Diablo IV: Lord Of Hatred Review

The slow-burn story of Diablo IV has been a welcome one. Previously, Diablo would effectively wrap up its main story beats well in advance of an expansion, resulting in the inevitable expanded content to speedrun through the narrative framework of why a new fearsome foe was setting their sights on your mortal being. With time comes retrospect, and it is clear that Blizzard has realised that if expansions are expected content, they better plant the narrative seeds well in advance. And so with Lord of Hatred we can see the culmination of Mephisto’s long gambit to restore himself to power – particularly at the expense of his daughter, his followers and even his own machinations.

Lord of Hatred picks up with the long-suffering Neyrelle confronting the awkward situation she has found herself in. The efforts to bind Mephisto haven’t quite worked out as she imagined, with the Lord of Hell managing to manifest himself within the body of the prophet Akarat at the end of the prior expansion. Much like the protagonist having a little bit of Lilith within themselves, Neyrelle is now dealing with Mephisto both within her mind and very much within her personal space. Poring over ancient tomes has revealed some semblance of a prophecy that can likely solve the problem, but Neyrelle is in no position to make this happen. Thankfully there is a player character waiting to sort it out.

GIANT. ENEMY. CRAB.

To our delight, this prophecy also sends us to the not-so-distant shores of Skovos, a longstanding cornerstone of Diablo lore. These environments are especially pretty in unexpected ways – one of my very first combat heavy areas was a sewer, quick to make me roll my eyes and think not this shit again, but it was so well realised and interesting that it set the tone for how I should approach the rest of Skovos…this place is a unique kind of sexy. The martial spirituality of the area feels so obvious in retrospect, with the home of the Amazons bedecked in carved marble and coastal vibes. It’s a unique setting for a Diablo title, if only because it isn’t a place that has been fighting demonic invasions for decades.

This beauty is diabolically mirrored in equal part by how unhinged and disgusting the new foes of hell are. Rat nests peel back like a grotesque orange, revealing unbirthed vermin floating within – hulking demons sport savagely spiked prosthesis on the end of their crudely amputated limbs, it’s a brutal treat to behold. One sub-boss enemy was an exploded corpse, laid out on its back to suddenly resemble a grotesque scorpion with rib-bone legs. The art direction does everything in its power to make sure you are constantly in either awe or revulsion, swinging like a mad pendulum between gorgeous vistas and visceral meatbags.

Just trying to read my book in peace

I couldn’t help but pick the Warlock as my new saviour of humanity. Disposable demons and flashy fire effects make a strong contrast against the Paladin, a class I already felt was pushing the limits of aesthetic exceptionalism. My time with the Diablo IV preview had me primed for what to expect, but given the full gamut of demonic power I found myself positively overwhelmed. It honestly feels like the half-screen menu to browse them is no longer enough, the immensely expanded skill trees present in Lord of Hatred genuinely make the ones in prior entries look like saplings by comparison. Thank Inarius for the readily available keyword search to help pick your path of destruction.

Every skill branches in a hefty number of absurd directions – my core builder ability Command Fallen, a simple nuke that summoned a gibbering doofus to sprint at an enemy and explode, would warp and change dramatically at keystone levels. At level 14, I could socket it to become a passive hellfire ability – now automatically summoning these heat-seeking dorks at regular intervals based on my attack speed. At level 30, I could change its typing once again to now summon three nefarious nerds as an abyss-type skill, prompting me to cast my gaze over what shadowy bullshit I could combo with it. And this is just a basic-arse core ability, a bread-and-butter resource builder.

The biggest upgrade for your class comes at level 19, when you gain access to your ‘Ultimate’ ability options. These were established a while ago and presented players with a set of enormously powerful abilities, where you can only select one at a time – and for good reason. These represent the nuclear option for combat encounters, often utilised when the threat level has pushed the needle well past red. For the Warlock, summoning a demon that is too massive to even exist properly in the world seems like a no-brainer, with the enormous dude literally only entering the game space from the waist up to swing a sword the length of a city bus. You’d think these capstone abilities could rest easy with their basic implementation, given that they are full-throttle awesome, but then you realise that they too come packing all the trimmings of customisation that your other abilities do – player freedom is wall to wall, roof to ceiling, no shortcuts.

Tell me this isn’t a heavy metal album cover

To add a little more RP to the ARPG that is Diablo, the Warlock class quests also offer an avenue to produce even more absurd power. An NPC will seek you out to teach you new and exciting ways to bind demons, ones far more powerful than the fodder you can find in your skill tree. These demonic lieutenants require you to find them in the hideous places they dwell and dominate them to your cause – by way of kicking the ever-loving shit out of them. Once you have tracked down and smashed these demonic middle managers, you get a new UI option to pick which one you want to team up with to bring ruin to the lands of Sanctuary, serving as your right-hand man (or hellish wormthing) for the rest of the game.

