I am not a Diablo Player. Never played I or II. But I did pick up III last year during a sale and have about 4 days of play time.
My entire knowledge of the Diablo story is that some guy crashed into a church or something, and some guy with a weird voice tells me I have to run around and smash/kill stuff for some reason.

That is my entire scope of Diablo. So yea, I’m new… and I just bought Diablo IV.

I was leary of basically starting out in IV. I mean, not knowing anything of the last 25 years of game lore and mechanics is going to put me far behind right?

But I fire up the PC and get downloaded. And after a quick blurb of “your graphics drivers are incompatible” and subsequent AMD update, I was dropped into… Sanctuary.

After a fantastic opening scene, that sets the mood and storyline, adventuring begins.
I was expecting at least two things to happen right away.

First, be completely lost. Not knowing how anything works or who main characters or where anything is, how to use the UI… but this is probably the smoothest entry into a long lived, major title that there can be.

Not once did I need to go outside of the game to find out how to do anything. The game knew when to show me, or show me how to do something with out taking me out of the experience.

Second, how to physically play. I played both keyboard/mouse and controller just to see which I might prefer, and even though I had nearly no seat time with the game, both were immediately instinctive. Right out of the gate 99% of the keybinds and button mappings were exactly where they should be.

When things go this smooth, you get fully immersed into the feel of the game with out being distracted by poor controls or frustrating menus.

This game looks great. Far better than I remember. The cut scenes transition fluidly from game to scene with any jarring difference, and those cut scenes are full feature animation quality. Everything I have seen so far in IV goes that extra mile to keep you in the flow with out losing focus of the over all emotion of the game.

Yet, you, the player, retain the ability to customize your gameplay very deeply. Skill/spell trees allow so many style options, you cant help but find a specialization that fits.

I am nearing the end of Act 2 out of 6, and while I am still playing around with which “spec” my Sorcerer will lean into, I can feel him getting stronger and stronger as he moves along getting enhancements and passives.

I am glad that I pulled the trigger and picked this game up, It really is what everyone has been talking about, and I’ve barely started.
If you were on the fence about this game like I was, I think you will be surprised at how good and how quick the storyline pulls you in, and how easy is is to jump right in and not feel like you are out of place.   

I will probably be jumping in now and then with updates so be prepared.