Most people, well, most gamers, would have heard of the series that is Diablo, with its dark themes, its dungeon delving, and its top-down view action carnage. As famous action star Tugg Speedman, also known as Ben Stiller says, ‘Here we go again, again’, and we hold onto our hats for the fourth instalment of this popular series. Publisher and developer, Blizard, brings us the newest Diablo experience where, once again, we must fight back the evils wanting to invade the hearts, minds, and souls of the people of Sanctuary, and who knows, like the action movie Scorcher, which is not a real movie series, by the sixth game, we may have to save Sanctuary again, but this time it’s different.

All Tropic Thunder jokes aside, yes, Diablo is back, and yes, in a lot of ways, it may seem similar to the previous games, but there are heaps of upgrades and new mechanics to keep you excited. Set in the world of Sanctuary, you play as the mysterious wanderer. After saving a village and then partying with the villagers, you are drugged and force-fed petals made of blood by them. So, not a great holiday destination, but hey, at least you’ll have quite the story to tell to your grandkids. After being saved by a monk, who was also captured by the hosts from hell, you make your escape by killing everyone in the village gruesomely. You are then told to seek out a hermit, because hermits always know things, and low and behold, the hermit is Lorath Nahr from Diablo III, and he does know things. After confirming that Lilith has returned, you set upon a quest to stop her evil plan, because it is evil. Right?

Diablo IV follows the same style as previous Diablo games because if it ain’t broke and all that. It does sport some groovy upgrades that are sure to please some people, and let’s be honest, we gamers love to find anything to complain about, but before that, let’s go through some of the cool new features, like the new skill tree, or the new levelling system filled with abilities that you can mix and match to create all kinds of builds. It’s oh so multifaceted.

On top of that, for the low price of a few gold, you can reset your skill tree to create a different build, and you can do that as many times as you like. Now that’s something to write home about, but with limited ability key bindings at your disposal, swapping out skills and trying different combos is highly recommended. Along with your skills, weapons and armour play a big role in strength, so the shinier the better, and there is a lot to gather. Like, a lot a lot, and the best ones have fancy abilities, so look out for those.

What’s that? You have played all of the Diablo games? You don’t think that it will be all that challenging? Well, my friend, you can now pump up that difficulty setting to its max for your first play-through, for all those BDE people out there. “But Brash, it probably follows the same linear new chapter, new area, follow the yellow brick road style progression won’t it?” Sweet child, yes, but also a huge no. While there are still chapters from the get-go, you can explore the vast continent, going from one environment to another with little limitation. “Wow, so the character creation must be super good,” you say. No, it’s quite depressing.

You can make a few changes to your face, skin colour, and whatnot, but that’s about it. A disappointing fact. I mean, I just wanted a jacked werewolf character to swoon over like all my Jacob stans out there. The classes are all great though, like many games with classes like barbarians, druids, wizards, and the like, but where is my monk? I want to punch people with gauntlets that look like panther heads and kick people with badass-looking greaves.

Not all is lost, because the cutscenes and the story are absolute masterpieces. I cannot fault them. They are so good and I can’t even, but yes, I love the cutscenes. I want to watch a series of Diablo with this animation. Lilith looks so crazy good, even with the bat-like wing membrane flesh cape thing being so gross but so cool, and it may weirdly make you feel a kind of way. Is it dark and foreboding, and yes, that’s the style of the game, but now there are places of bright colour that inspire hope for a happy future for Sanctuary. Oh if only… The dungeons that I have seen are all dark and dank places, even though they are randomly generated, they all start looking the same.

They do look good, but they’re still repetitive. The landscapes are equally great, besides the different biomes though. Each area is a big landmass of the same thing, but they are some good-looking landmasses though, and with volatile combat and large amounts of things going on at once on screen, I thought for sure there would be so much graphical strain, but not once did it even stutter.

Now audio. I mean, it’s a lot of sound effects – casting spells, weapons clashing and slashing… The sound of me crushing my enemies under my werewolf heel… You know, the usual sounds we all love. Look, the sound effects were good. They weren’t anything outstanding, but enough to pull it together and convey the theme of the game. The voice acting was great, and I can’t fault that at all, along with the writing.

There were no silly one-liners or nonsensical conversations that games seem to love these days. Caroline Faber does an amazing job as the diabolical Lilith, who may just be misunderstood. Maybe we should just hear her out. Being able to change the voice of your character is another thing that was missing for me, but it’s also understandable as your character does a lot of talking, so that would mean even more voice actors would be needed, which would be costly, but it still would have been nice.

I think this was a great game, yeah, but after a while, it got a little boring and repetitive. Is it worth playing right through the story? Definitely. Will it leave you questioning your actions? A little. Did I kind of want to join Lilith? Obviously! So should you play Diablo IV? Well, that’s up to you, but I do rate it, and think you should give it a go if you are even the slightest bit curious. If you have played the previous Diablo games, you will play it, let’s be honest, but Diablo IV was my first, and it was gentle in a not-so-gentle way. How your mother would disapprove, but you love him, and you can fix him. Thank you for joining me on this adventure. I hope you enjoy your dives into the hellish dungeons, and that your battles against ferocious monstrosities are glorious.

Written by: Adam Brasher