Full Disclaimer: this is the perspective of someone with over 5k hours in Path of Exile, which I consider one of the best games ever made. I also have a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of hours in Diablo 2, but never got around to play Diablo 3 (probably will in the near future). This review is based on Diablo Season 6, which was my first season played.

Diablo 4 is an exile-like ARPG, or at least marketed as such. It tries to be closer to the Diablo 2 formula than its predecessor, which is a good thing in my opinion. The gritty atmosphere of the older Diablo games is certainly there, and the combat feels just as good, but more modern and polished.

When talking about Diablo today, we have to keep in mind the intended audience - casual ARPG players and people getting introduced to the genre. It is supposed to be simple enough so that anyone can just pick and play, while being interesting and challenging enough to keep people engaged through the game. I think it is fair to say that it accomplishes that - for the most part, at least.

The campaign is certainly one of the best in the genre, with the strong Diablo lore and Blizzard cinematics behind it. The final fight with Lilith feels very epic, a great ending to a great campaign. The fact that you can change difficulty levels during the campaign adds a lot to the challenge for those brave enough and makes it possible for the "dad gamers" out there to also enjoy playing without sweating too much.

The endgame is where most of the problems reside, especially from a Path of Exile veteran perspective. It starts well - right out of the campaign (or even during it for some), you have access to many mechanics such as Helltide, Pit, Infernal Horde, Nightmare Dungeon, Dark Citadel, Underground City and can even try your luck killing World Bosses and Pinnacle Bosses. You will reach Torment 1 very soon and can go up to Torment 4, increasing the difficulty and the reward of the content. Going up the torment levels does feel like a challenge, at least if you're not using a broken class (looking at you Spiritborne).

However, once you get strong enough to reach Torment 4 and start exploding screens of monsters without too much trouble, the endgame problems become apparent. There is not a way to scale the mechanics apart from the Torment level - excluding the Pit, which has its own scaling. And the Pit is the best place to farm just about everything, so you will probably spend most of your time there if you're trying to minmax, which many ARPG players do. Everything starts to feel samey and the bosses start to die in a single frame, being more of a loot pinata than a fight. You will soon realize that it is better to save your resources and do rotas than to use them by yourself, which I believe is less fun for the majority of players. The crafting starts to feel very shallow, and there is no real way to scale your power apart from getting lucky on drops or using a 3rd party site to buy things via trade. Honestly, once you reach this stage is better to move on until the next season or reroll a new class.

Overall, Diablo 4 is a very good single player game, but fails as an online game with an economy where balance should be taken seriously and endgame should be more meaningful. If you're the type of player that have very limited hours to play, takes quite a while to reach the endgame and don't really engage with trade and min-maxing you will have a very good time. If you're in as a power gamer looking for the complexity and replayability that an ARPG can offer, it is best to look elsewhere for now. If you're in the middle, the campaign is still totally worth as a standalone game and you can maybe come back every now and again to play a new class or test a new build.


+ The campaign is outstanding, main story is engaging and most cinematics are very well-polished
+ Graphics, sound effects and music all blends very well into the game - the Diablo look and feel is still there
+ Character customization is great, I feel no need to buy MTX since we can easily customize our appearance by salvaging gear
+ The combat in general feels good, controls feels responsive and most abilities feels satisfying to use
+ The paragon system is a good way to keep slowly scaling your character even after reaching the endgame
+ Many systems to keep the game fresh until you reach the later parts of endgame like Helltide, Pit, Infernal Horde, Nightmare Dungeon, Dark Citadel, Underground City, World Bosses, Pinnacle Bosses
+ The bosses can be fun and engaging, especially when they don't die in 1 frame (which tend to happen very early, unfortunately)
+ The fact that mythical uniques have to be earned and can't be traded is a good thing
+ The option to skip campaign after doing it at least once is much appreciated


* No official SSF mode (no trading), for a game that is clearly better played as a single-player game this would be huge
* Side quests are just uninspired fetch quests most of the time and feel like a chore, unlike the main quests
* Crafting is too basic, which is fine for a casual gamer but lacks depth and stops being engaging after a while
* Power creep is through the roof, after the campaign you can trivialize all content very fast with a decent build, even in Torment 4 (apart from high lvl Pits)