There are also new systems to play around with for the sake of squeezing out every bit of potential you can, such as the Horadric Talisman that embodies a neat throwback to the days of Diablo II charms, only without the inventory slot hogging. Jamming a seal into its centre unlocks slots for you to customise by way of dropped charms, each offering a passive effect that runs the usual gamut of Diablo secondary stats. There are plenty of mundane ones – extra experience gain, gold generation, you name it – but occasionally you’ll get your hands on something a little more proactive, such as chance on hit effects or even a unique set-quality charm that can combine with others for a crazy strong combination. Really the genius here is creating a separate area to manage this buffoonery, so you can min/max far away from your usual bag.

The Horadric Cube also returns to those itching to transmute like the old days, now sporting a simple to follow list of functions and features for wannabe Horadrim. Simple actions such as upgrading a piece of armour to Legendary or even Unique quality should take some stress off the grind, but there is also a plethora of reroll options to get those ‘almost perfect’ drops a little closer to what you want. Personally, I see it as a way to grind up unwanted class drops into something more befitting my demonic lady, but you do you.

Why is my subjugated demon so caked up..?

Over the 10 or so hours I put into completing the story, I felt a push and pull of both subversion and trope-isms. There were motivating factors that felt compelling enough, and resolutions came together in a believable way, but the story only really gripped me in the latter half of the game. Characters and circumstances seemed to shift up a gear, and I quickly pivoted from wanting to play the story in a few sessions to riveted to my seat to see what happened next. This is helped in huge part by the development of many relationships in ways that felt immensely satisfying, such as levels of trust being earned and appreciated by the core cast.

A great many of the narrative spiels take place in a recurring void, a convenient place to dump exposition. Initially I was a bit unimpressed by this, as it felt a little too convenient to be an artistic choice – but as the story progressed, the place became a canvas to deploy some clever visuals to augment the storytelling. An oddly cold tale of family and parental failure was here to uplift the rote grab-the-MacGuffin quest, and this dreamscape would then be shaped and shifted to suit the situation or mood. It helps that Mephisto is a very wry villain, giving off that sweet devilish smarm that makes you think of Scar from Disney’s The Lion King. It’s just a crying shame that the same random audio desync I saw in original Diablo IV somehow made its way back into the game during cutscenes, causing the SHUNK of a dagger plunging deep into flesh to play a full half a second after it’s happened before your eyes. I could count the number of times this happened on one hand, but I’d rather be using those fingers to fling demons, ya dig?

Similarly, the in-world storytelling felt just a tiny bit less polished that what I had come to expect from the Diablo IV engine. The real-time cutscenes still continue to  wow me, but the smaller scale interactions where characters talk in the regular isometric view had a stiffness to it that I was not expecting. A wounded character would limp into a scene, clutching their belly in an idle stance – before pivoting to a proper upright stance to say their piece of dialogue, and jarringly returning to their harmed posture. It felt oddly amateur for what I’d come to expect from Blizzard, and sent me into fits of laughter when another character seemingly balls-ed up their talking animation to accidentally do a deadset perfect set of “6-7” hands during a line. Perhaps it will vanish in a day one patch, but the memory will remain with me forever.

Look away! he’s using Discord Light Mode!

Once your adventure is all done and dusted, the real game begins – the Endgame. A particular pain point for many with Diablo IV as a whole has been how the most enjoyable aspects of Diablo 3 didn’t get translated to this new entry, obviously as an effort to give D4 a real identity. A huge feature within Lord of Hatred is the War Plans system, explained to me as a ‘pick your path endgame option to engage with the content you most enjoy to chase the loot you want’.

Well, now I have played it, and I just want to say that it’s Bounties. Diablo 3-esque bounties. I say this with full joy and enthusiasm in my heart, not a lick of sarcasm or cynicism. Your War Plans board is a set of selectable objectives and modifiers to keep it all fresh, with the idea being that you can do as much, or as little as you like in the pursuit of getting as much, or as little loot as you can be bothered. Within my review period I felt I couldn’t push the borders of the system as much as I would have liked in regard to doing this stuff with mates, but the foundation seems solid enough that I am very optimistic. A huge step in the right direction for keep people playing well past the credits rolling.

The more you look at it, the weirder it gets

Final Thoughts

Traditionally an expansion has often manifested as an additional chapter tacked on to the end of another game. The ‘expanding’ part of this delivered promise can feel a little hollow, as it posits to add some extraneous doodads and wotzits to broaden the experience just a little. In Lord of Hatred however, the expansion targets the core of the experience – overhauling core paths and making them not just bigger, but deeper. With player growth and endgame overhauled in such a dramatic way, this is a chapter for Diablo that doesn’t just target people who are hungry to know what comes next, but all those that perhaps bounced off its debut for valid reasons. It is both an expansion and a substantial reinvention, and for that reason alone I heartily recommend it to both diehards and fencesitters alike.

Reviewed on PC // Review code supplied by publisher

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