Diablo 4 is one of the most anticipated games of the year, and with good reason. Diablo is in a class of games like Rogue, Doom, Myst, Pokemon, Metroid, and Castlevania where it has become so synonymous with the dungeon crawler genre that many that followed in its footsteps are accused of being mere Diablo clones. It has been ten years since the last major Diablo game, with only a couple of expansion packs, a remaster, and the ill-fated mobile version Diablo Immortal releasing in that time. Diablo 4 is the return of the king, and even in a stacked 2023, for a lot of people it is far and away the game their hopes are pinned on. A word of warning though - if you're a newcomer, Diablo 4 might not be for you.
This is not to gatekeep and banish players from discovering something new. There's no reason this can't be your first Diablo game; I'm not particularly protective over the lore of the game, nor would I insist that potential new players should go back to the start to pick everything up from scratch. Indeed, my first Diablo game was 3, and I have not worked backwards since to see where it all began. I'm not a cop, play whatever game you want, even if what you want is those strange shovelware Steam games that reward you for solving dungeons with pictures of bikini-clad waifus.
All I'm saying is to be aware going in that this is a game that plays for keeps. There are a few triple-A games coming out around Diablo 4 - Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Tears of the Kingdom, Street Fighter 6, Dead Island 2, Final Fantasy 16, and the list goes on. All of these games have the ability to consume your life, but they will also allow you to play casually. Dip in and have a few fights as Ryu here, go off and explore a planet as Cal there. Build a magic car out of rocks in Hyrule, bash a zombie in the face in Los Angeles. Casual can feel like a derogatory term in gaming, but these games encourage casual play - just play whenever you can. Most of us aren't looking to break into the competitive Street Fighter 6 scene, and that's the only thing in any of these games that would demand you constant attention.
In everything else, while you can no-life the likes of Star Wars and Dead Island, beating them over a few days, most people are going to take their time. And these games are going to let you. With Diablo 4, not so much. You can play it this way, and you'll still just about get to see everything, but it's not the optimum experience. With Star Wars and Zelda, you can set it down for a week then come back to it, and once you take five minutes to remember where you are on the map, everything is back as it should be. That's not how things go with Diablo.
With Diablo, the experience is at its strongest when you're immersed. Worse, it falls apart when you're not. Not that you need my permission to play, but obviously you can still just get Diablo 4 and dabble with it as much or as little as you like. Just be aware that all the people who tell you it's one of the greatest game series of all time will be spending a few months dedicated almost solely to playing Diablo. Battle passes will take 80 hours to complete, Blizzard says, and you won't even have maxed out your level by the end of it. It's a prospect that sounds ominous even to committed Diablo players, so newcomers should go in with their eyes open. If you're a fan of these grind-rewarding, immersive timesinks, but have never bothered with Diablo before, then 4 is the perfect time to start. If you're looking for a dungeon crawler that'll be good for ten hours of fun, you might find Diablo doesn't fit your needs.
Blizzard claimed 50 percent of Immortal players were newcomers. Those numbers are fudged a bit (they were determined by email addresses, which people tend to change over the course of their lives), and inflated by it being a free-to-play mobile game that notoriously scored the lowest Metacritic player score ever. But the point remains - Diablo is a draw on name alone. Many will be tempted by 4, and I hope they have a great time, new players and veterans alike. Just know going in, if you want to get Diablo, you have to get into Diablo. It asks for nothing less than total commitment to the cause.