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Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred Expansion Review
Diablo IV
Опубликовано
9 ч 18 мин назад
Tharid
Hatred looms over Sanctuary, and on October 8, Vessel of Hatred, Diablo 4’s first expansion, will continue to unveil the story of the Prime Evil Mephisto’s return. Thanks to Blizzard, Wowhead was granted access to an exclusive, week-long Vessel of Hatred playtest, and for over 300 hours combined across all team members, we were able to dive deep into the expansion’s campaign, the new Spiritborn class, its leveling and endgame systems, and much more!
Vessel of Hatred Expansion Overview
The Campaign
Diablo 4’s first campaign, which launched alongside the main game in June last year, was generally well-received by both game journalists and community members.
Without spoiling Vessel of Hatred’s story, we can safely say that Blizzard has kept up this momentum and crafted a fantastic campaign fit for a first expansion. We can’t and won’t tell what the campaign is about, of course - but we can tell you how it felt to play Vessel of Hatred’s campaign.
First, we advise you to play through the campaign on Normal difficulty if you decide to experience it with your first Seasonal character. Campaign quests reward incredible amounts of experience, and we won’t defeat millions of monsters along the way, so playing through the campaign on Hard difficulty, which grants 75% more monster experience, wouldn’t be worth it anyway. In the end, most of us hit around Level 50 by just playing the campaign on Normal. The pacing felt great because it balanced leveling speed well while fully embracing one of the expansion’s main features - a new storyline to explore.
Now, back to the story: Diablo 4’s first campaign ended on an unsettling note. Yes, both Lilith and Inarius were taken care of - but what about Mephisto, the much Greater - or even - Prime Evil? In the end, Neyrelle took fate in the form of Mephisto’s Soulstone into her own hands, which started a character arc that, up to this day, isn’t universally loved by the community.
With the start of Vessel of Hatred’s campaign, the player decides to follow Neyrelle into Nahantu, where she plans to destroy the Soulstone with the help of Akarat’s Tomb, a light-infused point of interest for every believer of the Light. While this does feel a lot like a “deus ex machina” moment with the sole intention of kicking off a new expansion story, we are glad that, for once in Diablo history, the soulstone bearer receives some form of human assistance.
During our adventure through Nahantu and Vessel of Hatred’s campaign, we began to understand Neyrelle’s role and place in Sanctuary: she’s a vessel for a Prime Evil. This epiphany helped us better understand her motives and actions. More than once, Neyrelle reminded us of Diablo 2’s Marius, the lonely adventurer who unknowingly assisted the Prime Evils in their uprise back in the day. While playing through the campaign, fans will notice countless parallels between Vessel of Hatred and Diablo 2.
While the Spiritborn as the new class is a novel choice made by Blizzard, Vessel of Hatred’s campaign returns to the roots of Diablo lore. While the main game campaign showcased the eternal struggle between Heaven and Hell, Vessel of Hatred’s campaign is all about the conflict between Light and Darkness - all supported by stellar voice-acting, immersive cutscenes, and, - of course - breathtaking cinematics.
Diablo 4: The Story So Far
The Spiritborn
We’ll come right out of the gate: The
Spiritborn
is massively fun to play both during leveling and in the endgame and feels incredibly powerful compared to the other five classes.
The Spiritborn embodies a natural and much-needed evolution of Diablo 4 class design, which starts with its skill tree. While active skills transport a very particular flavor showcasing one of the four Spirit Guardians - Centipede, Jaguar, Gorilla, and Eagle - the tree’s passive skill setup offers a ton of generic build choices.
We’ve found that mixing and matching archetypes works just as well as going deep into a build around a single Spirit Guardian, with Gorilla skills feeling like the only exception due to their defensive and supportive nature.
What is also great to see is that the Spiritborn’s skill setup doesn’t suffer from major crippling design restrictions, like Sorcerers having to use Ice Armor and Teleport or Barbarians having to use their Shout toolkit to stay competitive. That being said, we have noted a few outliers, of course, and some of them have already been addressed with the upcoming Day 1 patch of Vessel of Hatred.
Another highlight of the new class is its class mechanic, the Spirit Hall. While transporting tons of individual class flavor, it also comes with what appears to be a global design goal for Vessel of Hatred: Choice. Players will be able to choose a Primary and Secondary Spirit Guardian effect, once again being able to specify their playstyle based on the four Spirit Guardians and their general themes.
Surprisingly, what’s not so great about the Spiritborn isn’t about the class itself. With its introduction to Diablo 4, all other classes pale quite a bit in comparison. With a certain amount of novelty bias in mind, our existing Class Leads still felt let down, so we are hoping to see similar uptrends in class design philosophy coming to Diablo 4’s existing classes sooner rather than later.
