Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred fixes my biggest problems with the last expansion
Diablo 4 returns to its former narrative form with Lord of Hatred, and gives new life to the endgame
I adored Diablo 4 at launch.
At the time, the hardcore players were mad that the endgame didn’t feel finished, and the casuals were upset to learn that they’d need to reset and regrind their gear every three months. But as a big Diablo 3 enjoyer who would pop in to go hard on a season once or twice a year? I was thriving.
I’d dip into each D4 season to check it out for work and it got me with the bug about 50% of the time. By the time Vessel of Hatred – the game’s first expansion – came out a little more than a year after launch, I’d made maxed out versions of several of the starter classes in previous seasons. And while I’ve also done that in the year+ since that expansion launched, it was with notably less interest, as Vessel of Hatred highlighted two issues that began to plague the Diablo 4 experience for me:
- The strong narrative from vanilla D4 was stopped dead in its tracks in Vessel of Hatred
- There were so many different activities in the game – most of them good – but without concrete reasons to run one over the other
But this is not a re-review of Vessel of Hatred, an expansion that I very much disliked outside of the new Spiritborn class, which was super fun for a first playthrough. This is a review of Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred, the game’s sophomore expansion. But don’t let the eerily similar names fool you, Lord of Hatred is a major step up from its predecessor, and has found great ways to improve on those above bullet points.
Starting with the narrative, I’m gonna hit you with some minor spoilers for Vessel of Hatred, so … consider yourself warned.
Diablo 4 vanilla ends us in this really great place where Lilith and Inarius are defeated, and Mephisto – the prime evil and brother of Diablo – is trapped in a soul shard and on his way to a new land in the hand of one of our heroes. Huge potential. Potential that is almost entirely squandered throughout Vessel of Hatred’s campaign, which consists of following the shard from place to place while basically nothing happens in the larger narrative. That is until you reach the final cutscene, which reveals Mephisto taking over the body of a long-dead prophet, Akarat – basically turning him into a Jesus figure that’s actually more like the anti-Christ.
The ending of Vessel of Hatred is very exciting, don’t get me wrong. But when Diablo 4 did a good enough job with its narrative that it brought a bunch of longtime fans into actually caring about the story for the first time (myself included) and then basically one thing happens in the first follow-up expansion, it’s a major disappointment.
With that final tease, the narrative expectations for Lord of Hatred were high. And – thankfully – it clears them fairly easily.
Unlike Vessel of Hatred, Lord of Hatred feels like a major continuation of the vanilla Diablo 4 story. Mephisto is running rampant through the Skovos isles, masquerading as a long-dead prophet come back to life. It’s surreal, it’s creepy; it ticks all the boxes. But even more importantly, it meaningfully moves the story forward and works to resolve the conflicts initially teased nearly three years ago.
Without spoiling anything too major, the actions you take in the campaign feel as though they push you toward resolution in the grand story, not just solving issues in the new region while Mephisto takes a back seat. There are plenty of surprises and set pieces along the way, and it’s a great time – one I actually look forward to replaying on my retail account. If I have any complaints, it’s that I was hoping for more of a tease for what’s coming next in the world of Diablo, but that’s a much better problem to have than “I can’t believe only one meaningful thing happened in this entire expansion.”
Outside of the two new class additions – the Paladin and the Warlock, both of which are very cool – a drastically improved endgame is the major thing Blizzard is touting for Lord of Hatred.
In the temporary build they allowed me to play on for this review, I was able to cheat my way to better gear and higher levels so I could test the endgame. But with only so much time before the build goes offline, which forced me to advance my character past major pieces of the grind, it’s hard to really tell how well the game will function at its normal pace. However, all of the new systems seem great on their face – the talisman that allows for set bonuses is a genius addition, and the return of Kunai’s Cube is going to be massive for meta progression – so I have faith that the experience will get even better.
Obviously the features I just mentioned are great, but there’s one feature in particular that I am extremely confident will fix my secondary bullet point problem with Vessel of Hatred: War Plans.
War Plans are a new endgame feature that work pretty similarly to the map bounties in Diablo 3. But instead of just asking you to go to places on a map and clear an objective, War Plans asks you to choose a collection of activities from a tree and run them. This presents as a Slay The Spire style map – almost like a roguelite – where you’ll choose an activity like Helltide, and then select another activity like Undercity that branches off of it. Different choices offer different rewards, and you’ll gain experience for that specific activity each time you choose it. As your activities level up, you’ll be able to put points in a skill tree specifically made for that activity, which will make the activity easier or give you more options to expand your rewards.
Once you’re ready, you can just open your menu and hold a button to teleport to your first activity. For clearing it, you’ll earn some rewards and whatever bonus currency it initially promised you. You’ll then get told to do the next activity in your War Plan, and can simply hold down a button to teleport over to it. You’ll continue to do this until you reach the end of your plan, where you’ll return to the table and get a big bag of rewards for your trouble.
You can then level up your activities, select a new board, and go again.
This system is brilliant. At this point in Diablo 4, Blizzard has added so many damn activities. And a lot of them are great. But instead of now going “... why would I want to run Undercity or Nightmare Dungeons again?” I now can get genuinely excited every time the team adds a new kind of activity. It’s just more spice, more flavor, to add to my War Plans.
So while I can’t speak to how the journey will be once we have full access to a new season under this system, I feel very confident that the War Plans system will ensure that I never get bored on my grind to max Torment.
Lord of Hatred is what I wanted Vessel of Hatred to be, and that’s without even touching on the rework of every skill tree for every class. It offered me a satisfying campaign that I can’t wait to replay, and a genuinely excellent twist to the endgame that I can’t wait to grind and level up through May and beyond.
Back in my hot and heavy days with Diablo 3, in college, I would always dream that Blizzard would make it the first Diablo game to get a second expansion. Well, they never did. That makes Lord of Hatred the first sophomore expansion in the Diablo universe, and it seems to be setting a pretty high bar for when we inevitably get a third.
