"Lord of Hatred is the best Diablo 4 has ever been," Blizzard says

While Diablo 4 launched strong, perfectly blending the darkness of Diablo 2 with the flashy, fast-paced combat of Diablo 3, it's struggled to stick the landing. With challengers like Last Epoch and Path of Exile 2 providing better endgame experiences and stronger seasonal changes, Blizzard hasn't quite managed to stem the tides. But Lord of Hatred, the game's third expansion, hopes to change that. Closing out the Mephisto saga in style, it marks the end of an era for the seminal action RPG, but also the beginning of something new.

In my Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred review, I praised the expansion's endgame changes and general campaign, awarding it a solid 8/10. That's lower than I scored Vessel of Hatred, largely because, as a core DLC, I felt like LoH offered fewer new features than its predecessor.

While Vessel of Hatred included the Mercenaries and Runewords systems, which is both a gamechanger and a rose-tinted throwback to Diablo 2 (and 3, kind of), I found that Lord of Hatred largely focused on adding more ways to refine your build, with the Talisman and Horadric Cube offering yet another layer of customization. The War Plans system certainly helps you streamline your endgame experience and the rewards you get from it, but it feels like more of an attempt to tidy things up than a world-shattering, must-have feature. As a result, I'd argue that Diablo 4's endgame finally feels like it rivals its competitors' again, but LoH's additions perhaps aren't the most innovative.

For Blizzard, however, Lord of Hatred represents Diablo 4 at its finest. In a roundtable interview ahead of the expansion's launch, I asked Associate Game Designer Zaven Haroutunian and Associate Director, Game Design Colin Finer about whether or not this is Diablo 4 in its peak form.

"Yes, absolutely!" Haroutunian responds emphatically. "We think Lord of Hatred is the best Diablo 4 has ever been. We think of it as the ultimate expression of the game." "100%," Finer agrees. "So many of the features are a love letter to Diablo and its players - it's been a huge labor of love from the team.

"We've been playing the game constantly internally, and it's been so easy to lose yourself in the flow state of grinding War Plans, using the map overlay to effectively navigate every level, and using the loot filter to make ultra-endgame items pop."

It certainly feels like Diablo 4 is in a good state - I can already see the comments of 'it should have been this way from the start,' but I'm just thankful we got here. It'll be interesting to see how the team continues to innovate from here (if it doesn't move on to Diablo 5 instead), and how Diablo continues to evolve. By this point, we've got pretty much every feature from previous games, even if they've been slightly modified and modernized, so it feels like the path forward requires something new. And the return of Diablo - the clue's in the name, after all.