I’ll level with you, I haven’t finished Diablo 4’s campaign yet. I’m well into Act 5, but I created a new character to play couch co-op with my partner and got extremely sidetracked from the main storyline. What’s worse is that, because I played through the prologue with him, my own character hasn’t been progressing the story as we go. I realised too late I had to do the prologue separately, and now I’m too far gone to be bothered going back and catching up with my second character. It’s an annoying feature of Diablo 4 that I hadn’t realised would stop me from making progress. Combine that with the fact that I respecced my main character, an ice shard sorceress, at level 45 only to realise I hated the new arc lash build, and I’m struggling to find a reason to finish the campaign.
I thought that was the end. I’d been driven away from the campaign through my own mistakes, and I wasn’t particularly interested in the endgame grind anyway. The game’s story is interesting enough, even touching in places, and gameplay feels unexpectedly great considering action RPGs aren’t usually my jam. But the hyperfixation that saw me through two weeks of binging the game nonstop has faded, and I’ve found myself returning to familiar haunts – namely, Yakuza, my one true love. Unexpectedly, my interest stirred again once Diablo 4’s first season, Season of the Malignant, was officially announced late last week. I thought I was done for good, but I guess not.
What was so interesting, you might be wondering? Well, for one, the new gameplay mechanics look sick. Sanctuary is filled with a new threat, Malignant Monsters. You can take their hearts and use them to add new powers to your build and new unique bonuses, which means new playstyles and new things to experiment with. I’m also a fan of having to create a new character for the season, which I thought would annoy me. But after one failed respec and a prologueless second attempt, a fresh start is exactly what I need.
Everybody gets to carry over their collected bonuses and Renown from their discovered Altars of Lilith, as well as the Renown from discovering areas of the map. Since I’ve already gotten annoyed with how I respecced my first character, I’m kind of relieved to have a chance to start over with Renown that I’ve already collected once so it won’t feel like quite as much of a grind. It also seems fairly easy to progress through the Battle Pass, since you can climb through tiers just by playing through the Season’s missions. These touches help avoid many of the teething pains that would have stopped me from diving into Diablo’s Seasons.
There’s still a good chance I’ll fall off the game again. Knowing that Season Blessings earned from the battle pass only last until the Season ends will probably disincentivise me from continuing to play once I’ve finished the Season’s storyline, but that’s to be expected since I’m not a diehard Diablo grinder. What’s more likely is that the story won’t quite grab me and I’ll put the game aside until the next Season, when I’ll likely give the game another shot at getting me emotionally invested in Sanctuary. Right now, the pros outweigh the cons enough that I’ll happily put Kazuma Kiryu aside for a week or two to try to finish Diablo 4’s campaign and give the Season of Malignance a shot. That doesn’t mean I’ll finish it, by any means, but I’ll still see if it works for me. Diablo 4 was never going to be my forever game, but it can be my next-few-weeks game.