I’ve completed the campaign for the new Diablo 4 expansion: Vessel of Hatred now, which carries on post the events of the original campaign and focuses on Neyrelle and Mephisto.
I created a new character for this to get a feel for the new class, Spiritborne, aka Jungle Monk. I haven’t gone deep into either build craft or end game activities yet, I just ran with a ‘Centipede’ spirit poison build of my own creation, and… Well; I had a blast.
The new class seems fun at first blush, and the campaign story while it’s running is pretty good. It isn’t incredibly long; I would estimate ~10 hours (I have 12 hours in the game according to Steam, but a not-so-small chunk one evening was AFK).
You may have heard this already, but if I were to level a complaint about the game so far, it would be that the ending point of the campaign feels more like a midpoint. It’s an epic set of circumstances, and as a midpoint in a campaign, or even an end of an Act 2, it would’ve been fantastic.
As the full ending, it comes across as a cliffhanger purely for the purposes of selling the next expansion.
This definitely made me break out my frowny face, and I’m still not happy about it… But it also isn’t enough to make me turn away from the game just yet.
Between a mix of post-release patching and the expansion, the gameplay is feeling really good.
The only other real issue I have?
Well- I’m not feeling done with Overwatch 2 yet. So I’m having to share out my gaming time between the two!
Tonight I’ll likely take a look into some builds options for the new Spiritborne class though, and see if I can’t start powering up even further. Some friends took the week off to play, so they’ve managed to get some characters a bit further ahead, so I wouldn’t mind catching up somewhat! :)
I waited to read this until I’d finished the campaign, which I did last night.
I don’t disagree with you that it felt very much like a “[Redacted] will return in Vessel of Hatred, Part 2” but at the same time I was kind of ready for the campaign to end. I’m still having trouble connecting with Diablo IV and I think it is down to the Season system. Every character feels like a throw-away character since of course when the season ends and a new one begins we’ll want new characters to get the new goodies.
It’s like playing the beta of a game with regular character wipes.
Sorry, I just talked my way through what bugs me about D4 in a comment on your post. LOL
Haha, comments always welcome on whatever thoughts they may provoke!
The season character stuff is a bit of a paradox for me, I must say. On the one hand, I only play seasonal now — I have zero interest in the non-seasonal characters. But on the other hand, because they’re temporary, once I’ve hit whatever arbitrary goal or power threshold ‘feels about right’, because the character is throwaway, I’m done and see no need for further investment. xD
I think I’ve hit that point with the current season, completed Torment 4 Citadel last night with some friends, I can do Torment 4 content in general fairly smoothly now, so I think that’s all she wrote for me this season, despite the fact there is plenty more I could do to optimise and power-up.