When Diablo IV first launched I was pretty excited. I bought it right away, tore through the campaign relatively quickly, did a little bit of postgame stuff, and then put it down. I got about 40 hours out of it (doing a lot of side stuff during my run) and put it down, satisfied.

When they announced the Season of the Malignant season starting I was tempted to jump back in but Seasons in Diablo III have just been about cosmetic stuff and leaderboards, neither of which really appeal to me. Diablo IV promised some expanded questlines and other stuff, but I didn't really know how significant it would be.

Recently I've been looking for a game to play on my treadmill (I love the fact that Diablo IV has an Xbox One version and the saves are shared between the Series and One) and I decided to dip my toe in and see what the season was about, starting a druid, which I played in the beta but not the main game.

Being able to skip the campaign was nice, though in the seasonal realm you don't get the universal bonuses you earn on the eternal realm, which is kind of annoying. I dove into the new questline and...it's at the level of a complex side quest but without the bells and whistles of CG and other stuff that the main campaign had. There are a few minor mechanical tweaks that are sort of interesting, like being able to resurrect certain enemies to kill them again and "cage their hearts" to use like gems, but nothing game changing. Still it's an excuse to play more and see a little more story, and while I have zero interest in the battle pass I do kind of like having an excuse to get back to the game, especially because it's the perfect game to play on my treadmill.

Blizzard has said they are going to do 3 seasons and an expansion every year, and assuming that they give lengthy quests during the seasons and the expansions are a decent value for money, I'm on board with the idea. If I can get 50 hours out of Diablo IV per year that's perfect for me. Of course I know there are much more hardcore players who want to spend hundreds of hours per year and I hope that they find the seasonal rewards enticing (though they seem pretty underwhelming if you don't buy a premium pass). But for me this is a decent offering.

I feel like Diablo IV has not made a very big splash despite being a huge franchise. Part of that is just how much stuff has come out this year and part of it is that there hasn't been much controversy, unlike with Diablo III, but part of it is how safe the game played everything. It was in most ways the Diablo game Diablo fans wanted, with a dark tone, no stupid auction house shenanigans, a fair amount of endgame content at launch, and not a lot of bugs. On the other hand the always online thing is a bummer, and there's nothing spectacular about the game. It's just...more Diablo. It doesn't even has as much funky or weird equipment as Diablo III did, though some of that may come with expansions or in time.

If I didn't like to play games on my treadmill I'm not sure if I'd want to play more of this relatively thin content, but Diablo can make time just kind of melt away, which is what I want when exercising, so I'm going to level up my druid and look forward to the next season in about a month. If this were season pass content I would be kind of annoyed at how thin it is but for free it's just enough to keep me engaged and maybe buy the expansion when that hits, which is, I guess, the point (beyond selling battlepasses, which is the REAL point.)