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Impressions: Diablo 4
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.
V Rising: All Done
I’m done with V Rising after about 56 hours.
I technically did not “beat” the game, but I am done. All bosses have been defeated aside from the last two: Adam and Dracula. I have maxed my gear and spells, acquired a Legendary weapon, and was otherwise facing down 5-6 additional hours of “gitting gud” before seeing… I don’t think there’s even credits screen here. There have been tough bosses leading up to this point, but these last two have multiple phases and Adam even requires the crafting of a special consumable to even access him for an hour. I think I could eventually take down Adam by investing in crafting a different endgame weapon, or swapping out spells during a fight transition, but honestly fuck that.
Overall, I stand by my earlier assessment of the game, e.g. it’s OK. I did develop a deeper appreciation of the visuals though and the overall art direction. Running around the map during daytime became an interesting game unto itself, as you tried collecting resources or fighting mobs only to have the shading tree collapse from an errand attack. The sound that accompanied increasing exposure to sunlight was also very satisfying (if not deadly). The moment-to-moment gameplay was satisfying.
What is less satisfying is the grind on the macro level. As stated before, there is no XP here, and mobs themselves rarely drop anything of value, so there’s really no point to combat. The whole vampire fantasy takes a bit of a hit when you rush from house to house rummaging through dressers for bits of cloth and paper. A lot of that has to do with some of the absurd recipes.
Here is an example of what I’m taking about. I need Power Cores to craft an item. Crafting them requires 18 Radium Bars + 9 Charged Batteries for 2 Power Cores. I’m just going to ignore the Charged Batteries, because you basically just farm Depleted Batteries from certain enemies and then have to juice them up out in the world. The Radium Bars on the other hand… oh boy.
- Power Core x2 = 18 Radium Bars + 9 Charged Batteries
- Radium Bars x4 = 135 Tech Scrap + 9 Sulfur + 3 Sludge-Filled Container
- Tech Scrap = mob drop and/or mining resource
- Sulfur x1 = Sulfur Ore x45
- Sludge-Filled Container x1 = 9 Glass + 9 Mutant Grease + 3 Iron Ingot
- Glass x1 = 45 Quartz
- Mutant Grease = mob drop*
- Iron Ingot x1 = 45 Iron Ore
- Radium Bars x4 = 135 Tech Scrap + 9 Sulfur + 3 Sludge-Filled Container
Again, all of that for two (2) Power Cores. You need 9 Power Cores to craft the highest tier of necklace. So that’s 90 Radium Bars. Which might not have been as bad as it felt if there was a reliable way of farming for Radium Bars directly. Instead, at best you are running around 1-2 areas breaking all the boxes in a desperate hope that you can get 5-10 Radium Bars from drops. That shit immediately reminded me of Warframe, and it feels outrageously dumb for the same reasons. I can sorta maybe get behind mining for ore as a fledgling vampire, but endgame Dracula-esque vampire overlord reduced to breaking open boxes for loot is too much. Farming enemies? Good. Breaking background clutter? Bad.
One thing that made it better/worse were servants. These are people you capture and then turn into vampires, who then can be sent on resource-gathering missions. While it takes a bit to set them up – they have to basically be equipped with the same gear you have, which means grinding some more – they can return fantastic amounts of resources on a real-time basis. To a point. There are several time increments you can dispatch servants on, such as 4h, 8h, 16h, and 24h, but the difference between 8h and 16h is not 2x the loot. Which means you are better off logging on, dispatching servants for 4h or 8h, then logging off. Sometimes they get injured, so they cannot be immediately be sent back out.
So, anyway, there I was, logging onto V Rising three times a day to dispatch servants because I no longer wanted to spend time manually farm resources. And remember, I’m already on +100% global loot. Once I realized that I could only play more of the parts of the game I enjoyed by playing it less… I did so. And then discovered that the other games I was playing instead were actually kind of fun and rewarded me for playing them more. Imagine that!
Arguably, none of this is how V Rising is “meant” to be played in the first place. You’re supposed to be out in the world with your chums, farming some mobs, attacking (or being attacked by) other vampires and stealing their loot, defending your castle from destruction, and so on. Theoretically, it would feel like less of a grind if there was more grind, insofar as you wouldn’t be hitting the endgame wall as early. Or something. But by the time I got there, I kept asking myself: why this over Diablo 4 or whatever? At least there I had something to potentially look forward to from killing all these random mobs.
That’s V Rising. I give it props for melding the survival crafting and ARPG genres in an innovative way, and overall being a very slick game. I can see how other people might play it for hundreds of hours with friends and/or internet strangers. But it doesn’t really deliver a better experience in any individual one of the categories compared to other offerings. And while it does offer most of the trappings of a good vampire fantasy, it shrivels up in the sweaty heat of an unnecessarily grindy endgame.
Impressions: V Rising
V Rising is a hybrid ARPG with survival-crafting elements, sorta like Diablo meets Age of Conan. The approach is pretty novel, but there are some awkward elements that diminish the experience a little bit.
To start, I am playing solo on a “private server,” which is basically just single-player (like with ARK, Conan, etc). However, it is very, very obvious that the game is centered around and balanced on a more public, multiplayer and even PvP experience. For example, by default, you cannot use any of the Waypoint portals if you have ANY resources in your inventory. This option can mercifully be changed in the server settings, but the map itself consists of lanes, specific camps of NPCs, and then dozens and dozens of nondescript castle areas. Which is great for multiplayer servers (options!) and PvP (lanes forces players into channels for encounters), sure. But there really aren’t any exploration aspects, no map secrets, no particular reason to go to out of the way areas. Unless, of course, you were hiding from/laying in wait for other players.
