I am watching this as I am currently on the fence whether to buy D4 on launch day, and this review really baffles me.
He says a whole bunch of things which if true is very damning:
When he talks about the bad feeling of level progression (“the scaling that’s at work here is so aggressive it completely robs you of a feeling that I think is central to these sorts of experiences”), bad itemisation (“the value of powerful exciting drops is greatly undermined and is further undermined by D4’s approach to crafting and legendaries”, “Diablo 4’s item economy and sense of progression feels like a massive step back from Diablo 3”), build experimentation (“the lack of incentive to experiment with buildcraft is further exacerbated by the skill tree design”), boring bosses, no new ideas, etc…
Yet he recommends the game and heaps its praise in certain parts of the video. Why? Because there is ALOT of content (yet he doesn’t say many positive things about that content), pretty good story, and the classes feel different. Seems underwhelming but maybe playing it has a secret fun sauce that reviewers like this guy are struggling to put into words.
It’s the design I’ve always been drawn to so I will probably dump a billion hours into this. It’s fun to run into random people doing quests, it runs and looks great… I just have to figure what I’m actually doing. I will just end up using a guide as I’m clueless on doing builds.
Got a chance to play this morning before work. Plays beautifully on PC, I had some lag in the main town but outside of it everything is smooth. Ended up going melee Rogue as they diluted Sorceress down now and the class gimmick is uninteresting at best. I have a Druid backup in case I don’t like Rogue or when I want to group play.
Really liking new cutscenes and it seems that the quality holds up.
He also liked the performance, art and sound design! :P
A note, he usually puts titles like ‘I don’t recommend x’, or ‘x review’, or ‘I recommend x’, or ‘I strongly recommend x’ or ‘I very strongly recommend x’ for the reviews. It’s like his informal score scale. So it seems he liked it but with reservations. The equivalent of 3.5/5 stars review?
Could you be caught in a blaze/fire? That makes you ‘blinded’ until you move out of it.
Got my rogue up to level 22 this morn. Taking a break but I’m looking towards moving along the story this time, especially the story parts that I didn’t advance in the betas.
Is there a way to turn off the ability for people to request trades from me?
I don’t know how many of the content creators/streamers/community darlings have gotten much into the higher World Tiers, so assessing difficulty just on WT 1 or 2 isn’t terribly useful probably.
I’m starting on WT2 because that’s what I did in the betas and it feels about right. I am not doing this to be the most efficient player, so I don’t care if it isn’t a min/max approach. I am using a build though for my Sorc, to check out a specific setup.
Looked at the shop too. Way too expensive for some pretty crap items as far as I can tell. The only two that looked decent were a Sorc and Necro one, even the Horses looked bad. I’d expect WoW Flying Mount Blizzard to know how to do cosmetic micros by now even if I haven’t bought one in over 10 years (?)
Some cutscenes and dialog can be skipped by pressing escape, it seems that others can’t be unless. I’m doing something wrong? Is there a way to skip the others?
