If you're part of the 92% of Diablo 4 players who haven't completed Lord of Hatred: lock in

We all play Diablo for our own reasons. Some of us like the dopamine hit of smacking monsters and watching numbers go up. Others want to optimize their builds, honing every little piece of gear to be the best it could be. I, however, am simply a sucker for Sanctuary. Blizzard has created a world quite unlike any other; one where you don’t expect a happy ending, yet run headlong towards death and destruction with fervor. Its characters are masterful, brought to life with stunningly macabre visuals and a cast of voice actors that have been woefully overlooked. Put simply: Sanctuary is perfect in its imperfection.

Diablo 4’s campaign has been consistently good. While some found Vessel of Hatred somewhat lacking (yes, I saw your Reddit comments telling me how wrong I was for enjoying it), Lord of Hatred brings the game’s current narrative to a spectacularly gory close. While I found it a little too American Horror Story for my liking (play it and you’ll see what I mean), and I wanted more time with Adriana and her Amazons, I generally praised it in my Lord of Hatred review.

It comes as a shock to me, then, that, according to Steam, just 8.1% of players have completed the Lord of Hatred campaign. Sure, it’s locked behind a $40 / £36 price point, and this number doesn’t include people playing on Battle.net or console. However, the RPG has seen a marked player increase post-launch, with a mere 5.5k Steam players surging up to a record peak of 64k. That number has dropped a little to around 44k, but it’s holding strong and certainly nothing to smirk at. How, then, have so few players finished the Lord of Hatred campaign?

Allow me to make a quick argument as to why you should. First off, as I said, Lord of Hatred caps off the Mephisto saga. Whatever comes next will be something completely new, so why not close out this chapter? It’s got me hyped for whatever comes next, and it’ll get you excited, too.

Secondly, it’s just really good. While bits of it feel a little fetch questy, the overall story hits hard, and its consistent emotional sucker punches make you feel like you’re on a rollercoaster. Skovos is gorgeous, porcelain, and beautiful; a shining beacon in a world that’s strayed too far from heaven. As it slowly but surely begins to corrupt, and Mephisto’s malevolence seeps into the very soil, it begins to change. White gives way to black, nature to corruption; it’s some of Blizzard’s best visual storytelling to date, and it makes exploring its crevices ever-more interesting.

Finally, it gives Lilith time to shine. I found that, in the base game, she became somewhat of a ‘big vampire lady’ from Resident Evil Village: there for a good (or bad) time, but not a long time. I don’t think the base game gave her enough focus, and there’s plenty of that in Lord of Hatred. Caroline Faber does an excellent job of bringing her back to life, and there’s forever that sense of foreboding as she machinates in the background, watching your every move through your own eyes. I finally got the Lilith I wanted, and Mephisto himself is nothing to smirk at, either.

So this is an impassioned message to the 92% of you that haven’t completed Lord of Hatred: lock in. Explore Skovos. Ruin Mephisto’s plans. Cry when [redacted] dies, and feel that sense of victory as the credits roll. It’s worth it.