Diablo 4 Repeats a Big Mistake From Hogwarts Legacy and Doubles Down on It

There’s not much in the way of comparison between a game like Diablo 4 and Hogwarts Legacy, though a few similarities can be drawn if picked at. Both are takes on fantasy, though starkly opposite, and both offer an engrossing open world with a lot of content to experience, whether narrative-driven or exploration-driven. But where both games arguably share the most commonality is in how they are both mired down in divisiveness, though again the reasons for why both are being criticized are wildly different between Diablo 4 and Hogwarts Legacy.

Hogwarts Legacy will always suffer from the attachment it has to the Harry Potter IP’s author, no matter how tangential, while Diablo 4 was received exceptionally well before its first post-launch seasonal content arrived. That’s not to say that Diablo 4 was absolutely perfect at launch, though, and there is one feature in particular that many fans believe Blizzard mistakenly withheld from players. Interestingly, the same could be said about how Avalanche decided to unveil its own version of the same feature, but Diablo 4 still takes the cake in making it feel more unsatisfying when it’s finally offered in-game.

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Hogwarts Legacy Doles Out Items Gradually in a Slow Burn of a Story

Hogwarts Legacy has players running around on foot for quite some time before they are able to eventually mount a broomstick and fly around the open world. Players can’t fly within Hogwarts or Hogsmeade anyhow, but there is hardly any incentive to go out and try to fully explore the Scottish Highlands before all areas of it can be quickly flown to. There’s a lot players can do while at the castle and the trek to Hogsmeade at first is a great scenic promenade, but once players have been there they can fast travel back via the Floo Network anyway.

Fast travel points are frequent in Hogwarts Legacy and make any sort of travel much more efficient, so even when a broom does become available players may only be astride it if they are enjoying a view from the sky or competing in timed race trials, but flying to the furthest reaches of the Highlands is essential first so that those Floo Flames can be unlocked in the first place. Therefore, the broom is paramount when it’s finally offered since it allows for engaging traversal that is obviously preferable to sprinting around, but in the early game it isn’t incredibly necessary if players are swept up in activities nearby before the game truly widens its open world.

Diablo 4 Neglects Giving Players a Mount Until Far Too Late

Meanwhile, Diablo 4 waits an egregiously long time before players are actually able to mount a horse, and by the time players can ride a horse through Sanctuary they likely already have a lot of the open world’s waypoints unlocked, depending on how much they’ve explored in acts one to three. Stables seem to mock the player at every town they visit because the game goes on and on before any word of being able to unlock a horse is issued. Maneuvering Diablo 4’s Sanctuary on foot isn’t terrible and mobs of enemies will swarm the player regardless of whether they’re mounted or not, but being on a horse much later in the game is still quite unsatisfying because it controls awkwardly and arguably doesn’t even get players around that much sooner.

Players will eventually need to dismount to battle a horde of enemies and the horse can get caught on the geometry of corner pathing, making it slow and cumbersome between bouts of sprints it can achieve. Waypoints are often far and few between, and the horse is marginally faster than if players were to run everywhere, but the horse’s arrival is poorly timed and seems like an insufficient navigational aid at that point, while Hogwarts Legacy’s broom at least lets players get to their destination while off the beaten path.

Diablo 4 is out now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.

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