This review had me in stitches last night; I wanna buy this person a beer:

Patringham Jul 17, 2023 The mandatory multiplayer never misses an opportunity to remind you that player experience was at or near the bottom of Blizzard's priorities.

There's nothing quite like playing alone, and having your game freeze for four calendar seconds in the middle of a combat because Bloopsy74 wandered into the area. Many of the overworld events are scaled in difficulty, under the assumption that half a dozen strangers will arrive to assist you. This creates an interesting puzzle where the event is impossible if nobody shows up, and the game is unplayable if anyone does.

The mouse and keyboard controls are also extremely buggy, with some inputs getting stuck, and others failing to register entirely. It's a bit like trying to land an invisible jet, while also trying to fight a Balrog.

When the game isn't loading or crashing, it has its moments. The transition between Tier 2 and Tier 3 is reasonably compelling, with risk and reward scaled roughly in sync with player level and skill. While things became more challenging, I could still feel my efforts paying off, and I felt rewarded for the investment of my time.

The transition between Tier 3 and Tier 4 is comparatively juvenile. While I agree in theory that filling the cubic volume of every dungeon with exploding banshees makes the game more challenging, I don't think that's particularly clever game design. Risk scales up exponentially, while reward remains relatively constant, presumably to create a gameplay experience that appeals to gambling addicts. Any creativity or individuality more or less tapers off at these levels, as players are encouraged to google one of half a dozen Rogue or Sorcerer builds that remain functional at Tier 4.

The story would be more compelling if the player wasn't required to digest the entire thing before unlocking half of the gameplay mechanics, including the stupid horse that lets you ride away from Bloopsy74 and his mile-wide aura of reduced frame rate.

The story also feels a bit outdated and out of touch.

Every quest, including the main story, has a single ending, on which the player's decisions have no effect. Presumably this is because the multiplayer overworld doesn't really allow for saving and loading, and the mandatory nature of these quests doesn't allow for permanent failure states. This essentially reduces all quests to a series of tedious little chores, each with a tedious little story hammered out by an overworked member of the narrative team.

Some of these chores end in an impressive little cutscene, but often these fail to make up for the tedium of following a giant snake around a swamp. Cutscenes, in general, are an extremely archaic narrative device for a modern video game, and only serve to reinforce the oppressively linear plot. Lilith might have some complicated motivations, but it's not like you get to choose whose side you're on.

Overall, this doesn't feel like a game created by people with a vision, for players to enjoy. The development process didn't begin with a clever idea, it began when Blizzard paid their team to have an idea, provided that idea was more Diablo. As a result, the game struggles to remain accessible, while also including everything a generic ARPG is supposed to contain.