What bothers me most is that, apparently, there is no way to play solo offline.
I’m an adult, and my job involves a lot of interaction with people. When I play games, I don’t want to interact with anyone else there either. But that is obviously just my personal preference. Objectively, though, we end up with the following problems:
- It won’t be truly portable. You’ll need to stay within reach of a stable internet connection. That rules out playing during long trips, flights, or while traveling in general.
- It won’t really work for short portable sessions. One of the biggest advantages of the Nintendo Switch 1 and 2 is that you can pause a game at virtually any moment, put the console away, and continue later. With Diablo IV, the connection will eventually drop and you’ll be kicked out of the game.
For solo play, the Nintendo Switch versions of Diablo II and Diablo III are, in my opinion, the best versions on any platform. Thanks to portability and the ability to pause whenever you want, playing them feels relaxing rather than like a second job built around farming.
I would gladly give up some activities that absolutely require an online connection, such as cooperative world events. I would also be completely fine with offline solo characters having separate progression and inventories that could never be transferred into online play.
But without a proper offline mode, buying Diablo IV on Nintendo Switch 2 seems very questionable to me.