I've played a lot of ARPGs in my life - Diablo 3, Diablo 4, Last Epoch, Grim Dawn, PoE1, PoE2, Torchlight, Victor Vran to name some. I've never been a hardcore grinder, mostly I play campaign but I have reached and played the endgame of some of the bigger names. But I've accumulated probably 1000+ hours in various ARPGs so I thought it would be cool to try to play one of the most influential titles in the space.
Putting aside Blizzard online ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, the game runs well, I've played it exclusively on Steam Deck.
But unfortunately, I think this is a bad game when you compare it to modern ARPGs. Is it a brilliant game? Yes. Is it a genre defining game? Yes. Is it fun in 2026? No.
Inventory and stash space is extremely limited. Between potions charms, about 50% of your inventory at any time is occupied by items that have no actual value. And going back to town is necessary in order to sell gear for gold, since many good upgrades actually come from merchants, not just ground loot. However, the merchants have no search capabilities, meaning you have to hover over and read every single item every time to see if something is worth buying. All your gear dropping on the ground when you die is a pants-on-head stupid decision. The quest log is extremely barebones, so finding the actual quest objectives is arduous. Changes in elevation for some reason make your character walk like 60% slower. Needing to go up or down stairs makes me want to punch a wall.
The power progression is incredibly slow. Most of the power comes from putting points into skills. But you only get one respec per time you finish the campaign, so if you made a build that doesn't fare well into the current monster variety you're fighting, too bad. Now you have to grind an insane amount, or just start a fresh character. Items are overall unexciting, it's just looking for whatever has + levels in the skills you're using.
I think the real problem is that so far, I have found absolutely nothing that changes the way my character plays. I play Fireball on Sorc, that's it. The fireball is the fireball and it seems like it'll behave exactly the same way from the moment you pick it up to the moment you stop playing the game. The gameplay gets stale incredibly fast. Even spoiling myself and looking up good Unique items in the lategame, nothing looks interesting at all. The good items look like they have good passives and good levels to skills. The exact same thing. Monsters and bosses also don't really add variety as they generally don't require any particular strategizing as well.
For today's standards, this is simply just not a fun game. In fact, it's potentially the least fun ARPG I've ever played. Every single other one I've played has been fun to varying extents. This one hasn't been.
