Diablo Immortal

Diablo Immortal potentially has one of the worst game announcements I have ever experienced. Fans like me were hoping to see the next chapter in the storied Diablo PC franchise and instead got a mobile game. That said while I was disappointed… I remember talking on Twitter about how I was interested in a phone-based Diablo game. The app stores are chock full of Diablo clones, some of which are actually really good. The thing is… none of them really FEEL like Diablo and I hoped that Immortal would package up the gameplay that I really enjoyed on Diablo 3 into a handheld format. Then all of the bullshit happened over the last two years with Blizzard and it made me significantly less interested in playing any of their games. In fact, I had not touched anything Blizzard-related since April of 2021 until yesterday when I gave Diablo Immortal a spin because I figured at some point I would want to talk about it based on what I had been reading.

If you want my 500 ft view of the game… it looks like Diablo and sounds like Diablo, but does not FEEL like Diablo. There is just something missing about the way the game functions that pushes it into this uncanny valley of not really feeling like the game I was looking for. It is little things like breaking objects… if they are breakable at all… doesn’t really do anything. I’ve been smashing barrels for fun and profit since Diablo 1, and while there are a handful of breakables early in the game… there seem to be way more vases and jars that are untouchable. That is by no means a fatal flaw, but just indicative of the sort of thing that I am talking about here. Something just feels off about the game and I will dive a bit further into that.

At a core level, Diablo for me is about building resources, spending resources, and the interplay of abilities. Diablo Immortal instead is a game about pressing buttons whenever they come off cooldown, which is ultimately the problem with every mobile phone Diablo clone I have experienced. You could have told me that Raziel or Lineage was having a cross-over event with Diablo, and I would have believed you. Essentially Diablo Immortal feels at a fundamental level like every ARPG I have played on a phone. There is something missing in the interplay of the abilities that makes it feel like I am just whacking buttons when they come off cooldown without a larger goal in mind.

The other aspect that makes it feel like every other ARPG on the phone market is the inclusion of ultimate. There is a meter that is slowly building over time through you taking actions, that ultimately unlocks an ultimate ability. When this ability is active you essentially shift into all powerful god mode which allows you to completely decimate any encounter. However, the end result of this is that you feel weak and useless any time the ultimate is not active, making it feel like you need to gain power in order to compete with this borrowed power system. Based on my brief research, there are apparently gems that you can slot that will build this ultimate bar faster allowing you to have this “borrowed power” up more often and burn through things more quickly. To be fair, Diablo has always had borrowed power in the form of the shrines, but I specifically call out ultimate only because they seem to be bog standard for all phone ARPGs and not something I have traditionally associated with Diablo in the past.

Then there is the monetization. Upon clearing the first dungeon and taking down King Leoric yet again in a Diablo game… I unlocked the Mad King’s Breach Trove. This wasn’t something I got as a loot reward but instead something that I can now purchase on the in-game store for only 99 cents. For that low price, you get one legendary crest, two basic crests, six gems, and 60 eternal orbs. It seems like the “crests” are this game’s “gacha” currency and allow you a chance at pulling legendary gems. The orbs are the currency for purchasing more of these crests or the various cosmetic items available in the game store. However when I looked through the store there was nothing that you could actually purchase for 60 orbs, and instead, you would need to add another 60 to that in order to get to the price for the cheapest item… a single legendary crest for 120 orbs.

This sort of thing is what is referred to as “predatory monetization” and I get that it exists in so many forms now. However, the fact that you get an amount of currency in one of their “cheap” packs that they are telling you is a phenomenal deal… but that is not capable of purchasing ANYTHING in the store by itself feels real bad. All cash shops are notorious for doing the thing where the amounts of currency that you can purchase never quite exactly map to anything you can buy in the store so you either have an amount left over or are just short. That sucks too, but this is a case where you are given an amount as part of a bundle and there is absolutely nothing that I could see in the shop that you could actually spend it on. The above video is one that keeps getting referenced over and over by various talking heads discussing this game, and if anything they say is true… it would cost tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy your way to a completely maxed out character.

For a very long time, Blizzard games have been riding a line when it comes to monetization. While lots of folks complained about Overwatch loot boxes or Hearthstone card packs, I thought those were mostly fine. Overwatch gave you nothing but cosmetics and Hearthstone more or less modeled the same sort of thing I was used to in purchasing card packs for Magic the Gathering. This however feels like another significant line has been crossed, and in doing so… it takes Blizzard into a whole new category of a games company. Genshin Impact is a DEEPLY predatory game when it comes to monetization, and if there is any truth to the rumors about what the endgame of Diablo Immortal looks like… then Genshin actually seems generous.

If you are enjoying Diablo Immortal however then by all means awesome. The combination of it mostly just feeling like every other phone ARPG I have played combined with the aggressive monetization ended up being a massive turn-off for me. I’ve tried both the Mobile client and the PC client and they feel fine enough. Both mobile and PC feel much better with a controller than they do with touch or keyboard/mouse. Touch screen interfaces still largely feel like garbage to me so I am not going to hold that against this specific game when ALL touch screen games feel like trash to me personally. If you are grabbing it for your phone prepare to have about 2.6 GB of free space all told once the many downloads finish. Other than gameplay problems, I still do not feel great touching anything Blizzard-related right now so long as Kotick is still in power. I am hoping that the Microsoft purchase goes through and that sweeping changes are made within the company.

Instead of playing Diablo Immortal from the bed as I had originally planned on doing, I decided to use Steam remote play and give Torchlight III another shot. I have to say I kinda dig the ghost captain class so far though I did not make it terribly far before sleep claimed me. I really need to do the whole steam remote play thing far more often because with my phone and the Gamesir controller it was a phenomenal experience. I need to probably sift through my game library and look for more similar controllers/bed-friendly titles. All of this said I really do hope you are enjoying the launch of Diablo Immortal. It was not for me but that does not mean it is not a game you are going to be interested in.