They brought back the grimdark.

I have been generally enjoying my time with Diablo 4, all the way up to level 30 40 as a Necromancer. I tend to gravitate towards Necromancers in any game that offers it (including MMOs), and I definitely remember rolling one the first time I started playing Diablo 2 right as I moved to college. It’s kind of a difficult design to get right though. If your minions are too strong, you end up not pushing buttons and simply walking around the map melting bad guys. Conversely, if minions are too weak, they may as well not exist. Plus, you can generally get punished for having a minion-build during boss fights, as the boss will kill them quickly and there may not be any corpses around to bring them back.

I’m happy to report that Diablo 4 solves the issue is an interesting way: a draining basic attack that creates corpses every few seconds. Things can definitely go downhill quickly if you aren’t paying attention to your skeleton crew, but I appreciate the novel solution. It also enables the frequent use of Corpse Explosion, which has a very satisfying aural element to it. Killing the first enemy and then chain-popping dozens more feels good every time.

What kind of shocked me though is how you are limited to six buttons.

I legit had to look back to Diablo 3 and Diablo 2 screenshots to see that, yeah, it’s been that way for decades. Which is fine, I guess, but became real annoying once I realized that the Golem takes up one of those buttons. Was that always that way too? I suppose it’s as good a balancing mechanism as any, but it also reinforces the whole “walk around the map doing nothing” angle even more. It also makes me question why these other Skills exist with longer cooldowns. I’ll probably come across some meta build that farms the endgame in 20-30 second increments, but it’s baffling thus far.

Of course, everyone knows the “real game” doesn’t happen until you start getting decked out in Legendary gear. I can already see how some Affixes can radically change basic abilities; perhaps that is the secret sauce for making 6 buttons still feel like enough agency. Diablo 4 does allow you to scrap Legendary items and then add their special ability to future item you want, which is fantastic. If Borderlands 4 doesn’t have something similar, it’s going to feel miles behind.

I will say though, playing Diablo 4 has given me a greater appreciation for V Rising. I said multiple times that V Rising’s ARPG angle fell short, and you should “just play Diablo 4” instead. While that is true from a loot perspective, I do have to say that V Rising feels way better from a gameplay perspective. Didn’t quite realize how much I missed WASD movement than when I was left-clicking around in Diablo 4 and either halted to shoot when I wanted to move, or moved when I wanted to shoot. Yeah, you can hold Shift to stay still, but that gets awkward when the game wants you to keep your fingers on 1234.

Anyway, so far so good. My focus is on the story, doing some random dungeons/side quests along the way, and raising the World Tier difficulty as it become available. There is likely a zero percent chance I’m spending hours farming endgame-endgame gear for the giggles, but it’s fun enough for now.