Diablo IV Vessel of Hatred Review

thesixthaxis.com:

Another few months, another drastic shake up has come for Diablo IV with the Vessel of Hatred expansion. It’s time to go and hunt for Nyrelle after her flight at the end of the main story, doing so with a new Spiritborn class, a complete reworking of the levelling system, and some new endgame activities, including a raid. Yes, it’s even more like an MMORPG now – there’s even a party finder.

The new story could have been the best part. You go hunting for Neyrelle in a whole new region, called Nahantu, which is a sort of dingy jungle – just picture a dark jungle and fill it with blood and monsters, and that’s what it looks like. Nahantu is also home to Kurast and Travincal, locations you may remember from all the way back in Diablo II, and you’ll be able to revisit them here decades after the events of that game.

As for how this quest goes, suffice to say that if you’ve played any Diablo game, you already know what’s going to happen. Diablo IV in particular has shown its hand already, and that handnhas only one card: nihilism. It’s very on brand for the series, but it was delivered more effectively in previous games where there weren’t a huge amount of side quests that end in everyone dying just to hammer home, again and again, that actually this is a big dark apocalypse. I love dark fantasy, but there’s so much content here that ends the same that it’s just become repetitive.

So the story is fine, there’s one particular moment that felt like a moment of brightness and really stood out to me and looked particularly good, but other than the specifics, the story itself is pretty predictable.

Also predictable is the raid. I spent a good while getting levelled up so I could try this raid and frankly 20 minutes into it I wished I hadn’t bothered. The Dark Citadel, as it’s called, is described as a “co-op endgame dungeon” that “requires teamwork” to complete. What this translates to is that it artificially splits up the party and has them do things separately in the loosest