The announcement of Diablo Immortal annoyed many fans of the franchise who thought that a mobile version of their beloved game would be at the expense of a more traditional Diablo gaming experience. After a short time with the game before its release on June 2 (although today the game has been released early in some regions), I found two things that are true. The first is that Blizzard has created a game that admirably captures the look and feel of a traditional Diablo game. The second is that Immortal is also a game designed to make the most of your players.
From the two hours I played, the map is expansive with many different areas closed by level requirements and many places within these areas where you can deal with all the traps that kill demons your heart desires. After an initial incorporation tutorial, you are given the option to have the game run automatically from goal to goal, or you can run over an area that kills random demons or acquires random loot.
“Look, the beautiful ones.” Image: Blizzard Entertainment
I liked the auto-run feature. Diablo Immortal seems designed with dating games in mind, so I appreciated the possibility of getting to the meat of the game without the cartilage of time-wasting travel. And when I had time to sit in the game for a longer period of time, my exploration was rewarded with a chance encounter with a challenging world leader.
Combat also has the same complexity as Diablo prime, with classes with multiple skills that you can activate at different levels of size and impact. I played Croatian, a melee class with both physical and magical abilities, and I liked to hit enemies with my mace or blind them with sacred light. There is also a final ability that you can use to increase extra power similar to the final abilities in Overwatch. I’m not sure what the criteria are for triggering a last one, whether it’s closed or built based on the number of enemies killed, but it’s nice to have it when a world leader needs a beating.
Image: Blizzard Entertainment
Diablo Immortal initially won me over with its character customization. Being a mobile game, and a Diablo, I thought your avatar was immutable – what you saw was what you got. But in an interview with lead game designer Joe Grubb, I learned that offering customization options was something that developers were very passionate about.
“There’s a complete character customization of everything you can imagine,” Grubb said. “You can change your hairstyle, hair color, skin color, eyes, tattoos, the color of your tattoos. If you want to get in and change your facial structure, it’s all in Immortal, so we’re excited to get everyone involved and create the expression for the characters you want to be. “
It’s not Black Desert Online in terms of the sheer number of options, but being able to tailor my avatar to my specific (and demanding) specifications is pretty good for a mobile game, especially after my bad experience with the Witch Doctor racist pie in Devil III.
Diablo Immortal crusader. Image: Blizzard Entertainment
I still don’t have much to say about the story of Immortal Diablo. There wasn’t enough time to get much beyond “Don’t let the bad guys get a piece of the magic power crystal,” as well as Inuyasha’s main plot without all the unresolved sexual tension and the journey into the weather.
While Immortal is a perfectly reduced rendering of PC Diablo, I occasionally detect the sour smell of “this is a mobile game designed to keep me on a treadmill for as long as possible.”
As a general rule, I’m not against mobile gaming. I also understand that games have to make money so that the people who created them can continue to survive because the executives who actually make the profits from the $ 1 billion mobile games are happy enough with their massive profits to allow developers the privilege. of earning a meager salary. I understand that. Leaving cash for items and cosmetics is a standard operating procedure in mobile games and beyond, so when I play a game where I expect these features, it is unheard of.
But while Immortal is a mobile game, it is still Diablo, a game associated with a discreet set of rules and expectations that are not yet associated with the rules and expectations of a mobile game. So it makes me feel so bad that a Diablo game sends notifications to my phone reminding me to play with the hope of spending a dollar or two and that when I press a menu button I can show a game inside the game. store that allows me to pay to upgrade a dungeon to get more shine out of it. I don’t think it would matter so much that this was a completely new Blizzard property, like that new Warcraft mobile game. But that feels like your best friend you lost contact with suddenly hit you on Facebook to ask if you want to buy some leggings.
Also, I’m very happy that there is now a cross-progression PC option because playing with a phone is not that. I have a Samsung A21 and the game is soft as butter, but it’s just not comfortable playing with a phone. Clicking on the dialog or scrolling through the menus is fine, but I need a one-touch touch button to fight back. It’s a ingrained physical thing that feels badly emulated with touch controls. I can also feel my screen heat up to the point of worry, so I’m glad Blizzard sent me a Razer Kishi phone control peripheral that makes what was intolerable finally acceptable to my senses. .
I still have a lot of game to discover. There are social features like clans and something called Cycle of Strife, as well as (hopefully) a character progression system that I haven’t unlocked yet. Since I’m able to get inside Immortal, I hope that these undiscovered features are interesting and well-developed enough to counteract the mercenary fact of the game’s existence. So yeah, fans were right to worry, but I’ll need more time to see if those concerns are enough to make up for Diablo’s novelty in a smartphone.