Thought I'd let people know, in case they were curious.
I've only played a few minutes but...I'm very underwhelmed. For all the hate a lot of woke games get, you're often hearing only one side, and so they're often better than you might think. Not excusing wokeness, and I hate the state of modern gaming, but point is if you just hear the negative sides of a game, you might be impressed on playing it, even if there's plenty that annoys you.
This is not the case with D4. It feels like a fucking mobile game. I'm only a few minutes in, as mentioned, but it starts with a decent cinematic (not as mindblowing compared to past Blizzard games when compared to the technology of the time, but not terrible or anything), then hits with "connecting to servers" and stuff, with "accessibility" options turned on, including text-to-speech. It has an AI voice telling you it's connecting to servers, that's your next intro to the game. Already leaves you with a weird taste. Next thing is it pushes you right to the aforementioned accessibility options. Next is character creation. I suspect the characters are randomly generated, but I had four blacks, and one fatass female (Druid is always fat.)
As to the actual gameplay, as I said, it feels like a mobile game. Not far enough in to fully judge, but my initial impression was very underwhelming. And, again, was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, as I think a lot of woke games get an exaggeratedly bad image, since we're hearing only the one side. But, yeah, just feels kind of clunky so far, and zoomed in a bit too much. Music is good, though, from what I've heard. Classic Diablo-style music. Mutes on Alt-Tab by default though.
Anyway, I'll stop rambling. I don't want to color anyone's opinions and, if you are curious, I do actually suggest you try it while it's free. But I was surprised at just how much I didn't like my first dip into it, and thought I'd share. For all the woke nonsense, I expected to like it more than my initial impressions.
You tried much harder than me to like it, and still couldn't. I already had a fairly massive distaste for it before I'd even gotten to much of the gameplay. It just doesn't feel good. And the feel is one of the most important aspects of an ARPG. Woke, not woke, barely even matters, if the gameplay and feel is good. D4 fails on both counts. Too zoomed in, looting isn't satisfying, characters aren't satisfying, nothing is satisfying.
Yeah, I didn't get there yet (probably won't, not sure how far in it is an I'm just going to be playing a bit while it's free), and it still fucking blew chunks.
Gatekeeping, gatekeeping, gatekeeping. Can we please fucking go back to gatekeeping?!
So far, that's been my experience. A big issue is, as I mentioned, it's just too zoomed in. Makes me wonder if a big issue with modern gaming isn't just narcissism in general. We already knew a bunch of the people involved in this are narcissists, but playing D4 made me realize that a huge issue with modern game design is just this whole "protagonist syndrome" thing. Even when you're supposed to be the fucking Savior of the Universe, they still manage to make you too prominent. Leave me alone, Writer, I got this already...fuck off.
I sort of want people to experience this agony for themselves while it's free but, yeah, certainly don't pay for it. So far this shit is bad.