Finished campaign. Turn out I was like 2-3 hours away from it. Actually ending made story much better than I thought it would. Much like I said about it being stealthy kind of RPG it felt lacking that player wasn't given a choice in the end.
TLDR: Overall ? I think it is safe to say it is proper D2 sequel not abortion D3 was. It has it's own strengths as well as weaknesses but overall I think it is worthy sequel. At least when it comes to campaign and gameplay up to this point. End game and so on is yet to be seen but it's not that hard to beat D2 which didn't really have any endgame other than boss kills.
In detail:
Story and theme of the game:
Definitely they realized whole D1 theme here. While the first village and outskirts don't show that later on you can see clearly guts everywhere. This theme doesn't just touch environment but story itself. At one point in story you can see how characters talk while dude is eaten by demon wolves while he is alive piece by piece. It's dark and gritty as fans always wanted. Rivers of blood etc. Some places easily beat POEs Lunaris temple.
Theme aside story is interesting. Unlike 95% of other ARPGs story he is centerpiece, overshadowing whole game. It's clear that devs wanted to tell story first make game second. Narrative is more similar to other narrative driven games with frequent dialogs, scenes than something like hack and slash arpg where story is just bow to gameplay suit. Lilith as a character is really great. You always know that there is reason to everything she does and her motives from player view are not clear even as game ends.
I don't want to spoil much but use of another character (demon wolf for those who played) was pretty great and throws curveball at player questioning further your motives. Supporting characters are great as well aside from one shitty brat i hated whole game. Story is great but journey itself isn't without issues. Plenty of times I was wandering some table in middle of nowhere for mostly no reason because clearly someone wanted to pad story too much. Clearly if they would cut down a bit fat it would be better story.
My gripe with story and journey is that it has this disease of modern burger writing where everything has to be explained and people just can't shut up or they feel like they were written by someone writing comic panel rather than proper prose. ("cause i'm hungry")
Another part I liked about it was the bleakness. Hard to say something about it without spoiling much but I really liked the world and it's realization. In previous games I always had this feeling that santuary was pretty horrible place filled with diamonds in sea of shit and here it is how I imagined it. Definitely liked that part.
Overall as I finished game I could say something about what I experienced and probably will remember it for a while. Shoutout to Blizz cinematics guys, there is one cinematic in game that reminds me blizzard of old that gave shit about their craft.
Gameplay:
A lot has been said from people trying beta and all I can say is that up until end of game everything is pretty much same as beta. Only thing I noticed is that around lvl 40 you kind of lack ability to progress with character and your points mostly go toward small stuff that don't make much difference on tree. I'm yet to unlock paragon tree so there is that as well.
When it comes to questing etc. Imho this is the best way arpg can be. I never liked random generated end game maps of POE or other variations of it, because much like everything proc gen it gets boring really fast. D4 on other hand provides shitload of sidequests that are simple in design but give you enough reasons to smash. I mostly finished first area fully but barely touched rest as I was focusing on story. I spent like 35 hours playing till ending and it could easily go into 100-150 if I would decide to finish all side quests and even then much like any other arpg you can just repeat content on higher def.
As for looting experience I am kind of split. On one hand every rare actually matters as even if you don't use them you either sell them or destroy them for parts but on other hand base stats of items are pretty boring. Clearly issue with how their base combat works as there aren't that many stats to play with. Loot also in general drops toward your character but occasionally you can find loot for other characters.
Now when it comes to base gameplay, the raw feeling you get from combat it is great. Legendaries and uniques are their own thing. After fall of D3 on release they came up with something amazing in Loot2.0 update which instantly made D3 playable and this kind of item power is back in D4. Much like in D3 those power modify how skills work. So if you have something like leap legendary power might cause earthquake after you land, or reset it's cooldown if you do X, or cause ancient % chance to do this again on some other enemy. List goes on. It's great system and it is great here as well. Interesting idea D4 brings is that some dungeons have reward in form of aspect you can enchant your weapon with which are those item powers. So if you need some power to rise your build you can find dungeon that has that power and get it instead of waiting till RNG god gives you reward. Obviously only basic powers can be achieved like that and usually when you do it this way you get worst rolls so even if you have best power you want there is still a chance for you to find item with better roll (and those sometimes can double that power power).
Open world side of the game is also something I can't really decide if it is bad or good. On one hand I like the vastness and the idea that there is plenty of things to smash but on other hand you need to get there and sometimes you just wish you played on D2 and game was linear instead as you never run waiting to get somewhere. Weirdly horse is something you get very late in story for some unknown reason. Imho only time will tell as end game grind will test it. With Diablo 3 adventure mode it was clear they had something interesting and D4 is full realization of that idea and it seems to be good at least for now.
Much like in beta with barb i struggled whole campaign playing on veteran. Died few times too which is a lot considering my arpg history. So definitely game for barb is pretty hard. Don't know about other classes but I heard they got nerfed hard since beta and in beta only barb was hard to play. Definitely a plus for me. Rarely these days you get arpg with some kind of difficulty you can enjoy other than one click fasts and move up yawning. By the end of the game my build was pretty tanky and I had issues with DPS but overall I liked my playtrough.
Presentation:
Easily top tier arpg. duh. Worse looking than Diablo 2 Resurrected though which is something I didn't expect. In terms of just pure presentation not just technology D4 has here an edge simply because of panning camera that can show full glory (or horror) of environment from time to time. Music was typical modern gaming music. I don't really remember much of it aside from theme in one random boss battle in hell. It's "professional" - the best take i can give it. It works when it needs to work and gives omph to scenes in needs to give omph but it is not D2 tier music. Much more ambient and raw with very little interesting melodic arrangements that you can remember. Definitely best parts of game when it comes to presentation are character designs and environment. It's a kind of art I expect D3 to have but it didn't deliver but not only D4 delivered theme graphically but excelled above it. Plenty of dark ruined temples with guts lying around in high resolution glory that make sense instead of being just "artist put it here duh"
Score without endgame:
/
It doesn't smash you completely like D2 when it was released but it is solid piece of arpg. Depending on end game this score might go down or up. But i feel it will probably stay at same score.