If so is it worth it? I’m thinking about getting it.
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I ended up getting a free copy of the game as a promotion, and so far (6hrs in) its better than I was expecting. Almost all of the major issues I had with Diablo 3 have been fixed. I haven't seen an item auction house and all the items I pick up are for my class instead of for a random one. There seems to be less gear dropped overall, so each pickup is more impactful and inventory management is easier. The 1st playthrough of the game lets you start on difficulty 2, instead of being forced on difficulty 1. Its still a bit easy, but no where near the game journalist mode that D3 forced you into. I've been playing D4 on PC with a controller and it works well, I much prefer it over the keyboard/mouse controls. I found it baffling when D3 didn't allow that. The art style and plot seem to have a much more serious tone, which I think fits much better than D3's attempt at being wacky/cartoony.
So far the game looks great visually, lots of interesting details and it fits the atmosphere well, going with a less saturated color pallet and has slower atmospheric music which works for the starting winter villages and the lingering demon threat. I'm don't know how well this will carry over into lategame, as things will need to ramp up. The game also has a lot more focus on the open world, which is filled with side quests and small dungeons. Occasionally a mini-boss will spawn in an area and multiple players can all join up to fight it, I guess this is the justify the always online requirement.
Aspects of the gameplay seem to be simplified a bit. Each skill has a choice between 2 effects, and the differences and modifiers aren't nearly as large as before. For the necromancer, the skeleton spawns are on a different skill tree than your abilities, so you end up leveling up both evenly instead of picking one. I suspect that a well planned build will not be nearly as gamebreaking, and players will end up with a lot more viable builds but with each option feeling similar. Items are a bit simpler, with 3 max upgrades per item, no need to use identification scrolls, potions limited to max of 4 in your toolbelt, can teleport back to base without a scroll, all items using 1 inventory slot.
Is the game woke? So far I've only seen 1 minor instance, in the character select screen they show you the female characters when you pick a class instead of the male ones. That and picking between body type A and B. Ingame ~90% of the characters are white, which makes sense for a setting that I assume is based on medieval north europe (99% is more accurate, but 90% is close enough) and character morality doesn't seem to have any connection to skin color or gender. I haven't seen any mentions of anything related to woke ideology anywhere with the characters or plot. Maybe it changes later on, but so far I see no issues. Rather, I think the game design is largely influenced by various market trends, mainly the open world and 'cinematic gameplay' from other AAA games and the dark fantasy themes from game of thrones, with monetization being mainly through trying to see cosmetics.
I feel like this is a negative.... One of the bright spots of D2 was picking up interesting and/or powerful items for another class and wondering about how to make it work on that other toon. Then you'd start that character up, and they'd find some things for themselves, but also for other classes, and pretty soon you'd have a stable full of different characters. Some would be stronger and further along than others, but you'd be exploring the game much more and challenging yourself to build and play in different ways successfully.
Removing this aspect feels like putting the game on rails even more than it already is. If everything you get is tied only to your class, not only is that immersion-breaking, but it actively keeps you in the rut of your current character....
Maybe it was different for D2, but I found the random class loot to be a huge issue in D3 since it seemed designed to force players into using the auction house. Once the auction house was used you could easily get gear far surpassing what you would find naturally, which turned all loot collecting into a number crunch for getting ingame currency. Even if you only share to your other characters it makes those runs easier in a game that was already very easy at start, which doesn't help when figuring out that class's limits. D2 had a much higher baseline difficulty than D3, so getting high end gear from your other characters might have made a lot more sense there.