The progression system is also a bit weird. First, there is no XP. Instead, your character’s power is based on Gear Score – you deal/receive damage based on the difference in Gear Score between you and your foe. Increasing one’s Gear Score is achieved by unlocking technology via killing bosses and consuming their “V Blood.” This is not necessarily a linear process though. Killing the boss that gives you a Workbench to craft better weapons results in a huge power boost. Other bosses might just give you ability to turn into spider, or upgrade gems into better ones, or similar. You can tackle the bosses in any order (provided you have a decent Gear Score), but nevertheless there are times when things end up… uneven. For example, I just upgraded all my armor and now find myself ~10 Gear Score higher than like eight bosses I have yet to kill. And none of those bosses will see me improve my Gear Score at all.
Progression-wise, it is also worth mentioning that there is a recipe/research component as well. You can unlock Copper weapons by killing the appropriate boss, but getting the next “Merciless Copper” tier requires the recipe to drop from random loot. Sometimes you can purchase the recipe from a vendor’s random stock, and other times you can randomly learn it by consuming Paper or whatever at a Research Desk. So, random, but with grindable guardrails.
Having said all that, is the game even fun?
I guess. I mean… probably? Sure.
At the time of this writing, I show ~22 hours /played. My solo server has loot bumped up 2x, item stacks 3x, Waypoint access on, Durability and Castle decay basically turned off (25% of normal). I don’t feel “bad” about these custom settings because, just like with my time with ARK, the “normal” settings are absurd nonsense. You can dispatch vampire servants to collect resources for you, but they take real-world hours (2h min, 24h max) to return. Considering you have to grind resources to craft equipment for them to wear so they can… err… help you skip grinding resources, they are of questionable merit. Of course, the servants could help defend your castle from other players trying to break it down and steal your resources, if you were into that sort of thing.
From a strict, gameplay-only sense, V Rising is OK. It’s a kind of Diablo-lite where you can hotswap weapons to mix and match abilities (which share cooldowns), while also tailoring your two spell slots and one ultimate move to your preferences and/or the boss’ tactics. Enemies are fairly straight-forward where I’m at in the game, but the environmental factors add layers to strategy. For example, there are patrols of NPCs not just within each camp, but also throughout the lanes in the world. These patrols can include bosses, sometimes ones way beyond the difficulty of the area too. This brings opportunities as well though, as sometimes patrols can be lured into attacking other factions or even having two bosses attack each other! This makes the world feel a lot more interesting than what I normally see in the genre.
Anyway, I’m still playing V Rising and have every expectation to keep playing for now. Whether that is due to the underlying gameplay being better than I am giving it credit for, or because I am starved for new survival-crafting experiences, I cannot say. What I can say is that if you expect a Diablo experience, you will be disappointed. I definitely spend more time hitting rocks with a mace than I do hitting enemies for loot. But don’t expect something akin to Terraria/Starbound either, because the crafting is prescriptive and environment static. So… yeah. V Rising is its own thing and it’s fun enough for now.
In An Age 
Hurry Up and Wait: April Edition
Apr 15
Posted by Azuriel
Once again, I was already looking stuff up, so why not just share it?
April 23rd – Bellwright [Early Access]
This one is seems to be billed as an open-world Kingdom Come: Deliverance, but it also has some Medieval Dynasty vibes. Hard to say whether it will be worth anyone’s time yet. I originally thought it was going to be a survival-crafting game, but the store page makes it very clear that there is a sort of linear plot going on heading towards a rebellion against the Crown. If they can channel the general feel of Kingdom Come: Deliverance without some of the design jank, this could be good. We shall see.
April 26th – Manor Lords [Early Access]
Banished meets Total War in this medieval city-building tactical battler. Supposedly. All I know is that the game looks gorgeous, like an insane level of detail, and the city-building aspects are the most organic-looking I have ever seen in this space. Also, important detail: Game Pass Day 1.
May 8th – V Rising [1.0]
I snagged a copy of V Rising on sale before its recent pre-1.0 price increase, so I’m looking forward to… I guess playing it a month from now? That’s kind of fucked up, now that I think about it. Why increase the price like a full month before release? Anyway, it seems a combination of survival-crafting + Action RPG and I’ve heard some good things, so I hope it’s worth the wait.
May 14th – Diablo 4 [Season 4]
Diablo 4 landed on Game Pass a few weeks ago, but I didn’t dive in due to other priorities (read: farming virtual crops). Then, when I was actually starting to get ready to play, I hear about a “transformational” update coming in May. This is the summary from the IGN interview with the devs:
I mean, I guess that’s a good thing. Eventually. Although it’s a bit odd how they keep leading with “loot 1.0” when they know loot 2.0 is better. Rod Fergusson mentions it’s more due to “overshooting the mark” in a quest for depth and complexity in the looting system. Which I am unqualified to talk much about, considering I haven’t played the game. But it all kinda sorta maybe sounds like Quality of Life shit that was sorted out a decade ago already, and probably should have been in the game from the start. I could be wrong.
May 16th – Ghost of Tsushima [PC]
The once PlayStation exclusive is finally making its way to PC. And while I am liable to wait for ages more before it drops to a “reasonable” price, I am excited that it is coming to PC at all. If I did ever buy a PlayStation 5, this would have been one of the games I would have bought it for.
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Tags: Bellwright, Diablo 4, Hurry Up and Wait, Manor Lords, V Rising, Xbox Game Pass