Blizzard Entertainments Diablo IV is part of the very popular action-roleplaying Diablo series that centers on a massive, gruesome and dungeon-running conflict between, well, heaven and hell. But don’t go looking for any biblical foundations here.
Diablo IV begins with the blood sacrifice resurrection of a mythological character named Lilith, the Queen of succubae and demon Mephisto’s daughter. After being reconstituted through the gore and entrails of several sacrificed humans, she sets off to gather great power and reshape everything in her dark and demonic image. A warrior angel opposes her, but he is seemingly as corrupted and power-focused as she.
Players stand against this daunting and dooming onslaught as a deeply customizable warrior chosen and shaped from one of five classes: Barbarian, Sorcerer, Druid, Necromancer and Rogue. Each class has its own strengths, abilities and skill trees.
Barbarians, for instance are tank-like battlers who excel at every razor-sharp and skull-crushing weapon available. Necromancers rely on raising a surrounding team of skeletal warriors from the corpses of their slain enemies. That group of henchmen starts small but can grow into a flooding disposable army.
The Druid class focuses on werewolf and werebear shapeshifting. Sorcerers lean completely on deadly forms of magic. And Rogues dart quickly about, delivering devastating melee blows and ranged kills.
It’s the specialized loot and gear found in dungeon-crawling battles, however, that can dramatically shape a gamer’s play. Unique items protect characters with enemy-freezing magical shields, for example, and armor that transports them away from a swarming, slathering crowd. Special weapons can not only damage foes in spectacular ways, but some rare armaments can raise and even double magical attacks (which will greatly aid a Sorcerer).
The constant, frenetic battles are seen from a three-quarters bird’s-eye point of view. Players can set off in solo mode or join up with online clans (of up to four players) that take on the massing demons, monsters and deadly big bosses together.
The five-region land of Sanctuary—a crumbling land somewhere between heaven and hell—is open, freely explorable and filled with procedurally generated dungeons, along with dark main story missions and quests. It’s all spiritually and emotionally dusky and bleak. One early quest, for instance, sends players off to deal with a cannibalistic human cult.
There are PVP (player vs player) zones that allow online gamers to kill each other’s characters in cold blood. The various classes and their individual skill sets make replay more compelling since the hordes of foes can be downed with new strategic choices and unique forms of attack. The game requires an online connection at all times.
This latest Diablo game is technically impressive in some ways. The story, though demonically dark, is presented through compelling cinematic cutscenes. The graphics, overall, are visually striking. On top of that, the game’s combat mechanics are very easy to slide into. And like many dungeon-crawling games, the loot rewards are designed to keep players coming back for more and prompt them to keep reaching for that next, hoped-for unique boost. (Which, of course, can be seen as a positive and a negative part of gameplay.)
It could be said that the game’s main quest is all about a hero’s quest to fight against demonic evil.
Demons, swarming death, blood sacrifice and more demons. As has always been the case with this series, dark spirituality, death and gore is at the core of Diablo IV’s play. The goopiness of splattering demon guts everywhere in the heat of swarming battle is lessened due to the birds-eye perspective, but it’s still plenty messy. (And the movie-like cutscenes, featuring dismemberment, disembowelment and flesh-gobbling are far more gruesome.)
Saying that characters are attacked in bloody ways by swords, axes, arrows and spears is, of course, almost an understatement. Ravaging werebears, gigantic tentacled demons and fiends waving meat hooks make the above statement seem minor. We see acts of suicide, gory sacrifices and bloodied corpses lifted up on spikes and spears. The battles are intense and sometimes hard to keep track of in smaller, swarm-filled areas. Your character will die often.
A warning about the potential addictiveness of this game also needs to be repeated. There is a lot of repetitive battle action, but the game keeps things “fresh” enough to maintain interest, even on replays. And the potentially game-shifting loot discoveries are compelling. Gameplay can easily stretch from tens of hours to hundreds of hours depending on a player’s enthusiasm.
When we first see Lilith she is naked, though her flesh exterior is transparent and featureless. Later, she wears a form-fitting outfit that’s cut deeply in the front. The s-word is used in the dialogue. Players can choose to make real-money in-game purchases.
Diablo IV is a game for lovers of frenetic battling and loot gathering, all washed in bloody darkness. It’s well made, but murderously cold blooded.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
