Diablo 4 surprised the Hell out of me

I’ve always been more of an FPS guy. Used to be super competitive. Unreal Tournament was one of my first games, then I got heavily into Counter-Strike for 2 decades. That was my main thing.

Like many sweaty shooter players, I always needed a second game to unwind. For me, that was usually World of Warcraft. Been playing on and off since Wrath. Outside of that, though, I never really branched out into other genres.

The only ARPG I ever touched before was Diablo 3, and even that I bounced off after finishing the campaign. I didn’t really “got into it” at the time. I also tried Path of Exile years ago, but it just didn’t click with me, maybe it was the story, maybe the complexity, not sure. Though I will say, the Diablo universe/lore has always intrigued me more than PoE’s. (also it just confuses me so much with all amount of things you need to know and do)

When Diablo 4 was announced, I was interested, but then all the bad press started rolling in. Reviews, Reddit threads, YouTube rants, you know the deal. That pretty much killed my hype. I even considered preordering PoE 2, but thankfully my brain kicked in and reminded me it’s a free game. I held off.

Fast forward to now: a lifelong buddy of mine bought D4 recently and told me he was enjoying it. That was enough of a push. I remembered how fun it was blasting through D3 with another friend, so I grabbed D4 on sale with the Vessel of Hatred DLC and dove in.

24 hours later, I’m through the campaign, level 57 on Penitent, running a Quill Volley build on Spiritborn and I’m completely hooked.

I wake up thinking about playing. I watch build videos on my breaks. I’ve been looking into lore, reading guides, planning my next spec. I’m going full nerd mode, and I love it.

Honestly, I wish I had ignored the hate earlier. This game is exactly what I needed. Perfect second game to unwind with after a workday (I WFH, so lunch sessions might be happening too…).