Diablo IV Beta (2023) first impressions

“There is no greater sorrow than thinking back upon a happy time in misery.” -Dante Alighieri, Inferno

During the last weekend of the Diablo IV beta, a bored buddy and I decided to give it a shot. What ensued was 72 hours of some of the most devilishly delightful couch co-op gaming I’ve ever experienced.

I am not a Diablo fan. Never played while growing up, mainly because I have never been a PC gamer, and only dabbled briefly in Diablo III single-player. With an interesting opening movie and prologue sequence, Diablo IV’s beta hooked my friend and me from the start. Well, almost.

Misery Loves Company

Because we played a beta, we encountered a number of bugs and glitches that will hopefully be fixed upon the final release. As a consequence of it being a beta, there were often insanely long queue times to access the game. I waited nearly ninety minutes for my first log-in, which felt like some kind of reverse purgatory. When I finally logged in, the game treated me to a mildly sophisticated character creation segment (which my friend and I spent far too much time playing with). Here, you can choose from five different character classes: barbarian, necromancer, druid, sorcerer, and rogue.

After this, however, began the most sinister circle of hell in the game: accessing co-op. On the surface, it appears simple: press a button on a second controller to join the game. However, because of a strikingly odd design decision, there is no UI confirmation that pressing the button has done anything at all. Upon scouring Reddit threads, I realized that something was happening in the background. The second player had entered the queue. Players could not queue simultaneously. And there was no indication that this was the case. So, for about ninety more minutes, I played through a fair bit of the prologue when—to my surprise—my co-op partner’s character teleported onscreen (at level 1, with no quest progression). We could finally play together, but we essentially had to replay the former quests for him. Hopefully, all of this was just beta nonsense that won’t be in the final game.

Fortunately, finally playing was worth all the pain it took to get there.

This Ain’t Dante… and that’s Okay!

The story is straightforward: an evil demon-lady named Lilith has returned and she’s ready to raise all kinds of hell (literally). Your character, for whatever reason, must be the one to deal with her. And that’s pretty much it. Bad is bad. And you are presumably good. Now, go hit stuff with weapons and magic.

This is where the game shines. The gameplay loop is a dopamine addict’s dream. A mildly interesting inciting incident demands you go to a location. Go there and kill everything in sight. Get loot and gain levels (and open new abilities). Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s simple and effective.

Now, as a guy who loves a game with a striking narrative, I shouldn’t like this game. And yet, I never grew bored. I wanted to keep playing all weekend. And boy did I. 

Diablo IV isn’t for everyone. Some of its gameplay feels archaic, grindy, and arcade-y. The graphics are sufficient but lackluster. The story is compelling but uncomplicated. Everything about Diablo IV is entirely “fine” in every way. And yet… there is something fiendishly addictive about it all. I only spent a weekend with Diablo IV’s beta, but I can confidently say that I can’t wait to return to hell this summer when the full game releases.

Just… please for the love of God… fix the co-op queue madness.

Editor-in-Chief of The Pixels, Wade (aka ProfNoctis) teaches and plays video games at the University of Alabama. His dissertation combined Judeo-Christian kingship and Final Fantasy XV. Follow him on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitch.