Game Review: Diablo IV – The best and most accessible Blizzard game to date

a closeup of lilith standing agains a bloody red background. you can see 2 big twisted horns coming our of her head

Hail Lilith, Blessed Mother!

Hello, dear readers! My name is Victor and I am a blind gaming, technology, and entertainment journalist. I am also an ambassador for universal design and an accessibility consultant. For the last eight days, Alina and I have spent some quality time in Sanctuary with the fantastic Diablo IV from Blizzard Entertainment both on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

Below you can find my honest thoughts on this monster Action RPG.

Introduction

11 years after unleashing the excellent Diablo III, Blizzard Entertainment returns to center stage and takes once again the gaming community by storm with the release of the diabolically awesome Diablo IV. Available from the first day of June to those who have pre-ordered some of the more expensive versions of the title and from June 6 to everyone else, Diablo IV is Blizzard at their best!

2023 has proven to be a year with a lot of nice surprises for gamers with some really good titles coming our way. Even more interesting was the fact that a few of them also include different accessibility features that make them approachable for me, as a totally blind individual. Blizzard Entertainment is one of the oldest, most renowned, and most respected studios in the gaming industry and even though they went through some rough times recently, it seems they have now recovered and are again back to form. I grew up playing their games, from WarCraft II to StarCraft 2, to Diablo III, they brought us some of the best and most loved games ever. Even now, although I’m blind I play Hearthstone every day thanks to the Hearthstone Access Mod and I can’t wait to have a native version with full accessibility as the nice people at Blizzard have clearly stated that they will do everything possible so that more players will be able to enjoy their games. Also, they have committed to bringing accessibility features with new titles and even updating old ones. But, we will talk about accessibility a little bit later. Let me tell you more about Diablo IV.

Story and Gameplay

In Diablo IV the player is thrown in the midst of the eternal conflict between the High Heavens and the Burning Hells and they will start their epic adventure by choosing which of the five classes their character will be part of. After creating a character, the player will embark on an unforgettable journey through the legendary world of Sanctuary where the gates of Hell have opened and Lilith, The Blessed Mother, returns and ushers in a new and terrible age of darkness and suffering.

Diablo IV is dark, thrilling, atmospheric, captivating, immersive, rewarding, and super fun! At every step we are treated to new weapons, abilities, loot to gather, journals to collect, enemies to vanquish, dungeons to crawl, and mysteries to solve. We can approach the story at our own pace and probably most of the players will find themselves straying from the beaten path in search of one more last little something to add to their inventory.

We created two characters: Alina, a Necromancer, and I, a Sorcerer, so you can imagine that we had a lot of fun sending back to hell all its hordes of minions.

In case you did not know already, Diablo IV is both cross-play and cross-progression, so if you have the game purchased on multiple platforms you can pick it up and continue the adventure at your convenience.

The gameplay is very similar to the one in Diablo III and this is a good thing because it feels both familiar and approachable. Each of the classes plays differently and I’m sure that a lot of people will explore them in depth over the coming years. Add to that the already confirmed upcoming expansions and Diablo IV can easily have the same lifespan as its predecessor. Just as a sidenote, Diablo IV is the fastest selling Blizzard game in history and that’s something considering how many extremely successful titles they’ve released over the years.

Presentation and Accessibility

A lot of attention went into the presentation for Diablo IV and this thing is evident at every step taken in Sanctuary. Alina and other friends tell me that Diablo IV looks awesome and I can confirm that it also sounds amazing. From the riveting cinematics to the superb music and to the flawless voice acting, Diablo IV is a masterpiece showcasing what can be done when talented people give everything they have in order to enrich the player experience to such a level that they would want to never leave the game and return to their real world.

In all my reviews I cover accessibility for blind players and I’m a little sad to tell you that as of now, Diablo IV is not fully playable by those without sight, but it’s very close and I believe that with some more work on the developer’s side, we may yet get to blindly conquer Hell.

Diablo IV is without a doubt the most accessible Diablo and Blizzard game to date and the number of helping features available is nothing short of excellent. Almost all impairments and disabilities have been taken into consideration and with constructive feedback from the disabled community received after the closed, public, and server slam sessions the accessibility team at Blizzard has managed to offer players a more inclusive and encompassing experience. Diablo IV hosts over 50 individual accessibility features, with aids to dexterity, reading text, and vision.

For people with low vision, Diablo IV has a lot of options for character and item outlines, fonts, the UI, subtitles, and the colors can be fully customized to serve a specific need.

Hard of hearing individuals can take advantage of speech-to-text and players with motor impairments have access to customizable controls, action toggles, and other settings.

As I mentioned, Diablo IV is not 100% accessible to blind players, but that’s only because there is no system for navigation assist. The main problem for someone who cannot see is finding their way around the massive map. However, there is quite good Menu Narration*, the spatial sound design is out of this world, there is persistent target lock functionality, text to speech, there are intuitive sound cues, every item makes a noise when it drops, the Character screen is readable and fully upgradable and if you have someone to guide you around the map, like a friend or family member, there’s nothing stopping you from kicking the hell out of everything and everyone in your path.

*For now, the PS5 and PS4 versions of Diablo IV have a big problem with narration as the switch to turn it on cannot be enabled. The fact that I always play with Alina saved me from any unpleasant situations because of this issue, but I understand that Blizzard will fix it in a few weeks when they roll out a major update for the game.

I had the pleasure of playing Diablo IV with Alina, and navigating the map was not an issue since her character could teleport mine to various locations. This can serve as a workaround for those who have friends to play with, but please note that it is only available in couch co-op or via SharePlay on PlayStation. If you require further details, I can explain this in more depth. We played both on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, but also tried out the PS4 version. I talked with my dear friend Brandon Cole about narration on PC and he confirmed everything works absolutely fine.

Conclusion

Diablo IV is bigger, better, more addictive, more rewarding, and most importantly, more accessible than its predecessor. The cinematic story is captivating, the gameplay is insanely fun, the world is enthralling, filled with lore, with a lot of mysteries to uncover and tales to discover. The fact that you can do this with friends or family makes Diablo IV the perfect game to play whether it’s a scorching hot Summer or a freezing Winter. I’m sure this is just the beginning of this immersive adventure and I hope that with time blind players will get to be able to play it by themselves.

If you played Diablo III for a few years, you will definitely play Diablo IV for probably a decade! Diablo IV is a masterpiece and a must-play for everyone!

Special thanks

Sincere congratulations for a job very well done to everyone involved with Diablo IV. I realize that it was a colossal undertaking and that this is the result of only true passion and hard work. A huge thanks to the accessibility team and I hope they will continue to add more requested features, such as navigation assist for the blind, audio logs playback through controller speaker, and some immersive feedback on the DualSense controller.

As I always say, I am here ready and happy to help everyone and anyone who wants to create accessible experiences for blind and other impaired players. Last, but not least I want to say thank you to blizzard entertainment for providing these review codes. It is always nice and appreciated when you can try out products on different platforms.

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Victor Dima

Owner and Founder at victordima.net
Victor Dima is a Blind Gaming Journalist and Accessibility Ambassador, Living in Oslo with his wife Alina. Victor was the first journalist in Romania to receive the PS5 & the PS VR2 from PlayStation. He is also working closely with Xbox Nordic and other game publishers such as Ubisoft, Ea, Bungie, Activision, blizzard, square Enix, Capcom, Rockstar Games, Sega, PlayStation studios, WB Games, Bethesda and many others. With over 12 years of experience covering the Gaming Industry, he started victordima.net in 2013 and since February 2022 all his articles are posted in English in order to reach a more global audience. He is the owner and founder of the highly successful PlayStation Fans Romania Facebook Community, the largest independent source for PlayStation News in Romania, on social media with almost 35.000 followers. Victor is also running theAudiobookBlog.com. You can reach Victor at contact@victordima.net

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