Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred review

Our VerdictVessel of Hatred gives Diablo 4 a beating heart: Compelling characters to root for, creative loot to chase, and fiercely expressive action.

Our Verdict

Vessel of Hatred gives Diablo 4 a beating heart: Compelling characters to root for, creative loot to chase, and fiercely expressive action.

PC Gamer’s got your backOur experienced team dedicates many hours to every review, to really get to the heart of what matters most to you.Find out more about how we evaluate games and hardware.

Need to know(Image credit: Blizzard)What is it?A massive update and expansion to the dark fantasy action RPG.Release dateOctober 7, 2024Expect to pay$40/£40DeveloperBlizzardPublisherBlizzardReviewed onRTX 4090, Intel Core i9 12900K, 16GB RAMMultiplayerYesSteam DeckVerifiedLinkBattle.net/Steam

Need to know

(Image credit: Blizzard)What is it?A massive update and expansion to the dark fantasy action RPG.Release dateOctober 7, 2024Expect to pay$40/£40DeveloperBlizzardPublisherBlizzardReviewed onRTX 4090, Intel Core i9 12900K, 16GB RAMMultiplayerYesSteam DeckVerifiedLinkBattle.net/Steam

(Image credit: Blizzard)

Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred cutscene

What is it?A massive update and expansion to the dark fantasy action RPG.Release dateOctober 7, 2024Expect to pay$40/£40DeveloperBlizzardPublisherBlizzardReviewed onRTX 4090, Intel Core i9 12900K, 16GB RAMMultiplayerYesSteam DeckVerifiedLinkBattle.net/Steam

In a little over a year since its original release, Diablo 4 transformed from a decent action RPG into one of the best, a post-launchmetamorphosisthat few games have pulled off so thoroughly and so swiftly. Blizzard took every single thing players didn’t like about it and made them better. Every dungeon and every piece of loot was remade to better fit how people actually want to play a game about clicking demons until they pop. And now Diablo 4 is easily one of the best action RPGs of the last decade.

Vessel of Hatred’s campaign cements this shift in philosophy for the game. It follows in the footsteps of Neyrelle, the young woman from the first game who is carrying one of the series' major villains, Mephisto, demon lord of hatred, in her pocket. She’s on her way to Nahantu, the jungle region on the southern tip of the game’s map and your character, the Wanderer, chases after her to help. Your character has much more to say in Vessel of Hatred than they did in the original campaign, and I’m surprised at how pleased I was to see the hero of the story do more than nod and fight monsters. Vessel of Hatred’s campaign is shorter than the original one—clocking in at around 12 hours—but it’s dense with scenes where characters reflect, mourn, argue, and even tell jokes.

The original campaign was a grimdark fantasy determined to find the villain in everyone. Vessel of Hatred imagines a much kinder world. Its characters know that it’s ultimately doomed to endure an eternal war between heaven and hell, but they still care for each other anyway. For a game where you battle thousands of demons for sport, I think that’s as hopeful as you can get.

Better together

(Image credit: Tyler C. / Blizzard)

Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred mercenary base the Den

I frequently stopped to listen to my mercenaries' banter whenever I teleported back to The Den, their underground base in Nahantu. I heard Raheir, an old-warrior-turned-father, telling the others about his daughter, and the rest of the crew taking turns asking Varyana to cook her rancid meals somewhere else. The mercenaries aren’t just a set of skills to make your damage go up, they’re just interesting people who are fun to be around.

I had no problem tearing them apart with my spiritborn, Vessel of Hatred’s ridiculously flexible new class. Warriors of Diablo 4’s spirit realm, spiritborn fight with martial arts infused with the supernatural powers of their animal gods. Each one serves a similar role as the different elements sorcerers can use but the spiritborn skill tree and items encourage you to use a mix of two or more. I settled into a build that let me fling out electric eagle feathers and pounce on enemies with a fiery jaguar ultimate that reset on kills. I was tearing through dungeons so fast that I almost felt bad for the demons.

Diablo 4 already had unparalleled combat where you can feel every hit land and see every spell light up the room, but the speed and spectacle of the spiritborn demonstrate how far you can push it without losing the friction that so many other action RPGs seem to neglect. I dabbled in Last Epoch and Path of Exile this year and my characters felt like a wet sponge sliding along a countertop; Diablo has spoiled me with its tactile action and Vessel of Hatred only makes it even more satisfying.

Build-brained

That’s great news for a game that isn’t going to end anytime soon, and bad news for the games that I’m going to neglect as every new season in Vessel of Hatred debuts. No other live service game I’ve played is as generous as Diablo 4’s seasons and I expect that to carry forward into the expansion. While the early access build I played for review had the newest season available in it, bugged loot rewards (that will be fixed when it launches) made it impossible to get a good idea of how it’ll work when it goes live at the same time as the expansion drops.

