The sun rises over Lorath’s cabin, located at the top of an ice-capped mountain, serenaded by a howling blizzard. He tells me that I’ve ingested the blood of Lilith, Diablo 4’s prime antagonist, and that we now share an eerie connection that could send me spiralling into madness. As dawn breaks, we emerge into the sunrise with our eyes set on Kyovashad, the RPG game’s central hub. We see some deer with their young as they walk along the stony road. They reappear later on, now dismembered in front of a horde of Fallen, their limbs leaking their lifeblood onto nature’s fluffy white carpet. Sanctuary is all right. But evil can taint even the most innocent beauty.
Diablo 4 is stunning. While I explored the Fractured Peaks in our Diablo 4 gameplay preview, seeing them in their full glory with no overlay and stilted text-to-speech took my breath away (although I do miss ‘argh, *dies*’). Threat lurks around every corner, The Butcher randomly drops into dungeons, the darkness closes in as I battle my way through the forested maze that hides the Horadric Vault; everything wants to kill me, but by Inarius, I can’t help but want them to try.
My character this time is a Necromancer. This class is one of the newly awakened Diablo 4 characters. While I’ve always stuck to melee DPS characters or, in Diablo 3, my beloved Witch Doctor, having spoken with Diablo VP Rod Fergusson in London, I was lured in by the class’ creepy aesthetic and penchant for all things deceased.
I wasn’t running the best Diablo 4 Necromancer build – instead, I just picked the abilities I thought looked cool and fit my playstyle. Despite not following any recommendations, I found that the Necromancer was very appealing to me. Very Powerful, almost too powerful in fact. My Rogue was a pale shadow of my Sorceress, and while my Sorceress can easily one-shot mobs with a well-placed Chain Lightning; when you play Necromancer, your skeletons do the heavy lifting. You can place up to four of them, and then upgrade them using the Book of the Dead. I eventually had four Reaper Skeletons as well as three undead wizards who could strike enemies from afar with bolts and darkness. Bosses I struggled with on my Rogue became a cakewalk, and mobs disintegrated before my eyes – even Diablo 4 world boss Ashava crumpled before my armies of undead.
And, I won’t lie, I kind of hated it. I played World Tier 2, which was for slightly more experienced players. It was the best World Tier I had ever seen and it was everything I could have hoped for. You can 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 up close and personal with Lilith’s hordes, meaning my experience was generally pretty lacklustre. Necromancer clearly isn’t the class for me, and that’s completely okay; I’m not here to tell you the class is ‘bad’ because it doesn’t suit my style.
The fact that the skeletons were buggy was what was annoying. It is possible for bugs to occur, but this is a beta version. I had one get stuck in a rock (poor guy), others struggled to keep up, and when I moved from area to area I experienced some pretty nasty lag – especially in Kyovashad. This is due to the high population of the zone, but I found that things went more smoothly when I sent some of my undead friends back down there. This is just a teething issue I’m sure, but it was nevertheless Really, really irritating.
There were also some strange bugs that I found in the dungeons. The Black Asylum was my favourite underground location in my early playtest. It looked almost straight outta Diablo 2. The walls are covered in chains that hang lifelessly. The ghost of a little boy was driven into the depths by his absent father. It is a nightmare.
Unfortunately, there’s an odd dead zone between the two different pits next to each of the main door’s mechanisms. I couldn’t cross it at all, and had to go around each in turn. Sure, it’s a minor inconvenience, but given I alSo spotted a dead zone on one of the bosses in my early playtest, it looks like this may be a recurring issue. Where here it’s merely inconvenient, before it decreased the area you had to dodge – not great during a boss battle.
Small gripes aside, though, there’s so, so There is so much to love in this Diablo iteration. You’ve probably seen players sharing their characters on social media, and I am Living It is worth it. My Necromancer is a slightly emaciated goth queen with black and red hair and matching armour, with ‘tattoos’ drawn in fresh blood covering her body. Since I first played this game, there are many more options for customization and styles. This character feels more like me than my Rogue.
While I didn’t get the chance to play Druid, I’m also so excited to see just how inclusive Diablo 4 is. The Druid is a large and bulky woodland warrior who cares more about the spirits than being ripped by lifting heavy axes and cutting down enemies. There’s a body for everyone in Diablo 4, you can create a character that is actually representative of yourself despite Sanctuary being so far -removed from reality. You see? That’s truly special.
Diablo 4 is unique in every way. I said in my gameplay preview that Diablo 4 “is everything Diablo is supposed to be” – and I want to reiterate that. It’s creepy, it’s gory, but it’s new and it’s fresh, just like the blood that adorns my Necromancer. The beta has closed, but I want more – I’m like Krystyna’s husband Feodor, but thankfully 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 starting, we’ve got three months to launch and we’ve got a lot of cool stuff coming.”
