Another few months, another drastic shake up has come for Diablo IV with the Vessel of Hatred expansion. It’s time to go and hunt for Nyrelle after her flight at the end of the main story, doing so with a new Spiritborn class, a complete reworking of the levelling system, and some new endgame activities, including a raid. Yes, it’s even more like an MMORPG now – there’s even a party finder.
The new story could have been the best part. You go hunting for Neyrelle in a whole new region, called Nahantu, which is a sort of dingy jungle – just picture a dark jungle and fill it with blood and monsters, and that’s what it looks like. Nahantu is also home to Kurast and Travincal, locations you may remember from all the way back in Diablo II, and you’ll be able to revisit them here decades after the events of that game.
As for how this quest goes, suffice to say that if you’ve played any Diablo game, you already know what’s going to happen. Diablo IV in particular has shown its hand already, and that handnhas only one card: nihilism. It’s very on brand for the series, but it was delivered more effectively in previous games where there weren’t a huge amount of side quests that end in everyone dying just to hammer home, again and again, that actually this is a big dark apocalypse. I love dark fantasy, but there’s so much content here that ends the same that it’s just become repetitive.
So the story is fine, there’s one particular moment that felt like a moment of brightness and really stood out to me and looked particularly good, but other than the specifics, the story itself is pretty predictable.
Also predictable is the raid. I spent a good while getting levelled up so I could try this raid and frankly 20 minutes into it I wished I hadn’t bothered. The Dark Citadel, as it’s called, is described as a “co-op endgame dungeon” that “requires teamwork” to complete. What this translates to is that it artificially splits up the party and has them do things separately in the loosest definition of teamwork I’ve ever encountered. For example, the Trial of Reflection is just the party split up, doing the same thing in different locations. The only reason you can’t do these alone is because the game forces them onto different paths and because the health bars of the enemies are so large.
On top of that, much of it involves running through environments before a timer runs out, hoping you run into the shrine that resets that timer before you just die. The bosses in this mode keep teleporting you to different arenas, one of which also has this timer that will just kill you. This isn’t teamwork, it’s busy work split in two to give the impression of working together.
It also didn’t help that, while the mode supports up to four players, the only parties I got into were with just one other person. Without difficulty scaling, we’d eventually hit a boss we couldn’t manage and give up. Three times with three different people. This is a lot of words to say that it’s frustrating, shallow, and most importantly, often has you running past groups of monsters instead of fighting them. That’s pretty much the opposite of what I want.
Thankfully the rest of the endgame content is more enjoyable. The Pit returns with its many tiers of increasingly difficult and rewarding challenges – in fact you need to complete The Pit tier 20 to unlock The Dark Citadel. Then there’s The Kurast Undercity, a timed dungeon similar to the Rifts from Diablo 3. You enter the rift and fight your way through legions of enemies, through multiple floors, until you find the boss. If you don’t get there quickly enough you’ll run out of time, ending your run, but killing elites earns you more time. The more monsters you kill, the higher your attunement will get, bringing better rewards once you finish the run. This is a mad dash that requires a build that can melt through enemies reasonably quickly or you just won’t finish. It’s pretty fun.
Now we come to the Spiritborn – the new class that’s introduced in this expansion. The Spiritborn is a kind of tribal warrior that invokes the spirits of a Centipede, Eagles, Gorilla, and a Jaguar in battle, channeling those spirits to, for example, attack with jaguar claws, or slam the ground like a gorilla to damage surrounding enemies. To me, this plays and feels remarkably similar to the Druid who actually transforms into animals for attacks, just without the trandformation. The game’s other classes, Rogue, Necromancer, Barbarian, Druid, Sorcerer are all pretty distinct in how they play, but the Spiritborn isn’t quite as distinctive as the others. It’s just another tribal fighter with animals.
That’s not to say it’s not fun though – in fact, at the moment I am able to use my Ultimate attack up to five times in short succession, which is immensely satisfying. On the other hand, the class isn’t balanced very well right now – I’ve gone all the way to Level 60 to find that my core skill Rake, the cool jaguar claws, is pathetically inferior to Quill Volley, the Eagle’s core skill, even when Quill Volley doesn’t have any upgrades applied to it and Rake does. I discovered this when I found a unique that allowed me to completely abandon my basic skill, so I didn’t mind that much at that point I suppose.
Another huge change is the level system, which now tops out at 60 before Paragon levels come into play, which are now account-wide. This is a welcome change, except all the loot tops out there as well. That is to say, once you hit 60 you’re a couple hours at best away from having all your equipment at the maximum power level as you get to Torment 1 difficulty, meaning that there are no more obvious upgrades available. Instead, you’re doomed to sift through the four or so affixes every legendary item has on them and compare them to the one you’ve got equipped for marginal increases and cross your fingers you get that holy grail loot drop that’s exactly the affixes you want and they’ve rolled well and it’s an ancestral item. It’s not anywhere near as enjoyable.
Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred is a bit of a disappointment. After the story finishes, it feels like little has changed, though the structural systems of the game have had some upheaval. You hit max level far quicker now and, once you do, the fun of looting will evaporate for all but the most hardcore and dedicated loot hunters. Meanwhile, there’s spam to buy loot in the chat constantly, the party finder invariably puts me in parties where my lower level character is useless and dies to a sneeze from a passing asthmatic, and the big co-op endgame dungeon doesn’t really seem to understand what Diablo is. Why doesn’t it seem to understand? Because this is an MMO, not Diablo.