That’s the big reason why I loved Diablo II, but was lukewarm on the following two. The skill tree was fixed and a had nice synergies between the skills. I used to keep a notebook with plans for different builds that seemed fun and was primarily interested in the skills rather than items.

In Diablo III, the skill tree was much more limited, and you could swap things out at any time. So planning out a build and starting a new character was pointless. You could just swap the active skills.

It also didn’t seem to have any hard spots. If you followed the main quests, your character improved just fast enough to keep the challenge throughout consistent. So I never really felt a need to grind. I mean, I hate games that are all grinding, but I also like it when there are walls that you have to spend some time and effort to move past.

Diablo IV was even worse for this as the areas adapt to your level. So no matter where you were, the challenge was the same.

Neither of the two were awful, in my opinion, but they dropped the parts that made Diablo so exceptional to me. So I really didn’t spend too much time with either of them whereas I played Diablo II for about 10 years.