Today we’re going to look at the expansion to the latest game, Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred. Unlike most other reviews though, the focus here is going to be on the single player experience, which many would argue is not even the game proper in Diablo. There are many different approaches to playing Diablo and we’ve made a deliberate choice with this review to focus on more of a throwback approach. If you want to look up all the different character builds and damage multipliers and different levels of Nightmare and Torment and how to best max a character, there are a thousand guides out there. But no one is really talking about the core Diablo experience and we felt that that’s more than a bit of a disservice to a rather interesting game. The first part of this review is dedicated to an overall explanation of the game and the second is focused solely on Vessel of Hatred so if you’re already familiar with the structure of Diablo IV, skip ahead to the Vessel of Hatred content.
Let’s start with the base game, Diablo IV. With some of the drama that Blizzard has been having, many long time players have stepped away from their games and that’s a shame because the games are still incredibly good. Diablo IV has you playing a Wanderer, corrupted by the blood of the demon Lilith. She is trying to take over the world starting with Sanctuary (old school players will definitely remember that place). What follows is a gruesome and convoluted story involving the last of the Horadrim (ancient mages and wizards), an angel, hordes of demons, and more suffering that it’s easy to bear (the devs must have had nightmares making this stuff).
Spread out over the course of about 25 hours or so, you’ll level up your character, focusing on expanding their gear, raising levels, and adding abilities until you’re an unstoppable juggernaut capable of taking on the leaders of hell. Doing so is still a challenge but make sure you have a sturdy mouse and keyboard because you’ll be jamming the buttons a lot! By the time you reach Level 60, you’ll likely have beat the game, at which point you start unlocking a variety of additional content including bosses, missions for various factions, and much more. You’ll also start adding Paragon points to your character, making them even more powerful. Diablo IV is designed to teach you most of the gameplay while you beat the campaign and then builds on that with multiple levels of complexity, gear, and further refinements as you progress into the post-game.
Gameplay is identical for both the main game and the expansion so let’s give a quick rundown. All story, side quests, and post-story content are provided in the form of quests which you can choose from and pursue at your leisure. Just want to kill stuff? No problem. Want to clear out an entire portion of the map and complete everything? Plenty of time. Nothing is time sensitive either so you don’t have to worry about missing out on anything. There are ridiculous numbers of dungeons just to work through and get tiny boosts to various stats, assorted treasure and more. You can complete smaller boss fights all throughout the map as well, stumbling upon their gold circles on the map as you travel. Most side missions require combat too, so you’re going to be slaughtering with abandon.
During that combat, your primary and secondary attacks are mapped to your L1 and R1 mouse buttons for a standard computer. You can use the scroll wheel to scroll through text and your additional attacks are mapped to numeric keys 1-4 by default. Going into the skills menu allows you to allocate skills points, unlock both active and passive skills and then choose which ones you want active based on how you’ve structured your character. There are 5 default characters for Diablo IV, Barbarian, Necromancer, Sorcerer, Rogue, and Druid, each with their own unique abilities that can be refined and tweaked. It’s impossible to activate everything so you want to choose skills and abilities that are complementary and increase multipliers, damage and defense. That’s harder said than done though.
Combat consists of you highlighting enemies with your mouse and using the 6 main attack buttons to decimate your foes. Stronger enemies have more HP and often special abilities that can do loads more damage to you. Bosses have even larger health bars with segments that trigger new attacks as you whittle away at their life. Diablo IV is a war of attrition that feels never-ending, trapped between the armies of Heaven and the hordes of Hell. The map is also ridiculously massive with unlockable warp points everywhere, allowing you to quickly fast travel with ease. Taking the time to fight your way across the world makes the later game significantly easier by providing the ability to zip from area to area, especially combined with mount travel after you unlock it.
Keep in mind that this is a bare-bones explanation of a complex game that teaches you bit by bit how to play as you go along. There’s no reason to explain everything as Diablo IV elegantly does that for you throughout the campaign, making combat feel almost instinctual by the time you’ve made it to the level cap and completed the story. By now you’re probably wanting to hear about Vessel of Hatred though. This first expansion to Diablo IV adds a new character class, the Spiritborn, and some new mechanics that you’re definitely going to want to take advantage of.
The expansion picks up right where the first game ended, with Neyrelle and the Wanderer both dealing with the fallout of their final confrontation with Lilith. Saying too much would ruin an excellent story so let’s leave it at that, but you as the Wanderer end up in Nahantu, a jungle land corrupted by Hell’s evil. It’s here that Neyrelle flees after events and it’s your job to hunt her down and help her. This is an expansion so you’re looking at a much shorter overall playthrough for the campaign, only about 10-12 hours. Unlike the main story, Vessel of Hatred isn’t quite as compelling overall and the shift in focus for the main storyline here doesn’t have quite the same hook. The cinemas are still spectacular of course and the writing stays solid but it’s clear that the main game is the superior plot.
That being said, the expansion isn’t just about the story. With a total of over 35 hours of plot alone, Diablo IV and Vessel of Hatred aren’t hurting for exposition. Rather, the tweaks to gameplay are what make Vessel of Hatred worth your time. The Spiritborn class is wildly powerful, so much so that Blizzard has recently asked the community if they wanted to nerf the class or leave it as is, almost unstoppable for high level players. Honestly, that’s a great choice because sometimes it’s just fun to feel like you’re breaking a game’s systems and the Spiritborn builds allow you to do that.
