Trigger Cut Game Reviews

The Diablo franchise is a blindspot for me and the fourth entry is the only game I have played in the franchise.  While this may make me underqualified to review this game, I believe it also allows me to separate myself from the online discourse that this game is the worst game ever made.  Do I agree that this game is bad? No, absolutely not.  I actually think that with all of its flaws and predatory microtransactions, Diablo 4 is in fact a good game.  I played this game day one and for a live service game, it had way more content than is common for this mostly shitty subgenre of games. The game’s greatest strength is not in its combat but in its buildcraft.  There are many ways outside of just spending skill points to unlock powers to customize your build such as attaching runes to your weapons and gems to your equipment that activate both passive and active buffs and skills.  This leads to an almost overwhelming amount of ways you can customize your build and you will be spending a lot of time in menus.  The game throws a ridiculous amount of loot at you, most of which you will be trashing for resources; however, it is always satisfying seeing an explosion of loot come out of a boss.  The combat is simple and pretty mindless.  I found myself simply spamming powers and often succeeding.  There are many difficulty tiers that you have to unlock by completing specific tasks.  You will want to do this since the normal and even hard difficulties are extremely easy.  The higher the difficulty, the higher the probability that you will get rare loot. I have mixed feelings on the level scaling. Enemies scale with you so you never feel like you are getting more powerful however, this also ensures a steady difficulty curve. The presentation and narrative is surprisingly high quality, with an interesting story with great voice performances. I have easily put over a hundred hours into this game and I continue to come back almost every season to try out a new class and check out whatever seasonal content is on offer.  Couch co-op is important to me, and this is a great game to play with a friend or partner.  Blizzard as a company sucks and their nickel and diming of players continues in this game however, the bones are solid here and if you are a fan of the franchise, I think you will enjoy this entry.