- Game crashes a lot, and its not a hardware problem since I have a top-end computer and it's the only game to do so
- When the game crashes or you exit the game you automatically lose all your current buffs (elixirs/incenses/etc). With the amount of crashes this means that you will be reapplying those buffs a lot and being angry every time it happens
- Replayability is poor for an ARPG, the endgame systems are limited and you can't really scale most of them
- As of now, the Pit is the best source of XP/Obols/Gear, so no reason to do anything else unless you need Obducite
- The way you are forced to do "rotas" if you want to be efficient with your materials is very off-putting. At least there is a party finder in the game, which helps, but being almost forced into multiplayer in a single-player game feels really bad
- Snapshotting is a big balancing problem, and very unfun to use most of the time
- Many many balancing issues with the game - when you have a class that does literally millions of times the damage of any other class, you have failed (looking at you Spiritborne)
- There is trade in your game but no trade support? Not even an official trade site?
- Too few stash tabs. This is a paid game, not some free to play where the monetization comes from extra stash tabs, no reason to give us only 6, especially with the introduction of runes using a lot of inventory space
- Too few character slots. Even F2P games like Path of Exile gives more than 15 character slots from the get go, why not a paid game? Especially considering the fact that we need many "mule" characters since the stash tabs are not enough for storage
- The skill tree is too basic while the paragon board is too convoluted in a bad way while not offering any real choices apart from which glyphs to use, limiting build diversity and shoehorning characters into pre-envisioned archetypes


D4Bad XDD

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a game that sets a new bar for modern JRPGs, even though it ironically came from a French studio instead of a Japanese one - one of the rare occurrences when western studios outperformed or at least matched their eastern counterparts, something that seems to happen the other way around far more often nowadays. The hype surrounding it, along with the awards it has earned, feels entirely justified: this is genuine GOTY material.

The combat system is where the game truly distinguishes itself. Turn-based at its core, it incorporates reaction-based defensive mechanics such as parry, gradient parry, dodge, and jump, creating constant engagement even outside of your turn. Offensive QTE inputs reward skill and help give every fight a type of cadence that is heavily addicting. The result is a system that feels dynamic, expressive, and deeply satisfying when you are finally able to match the rhythm of the fight.

Presentation is nothing short of outstanding. The cutscenes, especially the combat-driven ones, are spectacular, and the overall level of polish across the game reflects what modern AAA productions should strive for. The narrative itself is nuanced and layered, filled with twists that ultimately converge into a cohesive and satisfying whole. The inclusion of two distinct endings is the cherry on top, giving players agency over a meaningful narrative closure.

Overall, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 delivers one of the most complete gaming experiences in recent memory, especially for RPG enthusiasts. Its combat depth, narrative ambition, and exceptional polish make it a worthy successor to previous GOTY titles. The AAA industry is probably shaking right now with the amount of polish, ambition, and passion being delivered from those smaller studios - Expedition 33 just proved that exceptional games like Baldur's Gate 3 were not unicorns, they are here to stay.


+ Looks impressive even on low graphical settings
+ Reaction-based combat is engaging and creates a very satisfying dynamic
+ QTE on attacks not being mandatory but adding a small but significant boost to skill power was a very smart design decision
+ Polished presentation across graphics, UI, voice acting, and storytelling - putting most AAA games to shame
+ Outstanding cutscenes, especially the combat-focused ones
+ One of the best storytelling in a video game, period - such a nuanced story with many twists and turns ending in a cohesive and satisfying whole
+ Ability to choose between two different endings (the canonical ending is siding with Verso, fight me!)
+ Abandon battle option is a great addition that helps practice parry timings and improve openers
+ Separate volume sliders help make the game more pleasant to the ears
+ Health multiplier and damage cap options later in the game allow for some extra challenge
+ Endless tower superbosses provide memorable, high-difficulty encounters that justify the grind


* An indicator that the 9999 damage cap is not permanent would be very welcome...killing Sprong and Golgra in early Act 2 was certainly memorable doe xDD


- Game could be better optimized, cannot achieve very high FPS even on the lowest settings
- No manual save option
- All those invisible walls inside levels certainly do not help with immersion
- Cursor is not always locked to the primary monitor, which is annoying for a multi-monitor setup
- Some things are badly worded or not explained at all (e.g. burning damage calculation, burning canvas damage increase cap, pictos that do not make it clear if the effect applies to the owner or the target, etc.)
- Minigames are mostly terrible, those should be fun activities, not some rage-inducing low-effort crap
- Audio mix can feel unbalanced at times, having to manually adjust volume for cutscenes is annoying
- Easy to become overleveled through side content, trivializing encounters before extra difficulty modifiers become accessible in the later stages of the game
- Final story boss felt way too easy after doing all side content, one-shotted even on expert with 100x health multiplier
- Unable to create presets for Pictos, which is weird since they exist for Luminas
- Chromatic Ramasseur is such a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fight, are you ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ for real now? Fortunately, I was way overleveled, so I just killed him before he could attack


See things as they are, not how you want them to be