This has been my first season in about a year and I have been having a blast. I'm a Paragon Lvl 146 Lock in TIX. Some of my thoughts on the season and current state of D4:
- Lord of Hatred Campaign: SIGNIFICANTLY better than Vessel of Hatred. I found the last expansion to be incredibly boring and felt like filler. For a game called "Diablo", wasting an entire expansion without giving us a fight against a Prime Evil, especially Diablo, just felt like a waste. I didn't much care for the region too much and honestly don't remember too much about the story.
Lord of Hatred felt like the stakes were drastically raised. I felt it corrected the D2 version of Mephisto, which always seemed like such an anti-climactic cakewalk for the eldest Prime Evil. Loved how much more menacing they made Mephisto. I loved the false prophet storyline a lot, I loved the return of my favorite Diablo character, and I loved how certain deaths were handled. Overall, the story, cinematics, and campaign of this expansion were great.- The Mephisto fight is actually very fun and challenging, without feeling stupid with one-shot mechanics. Could have been my build, but I think it's the second best boss fight in the game, behind Andariel.
- I believe itemization feels very good, right now. The drops feel good for rares, legendaries, uniques, ancestrals, and GA. Obviously, there are some patches that need to be made for a few exploits people have found, but unless you're looking those up and doing them, it feels very balanced.
- The Cube is awesome. Finally introducing a true crafting mechanic. Really looking forward to them expanding on it in the future. It makes so much more loot worth picking up, for crafting bases. This gives white, blue, and yellow items value.
- Loot Filter... yes. God, yes. Granted, Blizzard had already done a better job of lowering the amount of trash loot that drops. Still, applying loot filters is drastically speeding up my gameplay so I can focus on killing hordes of demons. I have played Last Epoch and have been playing lots of POE and POE2, over the last year. Allowing me to add Recolors to specific items I'm looking for only makes the search even more fun. Now, I know anytime a Red or Teal name appears, it's a great item that could be an upgrade or crafting base. This provides an endorphin hit that Diablo didn't provide, previously. Now, all I need is for them to allow us to add sound effects, as well.
- Really enjoying the Warplans mechanic to help direct us in the end-game. Now it just doesn't feel aimless, but a way to move you through all the end game mechanics so you get a bit of everything. Sure, you can focus on one mechanic if you like, but giving bonuses for mixing it up is a nice change of pace. It also makes the time fly by.
- The new Hub town of Temis is laid out fantastically.
Those are just some of my scattershot thoughts. It's in no means a perfect game, but I think Blizzard has made some great changes and hope they continue. I still believe they are not using the open world as much as they should be. The biggest thing D4 has going for it, that no other ARPG does, is the open world. I love the Helltide mechanic, but would love to see some more creative ideas on how to use the open world in the end-game.
