So like an AOE attack on an unsuspecting gaggle of skeletons, the Open Beta for Diablo 4 has come by and gone over after three rigorous days of traversing the snowy (and sometime forestry) landscape of Sanctuary, decades after the events of Diablo 3’s Reapers of Souls Expansion and now about to lay waste by the evil Mother herself, Lilith.
And before going into gameplay detail, might I say that the cutscenes are looking much better in 3, with a pretty good sense of art direction and style that showcase how the world is rather twisted and weak due to events that have happened within the many seasons of the previous game. Buildings lay broken and every NPCs (besides party members you meet) are on the brink of insanity when your character arrives, to your disadvantage.
And I do love Lilith’s design, from her reveal during the first cutscene to her sprinkle of appearance throughout the beta, she looks breathtaking and we don’t even know if she’s working on the side of humanity (doubtful) or herself, a mystery that might get uncovered when the full game releases in June.
Combo-ing Combat
Combat has changed quite a bit, with your gallery of characters not limited to several skill sets anymore but rather a skill tree where you can min-max your tree to your liking.
Like for example, the Rogue can get enhance any bow skills up to 5 times, along with 3 additional skills that help buffs your character is chosen skill, to add in some nice extra sauces, like Stagger or even Poison to your attacks.
This also sees the introduction of the Specialization quest around the level 15 mark, where your character can get skills that are only available to your class and it’s quite elaborate in how the quest goes.
And by the end of that quest, you might get skills that differs for each class, like one where you get a combo meter which if you keep getting hits, you can get lots of more damages buffs and so on. It’s a neat addition that might make the character that you choose more important than ever before.
The world events are pretty good as well, some of the enemies in them might be a level or two higher than you but with good usage and balance of both skills and dodging attacks at the right time, you can get pretty good EXP and loot from the events that are repeated after a cooldown.
Control-wise on the console side, it’s as in-tuned as most players wanted to be after Blizzard slam-dunked the control scheme from Diablo 3. It’s intuitive, easy to understand, and now your skills are swappable with any key or button, it’s by far the most approachable Diablo game with how easy and snappy everything feels during the flow of combat (looking at you Diablo 2 Resurrection).
Though my only gripe is that the healing button should be within the D-pad instead of taking the place of R1/LB because that usually made me mistook a potion when I’m not in danger, way too many times to count due to the close proximity of the left triggers as well.
Closing Thoughts
Diablo 4 looks to be cooking something special from the off-set of this Open Beta, it does shake up its core to be easily joinable but still retained its gentle difficulty curve by the end of the first act before it goes ham on the hardness whilst you, the player, will enjoy seeing the numbers goes up and up as you acquire more powerful gear, and bask in the frantic chaos of the gameplay. The best serotonin hit you’ll get, coming soon.
Diablo 4 will be out on June 7 for the PS4, PS5, PC (via Battle.Net), Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
Played on Xbox Series S, based on the Open Beta version of Diablo 4.