What I can tell you is that Vessel of Hatred’s soft reset of Diablo 4’s progression systems, specifically how you level your character up and climb through its increasingly tougher and lucrative difficulty tiers, is the bow that neatly ties together the last several months of iteration that it’s gone through. Taking a character from level 1 to 60 is a much shorter journey than before, but it’s filled with exciting loot drops and challenges that ease you into shaping your character’s build.

(Image credit: Blizzard)

Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred cutscene

The more time I put into it, the more the patterns in its design reveal themselves.

As you gather up powerful legendary items that augment your skills, like one that makes your spiritborn’s eagle feathers ricochet off walls, you’ll reach a point where you have to consider survivability. This is where Diablo 4’s loot and malleable skill tree shine. After its major loot rework earlier this year, each piece of equipment meaningfully impacts how you play your character and asks you to make careful decisions about how you build them.

I was lucky and found a unique helmet that let me spam my most powerful attacks much faster than before, but I had to give up a legendary power that gave me extra armor. I took the risk and found a few points in my skill tree I could move around to gain a bit of extra health. My spiritborn was suddenly made out of paper and the only way to survive was to swap one of my offensive skills out for a defensive one. I continued tinkering with my items, sometimes replacing them or using Diablo’s tempering system to apply defensive stats onto them. After a few hours I had massaged my build into one that had a good balance of damage output and survivability, and then a mythic ring—the rarest and most powerful items in the game—dropped off a boss and I suddenly had a whole new puzzle to solve.

That’s why I keep playing Diablo 4 and have no plans to stop with Vessel of Hatred. The more time I put into it, the more the patterns in its design reveal themselves, like how leggings tend to be a perfect spot to stack all your extra health and armor. And how the designers break those patterns in clever ways: The unique Tibault’s Will pants skyrocket your damage but omit most of the stats leggings usually have on them. Vessel of Hatred sprinkles even more smartly designed loot into the mix, including a spiritborn chestpiece that drains your health to make your cooldowns shorter. I’m now determined to figure out how to make a low-life build with it as soon as I find one. And the best part is that no season will be the same as Blizzard continues to add new loot to chase.Diablo 4 spent the last year reconfiguring itself into aphenomenal action RPGand Vessel of Hatred demonstrates that Blizzard isn’t out of ideas on how to improve it further—even on the narrative side of things. Its willingness to stretch what Diablo could be is what impresses me most and the trust it’s earned along the way makes me confident about its future and thrilled to be along for the ride.

The Verdict90Read our review policyDiablo 4Vessel of Hatred gives Diablo 4 a beating heart: Compelling characters to root for, creative loot to chase, and fiercely expressive action.

The Verdict

90Read our review policyDiablo 4Vessel of Hatred gives Diablo 4 a beating heart: Compelling characters to root for, creative loot to chase, and fiercely expressive action.

90Read our review policy

Diablo 4Vessel of Hatred gives Diablo 4 a beating heart: Compelling characters to root for, creative loot to chase, and fiercely expressive action.

Diablo 4

Vessel of Hatred gives Diablo 4 a beating heart: Compelling characters to root for, creative loot to chase, and fiercely expressive action.

TOPICSBlizzard Entertainment

TOPICS

PRODUCTSDiablo 4Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred

PRODUCTS

More about diablo 4Diablo 4 is free until January and lets you play as its most busted class, so go on a rampage before Blizzard nerfs itDiablo 4 expansion’s game director refuses to back down on the dungeon you can’t enter unless you do it multiplayer: ‘I absolutely am sticking to my guns’LatestToday’s Wordle answer for Saturday, January 11See more latest►

More about diablo 4

Diablo 4 is free until January and lets you play as its most busted class, so go on a rampage before Blizzard nerfs itDiablo 4 expansion’s game director refuses to back down on the dungeon you can’t enter unless you do it multiplayer: ‘I absolutely am sticking to my guns’

Diablo 4 spiritborn character with glowing eyes and holding a glaive

Diablo 4 is free until January and lets you play as its most busted class, so go on a rampage before Blizzard nerfs it

Diablo 4 Dark Citadel

Diablo 4 expansion’s game director refuses to back down on the dungeon you can’t enter unless you do it multiplayer: ‘I absolutely am sticking to my guns’

LatestToday’s Wordle answer for Saturday, January 11See more latest►

Latest

Today’s Wordle answer for Saturday, January 11

Wordle answers

Today’s Wordle answer for Saturday, January 11

See more latest►

Most PopularTurtle Beach Stealth Pivot reviewIkea Matchspel gaming chair reviewASRock DeskMini X600 reviewZotac Zbox Magnus EN374070C reviewMinisforum AtomMan G7 Ti reviewSamsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra reviewNoctua NH-D15 G2 reviewGulikit KK3 Max reviewBallionaire reviewMarvel Rivals reviewBe Quiet! Dark Rock 5 review

Our Verdict#

Better together#

Build-brained#

Our Verdict

Better together

Build-brained