In addition to normal attacks, Spiritborn characters can access an affinity to their chosen Spirit guardians, taking on some of their abilities. These spirit guardians, Eagle, Gorilla, Jaguar, and Centipede can also be summoned as part of your attack builds to destroy ranks of enemies. We went with a combination of Eagle and Centipede for our Spiritborn. Playing on Hard difficulty (that’s Level 2 of 4 for the main difficulty settings) leveling up was extremely fast compared to normal (75% boost in XP) and most bosses were challenging without being outrageous. There are 4 Torment levels after you’ve managed to dominate the game’s normal difficulty levels too, but if you’re playing mostly for story like we were, you’re not going to bother with those.
As well as summons and taking on aspects of the guardians with incarnate skills, you can also unlock mercenaries in Vessel of Hatred. These are ideal for single player gameplay as you can hire mercenaries (for free mind you) to accompany you and fight by your side, gradually unlocking their abilities with a level progression and making them indispensable for higher level single player combat. Building rapport with the four available mercenaries will make them ridiculously powerful, especially Raheir. You can slot them in as Primary or Reinforcement mercenaries and when playing solo, your Primary mercenary always accompanies you and your reinforcement one appears as needed based on their reinforcement skills. In vanilla Diablo IV, makind do on your own was tough at higher levels of the game but the support given by mercenaries changes all that, making what was previously a struggle into only a moderate challenge. That ups the fun factor of Vessel of Hatred significantly for single player gameplay.
Late-game changes have also been made to Paragon and loot systems as well as a variety of other tweaks. For the last few weeks, every time you boot up Diablo IV – Vessel of Hatred, a new update seems to appear, making you wait a couple of minutes as the latest patch drops before you can drop back into Nahantu. That can be a bit irritating but it’s clear that the expansion is both being taken seriously by Blizzard and is being slowly molded into an even more engaging package for both new and old players alike. We saw this with Diablo III when it came out but the changes were much more significant in that game, fundamentally changing the experience from release to its current form. By contrast, changes to Diablo IV have mostly preserved and refined the core experience of the game, making it more approachable and playable for all levels of players.
Of course the visuals are outstanding in Diablo IV and no expense has been spared there. Cinemas are incredibly detailed and even on a marginal system like ours, there is no slowdown. Crisp cinemas aren’t the only thing you’re going to see in Vessel of Hatred though. The new jungle environments are incredibly dense and complex and if it weren’t for all the pesky demons constantly attacking you, it would be more than possible to spend hours zoomed in just looking at all the details that lovingly went into creating these spectacular jungle vistas. Depending on your playstyle, you might like playing close in for the excellent in-game graphics as well, but we find that make sit far too difficult to see where you’re going next and too easy to get ambushed so max zoom is a must, especially in high-pressure combat situations. It’s a shame because Diablo IV is so beautiful, but sometimes you have to pick substance over style. If you have even a weaker system (we run a 1080Ti) the game still looks amazing even in 1080p and the GUI is outstanding and fairly easy to navigate as you slowly learn the menu systems.
Audio is similarly crisp and intense, with the jungle noises of Vessel of Hatred making the game feel suitably damp and oppressive and melding well with the main game’s top tier sound design. Voice acting is exceptional as well and actors clearly took their characters seriously, providing substantial drama to this new expansion and a bit more gravitas than you might expect. With the shorter length of the story expansion, that does improve the experience. It’s clear that Blizzard did not skimp on either voice work or sound design here and the new sound effects for the Spiritborn class become almost comforting once you get used to them.
One of the big complaints about Vessel of Hatred has been that it’s a fairly expensive expansion. The Standard edition (which is what we were playing) runs $40 with Deluxe and Ultimate weighing in at $60 and $90 respectively. Depending on what kind of player you are, that’s a fair chunk of change but if you’re a serious online player, you’ll get your money’s worth. In the context of single player play, the base Diablo IV game has been on sale for $40-50 on occasion recently and getting both the expansion and the base game will currently run you about $70, noticeably cheaper than buying both main game and expansion at launch. You’re getting a wealth of AAA content here too and there’s no charge to play Diablo IV online on PCs (though you’ll need various online services for multiplayer on consoles). That’s not a bad deal for a game that is constantly being updated and tweaked with a massive user base. It’s not even a bad deal for a game that’s 35 hours long for a single player for that matter!
There are so many systems and complexities to Diablo IV that it would be easy to write one or even several full strategy guides dedicated solely to all the nuances of the game. There’s simply not enough time to even discuss everything over the course of a single review and that might make some players hesitate. But Diablo IV – Vessel of Hatred is surprisingly user friendly and even if you’re just casually learning and playing, it’s a fun experience that’s going to stick with you for a long time…and suck up a lot of your time. An hour or two can disappear in instants if you drop into a particularly challenging dungeon or just try to pursue a couple of side quests to complete a region’s expectations.
What you really need to know is that Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred is an excellent expansion overall, and while it only adds a shorter extension to the main story, a single class, mercenaries, and a plethora of tweaks and adjustments, it’s still well worth your time. Actually, that’s a fair amount of stuff and with the new discounts in price, much more affordable, putting down some of the cost complaints that came a few weeks ago, at least for new players. You’ll still have to shell out the $40 for just the expansion if you already bought the main game but it’s going to be a fun time no matter what and if you’ve played this long, you’re not likely to have complaints, especially with the wild builds available to the Spiritborn class. In other words….buy Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred. You won’t regret it and chances are we’ll still be in there learning the ropes for multiplayer because this is a fun game even after the story is done.
This review is based on a digital copy of Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred provided by the publisher. It was played on a PC using a 1080Ti graphics card, 12 GB of RAM, and a 1080p monitor. Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred is also available on Xbox, PS5 and Steam as well as Battle.net. All photos supplied by Blizzard.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.