2023's better releases.

This review is based on a playthrough of a physical copy purchased by the reviewer as a Druid.