Unlike the contentious launch of its predecessor, Diablo 4 arrived last year with a reasonably strong foundation that Blizzard has nurtured thoughtfully in the months since, giving its first expansion much less heavy lifting to do in the hearts and minds department. Diablo 4 doesn't necessarily require an overhaul, but that's what it feels like it's getting next to its biggest content addition yet. That means you don't have to own Vessel of Hatred to enjoy some of the most exciting changes arriving alongside it, but without it you would be missing out on the game's most dynamic class yet, which makes Vessel of Hatred a blast to play.

If you've been away from Diablo 4 for sometime then you'll be happy to know that Vessel of Hatred isn't designed solely for those who have stayed engaged in demon-slaying since launch last year. If you want to hop right into the campaign of the expansion, you're given the option to do so with a new character from the start, so long as you've completed at least the prologue in the base game. The updates since Diablo 4's launch coupled with the sweeping changes made by a far-reaching update that goes live with the expansion enables this approach, making leveling substantially faster to get you to endgame activities by the end of Vessel of Hatred's campaign. The changes to difficulty also remove any tedious grinding, letting you select your preferred difficulty and having all areas and enemies scale accordingly. These, along with more subtle changes to damage, health, and resource figures, as well as the lower level cap, all make Diablo 4 feel fresh again. That's especially true if you haven't been keeping up to date with it over the past year.

Vessel of Hatred's story picks up after the events of Diablo 4, an indeterminate amount of time after Lilith's defeat and the subsequent imprisonment of her father, Mephisto. Neyrelle, one of your core companions, has been shepherding Mephisto with her and bearing the brunt of his mind-twisting torture, venturing deep into the new region on Nahantu in search of a prison that might hold him. Meanwhile, the Cathedral of Light has its own crisis of faith thanks to a misguided campaign into hell and a new leader who is all about punishment over redemption, threatening its very existence in the wake of many of its followers perishing. This establishes a dual-antagonist threat, one with the Cathedral pursuing Neyrelle to pin its failures on, and the other with the growing power of the Prime Evil she's carrying. Yet despite this, both of Vessel of Hatred's main villains feature surprisingly little during its campaign, only manifesting once you're ready to vanquish them. This stands in contrast to the persistent threat of Lilith in the main Diablo 4 campaign, whose presence was tangible as you raced across the region to put an end to her machinations.