Dungeon Master
Welcome to Dungeon Master, PC Gamer’s regular RPG column, where Online Editor Fraser Brown delves into PC gaming’s most beloved and enduring genre. Grab a seat in our badly-lit tavern and please ignore the goblin puke.
Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred is nipping at our heels, and to prepare I’ve been mucking around in Sanctuary again. I finally finished the OG campaign, which I initially bounced off in favour of seasonal distractions, and I’ve rolled a couple of new characters. And despite never vibing with Blizzard’s latest before, I am finally enjoying myself.
But it simply left me bored. Even Diablo 3’s character progression and skills felt more compelling and primed for madcap buildcrafting, and honestly I couldn’t come up with a good reason to keep playing when Path of Exile 1 and 2 were there, doing significantly bolder things with the ARPG framework.
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Where Diablo 4 didn’t come alive until endgame, and left you feeling underpowered and lacking in interesting build options before then, Path of Exile’s passive skill tree means the wild experimenting can begin straight away, as you strike out on whatever path you fancy. The sheer potential of that tree is mesmerising.
If you try to follow a build guide in PoE or its sequel, or attempt to make your own build, it feels like you need a degree in dungeoneering. There’s so much to wrap your head around, so much to pore over. It’s intimidating but thrilling. Diablo 4 isn’t comparable. It’s a checklist that doesn’t reward experimentation. Though it sounds like Lord of Hatred will solve this somewhat.
Per Tyler Colp’s glowing Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred review:
Freestyling a build in Diablo 4 used to be like being stuck in a maze and constantly running into dead ends. A skill could sound effective, but you’d all too often discover that it was garbage unless you paired it with a specific item. Now, a lot of the most powerful effects are in the skill trees themselves. Your gear still matters, but it’s been moved to a more supplementary role.
In practice, playing through the campaign on my warlock gave me the same thirst for experimentation that Diablo 3 did. I swapped skills in and out in between quests just to see if they’d make the cut for my final build and found it hard to stick with one set. This is how, after going through some combinations I still want to explore in the future, I ended up with the world’s strongest demon.
This is exciting! But since I’ve been waiting for Lord of Hatred like the rest of you, I’ve had to make do with the current version of Diablo 4. And I’ve still managed to have a good time. It’s all because I’ve stopped giving a damn.
Instead of wishing Diablo 4 was as complex and compelling as Path of Exile, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that it never will be—and probably shouldn’t be. We already have two of those games, and other ARPGs like Last Epoch that do more unusual things with skill trees and builds.
With Diablo 4, then, I’ve just been enjoying laziness. I have a popular Sorcerer build, I regularly spit three flaming rays of death out of my hands, and things explode. There’s some solid crafting, allowing me to refine my build with new gear, but mostly I am just clicking things and watching them die. I don’t need to dedicate entire evenings trying to figure out ways to not suck.
It’s pretty satisfying! Does it feel a bit weird that death is only a worry if I literally step away from my PC to make a sandwich? Yes. It’s hardly in keeping with Sanctuary’s grim, everything-wants-to-kill-you vibe. But on the other hand, I can go to the loo or play with the dog without needing to portal back to town. That’s handy. Not particularly exciting, granted, but when I’m a bit beat and just looking for a smooth power fantasy, Diablo 4’s got me covered.
The current season also lets you temporarily play as the Butcher, which is immensely fun. Just running around utterly obliterating things for a couple of minutes, grabbing demons and humans alike with my meathooks and incinerating in my oversized grill. It’s a good time. As seasons go, it’s entertaining, even if it never comes close to the boldness of, say, monster collecting or running your own colony—two things that Path of Exile did.
There’s something to be said for not getting too into the buildcrafting/theorycrafting that holds so much appeal in PoE. I just turn off my brain and run around Sanctuary, bringing death to all four corners of the map. And sometimes those simple pleasures are enough. Blizz knows what it’s doing in this regard. If you want a flashy, polished and largely frictionless murder party, then yay, you’re well-catered to here.
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