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Sad to hear you don’t enjoy it. Personally I am having a blast with it. I love its much darker gothic look than D3 (which was very cartoony). The music is just amazing good. And the map is ridiculous big (I guess bigger than all 3 previous games put together). Technically the game is also extremely well polished. Didn’t encounter a single technical issue so far (playing on PS5). The only complaint I have is that they enforce an permanent internet connection (even if I see the reason why - it’s kinda a MMO). I almost feel put back into my youth (yea I am old), where I spend hundreds of hours with my friends in our garage to play D1 in multiplayer mode.

Also, if I equip a staff that gives an INT boost, shouldn’t the damage I deal go up?

Int raises All Res in D4. You can see what each stat does by hovering over it.

A lot of your combat pain points are solvable with gear in endgame (effects still won’t be flashy tho). Pretty sure D2 early game consisted of chugging mana potions non-stop until you got the Tal Sth rune word for your helmet. Which really isn’t all that different from spamming Basic attacks until you get aspects and talents/skill in D4.

Honestly it sounds like you just wanted Diablo 2 (2023). Nothing wrong with that of course but I don’t quite understand why you wouldn’t play PoE then. That game strikes a good balance between modern and old school while also upholding the more hardcore nature of D2.

Does it have that boring cartoon look of III, or is grit at least back?

What level did you reach? I feel like a lot of these problems are solved by better experience and understanding.

Not all of your criticisms of course unfortunately, but they’re not relatable to me at least. I’ve really enjoyed the experience.

For the mana (essence) make sure you are taking advantage of essence buffs in the skill tree as well as watching for armor/jewelry/weapons that will assist with rapidly recovering essence.

Also look online for sorcerer builds to see what other folks are doing and what skills they are using for not only leveling, but also for endgame.

Personally I’ve really enjoyed it.

I also enjoyed it far less than I wanted to. Re: Your 2nd point : I find this really funny as I just started a sorc the other day and one my first reactions was how terrible the spell animations look for a modern game. I’ve been tempted to re-install Diablo 3 just to compare them, as I remember them being much better.

I finished the campaign as a Druid and am now tinkering with the other classes, so nowhere near endgame, all my feedback is just from the above.

• The writing is bad, laughably bad. Not like, bad grammar or sloppy prose bad but just like…written by a really edgy teenager and then heavily edited by adults who weren’t allowed to change any of the actual plot points bad? There were some good ideas (trying to avoid spoilers), but (for me) none of them ever went anywhere. And there were so many just…dumb/silly things…nevermind all the cutscenes rendered with the games engine that look laughably bad/amateur compared to Blizzard games like…what is going on with those??
• D3 items were a hot mess of garbage compared to D2 and I think these might be a tiny bit better, but still seem overly messy and the mod pool is too big. I also don’t think I found a “real” unique yet? They all seem like RNG trash just there for the aspects to be extracted? I could be wrong here, maybe the real uniques come later but if so that’s (more) bad design imho.
• frequent lag
• agree on the automap. Quest interface also seems poorly designed and very frustrating to use.
• the whole thing feels aggressively like a console game ported to PC, not vice versa. I strongly dislike that in my PC games.

FWIW, I’m enjoying playing my sorc more than the druid, but we’ll see. By the last 2 acts, I could close my eyes and hold two buttons and kill any of the bosses (except the last boss where you have move 3-4 times).

I constantly run out of mana, preventing me from spamming my main spells and enjoying playing as a Sorc

Couldn’t agree more. Problem is when I have mana and my CDs available, my damage output is insanely high. But once I’m out of mana and CDs are off, I just walk around like an idiot lol. My build takes out basic spell too so I literally have nothing else to do but walk around. It needs a rebalance, I don’t want to have such high burst dps but a more constant gameplay with stable dps output.

Nothing will be as good as Diablo 2, but I’m liking playing Diablo 4 as a chain lightning sorcerer far more than Diablo 3 in any way. The skill tree allows for much more creativity than 3. They’re a bunch of different, interesting builds. The basic mana-free skills are useful. The dropped resources give you something to do while waiting for mana to refill. There are items that incentivize alternating between core and basic skills.

Overall, I think it feels a lot more similar to Diablo 2 then Diablo 4.

Seems less isometric and more top-down

Isn’t isometric another way of saying “top-down”?

Woah cool seeing a reference to PD2 here on beehaw already when I’ve only just joined. I’m one of the devs for it, glad you enjoy it!

I’ve been playing Diablo 4 with a different mindset, treating it more like a non Diablo arpg and with that I’ve been enjoying it. The story is better than previous Diablo games and the gameplay is decent (though I agree that resource management makes me use the basic skill way too much). I also agree that the music isn’t quite as good as D2’s. It’s a bit over hyped for sure and the MTX skins on a paid game sit wrong with me but for a generic arpg, it’s not a bad experience.

When I can play it (or rather, when it’s playable), it’s pretty decent. My problem seems to be that the PS5 version apparently has some connection issues. So I spend most of my time lagging.

I’m liking the game so far. I’m a level 49 necromancer, currently going through act 3.

The field of view looks diferent, but I’m enjoing the enhanced verticality of the maps. I was amazed when going down a moutain for the first time during the beta, and now in act 3 the dunes look so cool due to that!

Regarding the stats, I had to read up about their effects because I was also finding somethings odd, this is a good explainer: https://gamerant.com/diablo-4-stats-explained/ I would love if D4 implemented a system, lore adequate, similar to what death stranding has where there is an encyclopedia of game mechanics where everything is explained.

(Only now am I noticing, in the screenshots on that website, that they have popups when you mouse over the stats explaining things, never noticed them given that I am playing with the Xbox controller on my living room PC :o)

There are quite a few new systems ingame, its a diferent game from D3 wich was a diferente game from D2, for better and for worse.

I’m enjoying learning those new systems and playing within their restrictions.

I watched MrLlama’s (popular d2 speedrunner) videos about d4 and decided I will most likely hold out for a sale or deep deep sale before I get the game. From the sounds of it d2 is still just straight up superior in most categories. Especially with the new remake making it look almost as nice. And since I still have d2r and still haven’t gotten my enigma yet, why not go back into to it?

If anything d4 has made me want to play d2 more lol. I am glad people are enjoying d4 though. Much different song and dance this time around than when d3 released.

My current biggest gripe is that I am fearful Blizzard is somehow going to take a perfectly functional game and somehow ruin it, since it is a live service game after all, and it is Blizzard. Thus the wait for a sale.