Diablo IV Vessel of Hatred Review in Progress

Diablo IV Vessel of Hatred is set to launch just about sixteen months after the debut of the base game. It’s a much quicker timeframe than we’ve seen with Reaper of Souls, the first and only Diablo III expansion, which only materialized almost two years after the base game’s launch.

This speaks to a much greater commitment to the continued support of Diablo IV, as promised by Franchise Director Rod Fergusson, who confirmed around a year ago that players would get annual expansions. However, such an aggressive content plan inevitably has some drawbacks, particularly for the story.

The plot of Diablo IV Vessel of Hatred’s campaign continues directly from the end of the base game. After choosing to trap the Prime Evil Mephisto in the Soulstone, Neyrelle has left on her own in the desperate hope of finding a more permanent solution to contain the Lord of Hatred. Her research brings Neyrelle to Nahantu, a jungle-themed region previously seen by fans in Diablo II’s third Act (although back then, it was referred to as Kehjistan, the bordering region). As teased by the pre-release trailers, Neyrelle is already being corrupted by Mephisto’s evil even as she enters the region, and the situation only gets worse from there.

The main character (addressed as the Wanderer, like in the base game) has been trying to learn about Neyrelle’s whereabouts ever she since left with the Soulstone. That suddenly changes at the beginning of the expansion, and they set out to follow her tracks, eventually reaching Nahantu. There, they come in contact with the local Spiritborns, which is a way to introduce the new class from a lore standpoint.

From that point onwards, the story of Diablo IV Vessel of Hatred largely unfolds as you would expect, except for a major twist toward the end. The storytelling quality is, I would say, comparable to that of the base game; that is to say, very high for a game of this genre. The main difference is that it is way shorter (it was compared by Blizzard itself to an Act, of which there are six in Diablo IV). Moreover, as mentioned above, it is also somewhat of a stopgap in what inevitably needs to be a story told year by year; Reaper of Souls felt far more significant and meaty of a follow-up to Diablo III, whereas Blizzard already confirmed this is far from the latest we’ve seen of Mephisto, teasing future appearances in later expansions.

The same largely goes for the Nahantu region itself. It is around the size of Scosglen, with six Waypoints and twenty new Dungeons, not to mention several side quests, but Scosglen was just one of five regions in the base game. On the upside, it is rather gorgeous and definitely adds a biome that was fairly lacking in Diablo IV, increasing the variety in the environments.

Like Reaper of Souls with its Crusader class, Diablo IV Vessel of Hatred also adds a new class, only this time it’s something franchise aficionados have never seen: the Spiritborn. Native to Nahantu, the Spiritborns undergo a coming-of-age ritual that tests them to survive in the jungle for days on end by learning to open their “sight”. They subsequently go through a metamorphosis in which they shed their former existence for their Spirit Realm self and believe their spirit will be reborn as a powerful animal guardian.

At its core, the class was designed around fluid combat, acrobatic movement, and a martial arts weapon fighting style. It offers four powerful spirit Guardians that allow players to fully customize their playstyles. The Jaguar is a warrior-like Spiritborn that uses repeated aggressive/fire attacks that increase in lethality. The Incarnate skill is Ferocity, a stacking buff that increases attack speed and provides a reduction to skill cooldowns.

The Gorilla is a defensive Spiritborn that excels at physical skills, fending off incoming damage and focusing mainly on damage reduction and blocking. The Gorilla’s Incarnate skill is Resolve, which can be stockpiled and provides additional damage mitigation. The Eagle is the most agile of the Spirit Guardians, providing lightning-focused strikes while moving swiftly across the battlefield and increasing the evading capabilities. Finally, the Centipede focuses on debuffs, draining enemies of their energy with poison damage over damage over time and excelling at crowd control.

All Spiritborns have their own class feature called Spirit Hall, which lets players customize the build with Spirit-based bonuses. The catch is you have to decide whether to set a Guardian as a Primary or Secondary Spirit Animal, which provides different bonuses. For example, setting the Jaguar as Primary Spirit Animal has the following effects: every 4th time you deal direct damage to an enemy with a Jaguar Skill, unleash additional slashes dealing 100% of the damage of the 4 hits. All Skills are now also Jaguar Skills. On the other hand, as a Secondary Spirit Animal, the Jaguar increases Maximum Ferocity by one and lets you gain one stack of Ferocity whenever you kill an enemy or damage a Boss.

As a massive fan of melee combat, I landed on a build largely centered on the Jaguar with a couple of Eagle skills for good measure. It felt a lot like playing the Barbarian, albeit with its own twist. There’s definitely much experimentation that can be done by mixing the Spirit Guardians, and overall, the Spiritborn is a great addition to the game’s class roster.

