Some of us saw what was going to happen with D4. It was pretty obvious.
After DI, and D3, to expect D4 to launch in any decent state would have been naive at best.
I've said as much in the Diablo subreddit. D3 is now a good game, if it is what you are looking for. It's a fun romp, but... It isn't a truly heavy ARPG. If you want that POE is calling you.
Diablo 4 was great. I put probably 50+ hours into it and enjoyed it a lot.
I also completely ignored the opionion of whatever communities existed for it, because they ALWAYS complain and turn toxic, especially for Blizzard games. It’s inevitable and says very little about the actual game. Same thing happened with Overwatch 2 as well. It’s a great game yet somehow has only 10% positive reviews on Steam.
It is okay to like and enjoy a game that the majority of the playerbase does not, I've had similar experience in multiple games, mostly MMORPGs and ARPGs with expansions but that does not take away from the experience of other players.
It comes down to personal preference. If you find yourself liking a game/expansion when most of the playerbase does not, it is best to avoid online forums/subreddits where the game is put on full blast (sometimes unfairly) becuase people are extrememly emotional, when the best thing for the to do is to walk away and play games they enjoy, it is just a game the stakes couldn't be any lower.
50 hours is not the expectation from an ARPG mainline title. If their goal was to just push the story forward, fine. But that clearly isn’t what they were going for. From that perspective, it’s not great.
Overwatch got review bombed because they just remonetized overwatch 1 and did things they said they wouldn’t do. It’s actually a pretty good parallel to the unity story.
You think they want to pan the people handing them early review codes TOO hard given that it is how they make a living?
Often critics have little time to review a game, a few hours, etc... they have a ton of games to review, they'll use cheats in single player games, or play through on easy mode etc.
For a game like D4 that is played at the end game, and really the big problems will only show up later in the game... There's no way a review was going to be right.
Understanding what a critic can, and can not see is critical to understanding what they can tell us about a game. Personally, I give them some weight, but I've taken to waiting a bit and listening to people who love the genre speak about it.
When Raxx is panning D4... it's bad. Bad enough that 79 is a WAY overrate.
After DI, and D3, to expect D4 to launch in any decent state would have been naive at best.
I've said as much in the Diablo subreddit. D3 is now a good game, if it is what you are looking for. It's a fun romp, but... It isn't a truly heavy ARPG. If you want that POE is calling you.