Been playing Diablo since 2001, just beat Vessel of Hatred - Wtf was this expansion

Although a lot of people like to rip on D4, I actually found the campaign to be super compelling and nearly as good as D2 (vastly better than D3 for sure).

But yesterday I finally got around to beating Vessel of Hatred and I am just confused.

The franchise has so much lore and cool stuff to draw from and yet they make a central focus of the story this ... Ah Bulan guy who I have never heard of at all previously

Some of the other stuff was cool, I won't repeat here out of respect for spoilers, but it feels like a huge drop-off in writing quality from both D2 LoD and D3 RoS. Vessel of Hatred had almost no tension; a lot of suffering, but the sense of tension was at a minimal. It didn't make me care about what was going on at all. Conversely, the base campaign of D4 had me rooting for Donan hardcore

It also took the D4 overall campaign story from a solid A+ for me and has dragged it down to maybe a B-. This was the first expansion I felt was such a slog to play through I almost didn't beat it. Was actually worse than D2 A3 by miles