Diablo IV Vessel of Hatred also adds AI companions through the Mercenaries system. You’ll unlock the first one, Raheir, very early in the expansion’s campaign. Raheir is the former leader of the Pale Hand band of mercs, and he’ll eventually offer the Wanderer to set up camp in the Pale Hand’s now deserted underground haven. Then, he’ll provide pointers to the other three Mercenaries: the half-demon child Aldkin, the berserker and former cannibal Varyana, and the disgraced bounty hunter Subo. It’s a ragtag group of misfits, each one introduced with a short but very interesting quest that provides plenty of background on the character.

From a mechanics standpoint, you can pick one Mercenary to bring with you at all times (unless you’ve got a full party) and another to use as a ‘Reinforcement.’ This is the big innovation: you can select a specific skill of one of the Mercenaries to be triggered whenever you perform a particular action. In my case, I linked Aldkin’s Fireball-like skill to the activation of the Spiritborn’s Vortex; they are a perfect fit since Vortex pulls in groups of nearby foes and Aldkin’s Fireball deals area of effect damage and stun. For the active Mercenary, I picked Raheir, who is a very traditional tank with taunts, buffs and debuffs that are very handy.

As you defeat enemies throughout the game, the selected Mercenaries gain Rapport, leveling up to offer more bonuses and skill customization as well as valuable rewards and bartering currency. As you build Rapport, you can even Barter with your mercs and enter trade agreements for a chance at powerful loot and other items. One thing should be clarified: Mercenaries do not make the game any easier. Blizzard clearly worked hard to rebalance the difficulty, and if anything, Diablo IV Vessel of Hatred felt a tad more challenging than the base. As such, their purpose is not to make your life easier but rather to offer more customization to your preferred playstyle. You’ll have to try out different combinations to find out the best way to complement your build with Mercenaries.

Diablo IV Vessel of Hatred features yet another major new system: Runewords. Longtime franchise fans may recall it from the days of the revered second installment, although this version is a bit different. Runewords are mainly about accessing the skills of other classes or augmenting your movement or attack speed. At launch, there are 17 runes of Ritual and 28 runes of Summoning Runes available. To create a Runeword, players must combine a rune of Ritual with one of Invocation. The Ritual rune sets which action will trigger the effect, while the Invocation rune lets you select the effect. For example, the first Runeword I crafted provided a critical hit chance bonus after my character performed the Evade (dodge) action.

Runes operate on a resource system called Offering, which is generated by Ritual runes when their listed condition is met. Conversely, Invocation runes consume this offering to activate their effects. The more demanding a condition is, the more Offering the Ritual rune will generate. On the other hand, the Offering requirement to activate an Invocation rune scales with the strength of its effect. Generating more Offering than required results in ‘overflow’, which provides a bonus to the effects of a Rune of Summoning.

Runewords are crafted at the Jeweler NPC. Since you need two runes, a Runeword can only be added to an item with two sockets, like chest, leg, and two-handed weapon. The developers have also added an extra socket to helm items, so they may also host a Runeword. Last but not least, Runes come in three rarities: Magic, Rare and Legendary. The higher the rarity of a rune, the more powerful its effect will be, exactly as you would expect. Needless to say, you will be sacrificing the option to insert gems into those sockets. However, from what I’ve seen, it should generally be worth it. Runewords are another interesting way for players to complete their build with something they were perhaps lacking, and Blizzard can surely add a lot more depth to it over time.

For endgame players, Diablo IV Vessel of Hatred introduces a new cooperative dungeon experience called Dark Citadel. Whereas the regular dungeons are perfectly playable solo, the same is not true of the Dark Citadel, which expects players to have a group of at least two. Blizzard also promised complex boss fights that require coordination (thus the addition of a new Marker system) and situations where the party has to split forces and traverse separate paths for a while.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t check out Dark Citadel during the few days of pre-release access. That’s partly because Blizzard decided not to provide any preset characters, so we had to level up from the beginning. It’s also the main reason this review is currently not final yet.

For now, though, Diablo IV Vessel of Hatred is a solid expansion that is perhaps not heavy on content but more than makes up for it with many systemic changes that will elevate the whole game for years to come.

One last tidbit about the PC version. As listed in the patch notes, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation and Ray Traced Foliage do not work right now. While the loss of Ray Traced Foliage is trivial, the same cannot be said about DLSS Frame Generation, which provided a sizable performance boost (especially to frame rate lows) to owners of the GeForce RTX 40 GPU series. Hopefully, it will be fixed soon.

Review access (PC) provided by Blizzard.

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