Blizzard took a gamble by introducing a brand-new class to the Diablo franchise with the first expansion of Diablo 4 - and it seems to have paid off. Especially during the campaign, we felt highly immersed while fighting through the lush jungles of Nahantu, “our” home turf. The class perfectly showcases Diablo 4’s visceral combat look and feel, one of its most convincing gameplay features, all while introducing a genuinely new class experience based on successful and fun action mechanics.
Spiritborn Class Overview
Leveling and Endgame
As already mentioned, the
leveling
pace throughout the campaign felt rewarding and not too slow. The stat squish and new max-level cap make character progress way more palpable. Quest experience is more than meaningful and will give players incentive to enjoy Vessel of Hatred’s storyline. There has also been a noticeable increase in Side Quest experience, which can be a welcome change from the campaign.
What also feels very immersive and natural throughout leveling is the acquisition of all
Mercenaries
. Once you unlock the feature through the campaign, the quests to unlock all Mercenaries will be instantly available. Whether you want to try out every single one of them or rather stick with your first Merc is up to the player; however, we felt that all Mercenary quests were very well-written and fun to play through, so don’t miss out on them on your journey through Nahantu! In terms of gameplay, Mercs feel like a nice little extra of your character build - not more, not less. Choices will definitely matter in min-maxed endgame scenarios, though, especially if you’re looking for certain CC or other effects like Vulnerable.
Another system that players will learn about relatively early is the
Kurast Undercity
“Time-Attack” dungeon. Honestly speaking, playing through and learning this system showed us that Blizzard learned quite a lot from their past mistakes in designing instanced content. Unlike most systems in Diablo 4, Kurast Undercity offers a reasonable degree of complexity when it comes to optimizing your rewards through Tributes and Bargains in the later stages of character progression. Much more importantly, though, it feels incredibly satisfying even during leveling to just blast through the streets of Kurast’s underground maze against a timer while choosing your own route and target priority.
These factors also play an essential role when entering the
Dark Citadel
, Vessel of Hatred’s first “Co-op Dungeon Experience,” or as we’d like to call it, raid.
First things first: We were thrilled to hear during this week’s developer livestream that the Scrolls of Retempering can also be reliably found outside of the Dark Citadel (in Infernal Hordes, to be precise). Why? It turns the Dark Citadel into a system players should explore for fun, bragging rights, and fabulous cosmetics - not for character progression reasons.
With that in mind, the Dark Citadel offers a uniquely entertaining endgame challenge in Diablo 4. Most of the mechanics don’t pose a significant threat but require quite a bit of teamwork and communication. Timing and coordination on the battlefield are essential, and failures will have consequences, mainly in the form of group wipes.
During the playtest, the overall dungeon design felt unique even after multiple raid runs. Boss encounters feature spectacular visuals and come with a fantastic soundtrack, further enhancing the immersive experience in our fight against the First Khazra.
The one potential downside of the Dark Citadel could be its overall length and complexity. On Torment II, we spend about an hour clearing all three wings of the raid with a premade group of players. Expert players and creators have reported that clearing the raid on Torment IV is very, very challenging. For the average player, this raid could be a challenging ARPG experience for the wrong reasons that even the new Party Finder and Raid Markers won’t remedy.
Leveling Changes ExplainedVessel of Hatred Endgame Overview
Conclusion
Diablo 4’s Vessel of Hatred expansion is a worthy addition to a base game that has undergone considerable change. Ever since the release of Season 4, which fixed Diablo 4’s most glaring issues around itemization, Blizzard has maintained an upward momentum.
Except for Runewords, which honestly feel like a soulless itemization filler, Vessel of Hatred’s new content additions enrich the overall character progression experience, offering more choice and, much more importantly, more things to do in the endgame of Diablo 4.
Despite initial worries and after extensive testing, the new Spiritborn class not only fits perfectly into Diablo 4’s visceral combat system but also offers a glimpse into a potential future of optimized class design across the board.
Ultimately, Vessel of Hatred shows that Diablo’s development team has finally caught up to what appears to be their true vision of Diablo 4: a constantly updated live-service game based on feedback from one of the most dedicated ARPG communities that knows precisely what it wants from a modern version of Diablo.
The game’s launch state left a lot to be desired - and while its first expansion won’t ship with some core, modern-day ARPG features like an Armory or a Loot Filter, Vessel of Hatred still left a more than positive impression, further enhancing Diablo 4’s recently established strong points.
We hope to see you in Nahantu when Vessel of Hatred releases worldwide on October 7 and 8!
Vessel of Hatred Expansion Overview
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