Hello fellow Diablo enjoyers, I've decided to write up this post of my first impressions of the beta test. Hope you enjoy reading and enjoy the game as much as I do. Without further ado lets get started.

My history with Diablo

Before I get into the nitty gritty of it, I just wanted to give some background of my playtime/thoughts about previous Diablo titles. I started playing with D2 ages ago when I was young. Enjoyed it a bunch, but wasn't exactly my favorite game when I was younger. When D3 came out I played it for a while, ultimately dropped it at endgame and never came back until the RoS expansion. The expansion was so well done and I loved everything about it that I played it on and off for years, putting easily 2k+ hours into the game.

I tried D2R but the entire time I just wanted to go play d3 again, it just didn't quite scratch that itch I was after.

My first session

I had to work so I couldn't log in until the evening (10 hours after launch or so) and I was dreading having to sit through a horrendously long queue, unable to play the game for very long. To my surprise the queue was only around 15 minutes or so, I quickly made my sorcerer and was pleasantly surprised by the customization available. It wasn't the most robust character creation I've seen but it certainly was miles better than D3's pick either the Male or Female model.

I watched the first cut-scene and was floored at how good it was even though I had already seen it. It was dark, gritty, and the atmosphere was miles better than any scene in D3 imo.

I continued playing for about 3-4 hours with minimal issues, absolutely no disconnects or major technical issues. I leveled my Sorcerer to 18 and mainly did the main story with a few side quests.

What I liked

I could go on forever about what I enjoyed in my first session, the Atmosphere is absolutely impeccable. They've really nailed the feel of a Diablo game with this game. D3 was very fun but it really lacked in making the world of Sanctuary feel like doom and despair was everywhere.

The combat is just Chef's kiss every single skill and ability felt fun to use, everything was so fluid and the animations were damn near perfect. The way your character moved on the screen looks so good. I just wanted to find an endless horde of things to kill.

The story was good, I'm mainly into games for the gameplay rather than story but what's there is certainly miles better than D3.

I was a little hesitant about the open world aspect, being able to randomly see other players in the world I was worried I'd constantly see others and be unable to actually kill anything since other's would beat me to it. Outside of towns I think I saw a grand total of 5 other players, most of them were gathered for the random world events so it wasn't an issue at all.

Lastly the accessibility options are great. being able to pick and choose the outline of your character and of enemies and usable objects are a godsend for me who is colorblind. Seeing a screen reader option was very nice as well.

What I didn't like

While there's so much I enjoy about the game, there's a few issues I have with it. I hope they at least fix some of these issues by the launch.

First issue (and most important) is that the game absolutely eats up memory. I've got a great rig with 64g of ram and this game was using up at least 20g to upwards of 50g of memory. This is likely the cause of the next issue I have and possibly other issues but there is no reason this game should take up this much memory when the recommended specs are way lower.

Next issue is during the in-game cut-scenes, the sound gets a little "off" sometimes. during a scene where one character gets attacked, when I saw the attack land the sound of that attack landing would play a second later. It was very noticeable at times while other times it was fine. I suspect it's caused from the memory issue as the rest of the game the sound is on-point, it's only slightly noticeable (for me) during the cut-scenes.

The UI could use some improvements for PC, it was obviously designed to work with consoles which is ok, it is playable in the current state but it could be miles better.

• Customization of the UI is non-existant. Being able to change certain elements would be amazing, I don't need to see the "Enter to chat" all the time or the Tab to open the journal.
• Timers for potion and shrine buffs would be nice
• Let me move the chat box to the bottom left where it is in every single other game I play
• No overlay map is baffling especially when it's present in other Diablo games
• Challenges screen needs to be reworked, it's way too large and it's awful to navigate.

TLDR

From what I can tell in the short time I've played, the game is so much fun. I had to force myself to shut the game off or I wouldn't get any sleep. I still have so much content to play for this beta, I'm not sure I'll be able to finish it all this weekend but I know I'll be having a blast doing it.

The issues I have pale in comparison to how much fun this game is, I cannot wait to get home and do my first dungeon.