Diablo Immortal Is Pretty Fun, It Turns Out

In the wake of, uh, this entire week so far, I'm not surprised this topic hasn't come up in the forums yet. However, I did want to put something out there, because I happen to be enjoying this game despite its flaws. For reference, I'm playing the PC (technically in beta) version using a mouse and keyboard. Here's a bulleted list of some of my thoughts:

Positive

• The gameplay loop is authentically Diablo, which exceeded my expectations.
• It didn't waste much time getting to the Adventure Mode-style stuff that made postgame Diablo 3 so much fun.
• It's fun seeing other players populate the world. I've inadvertently traveled with a small group, and we organically went our separate ways at some point.
• Necromancer + corpse explosion = good time for ALLTheDinos.

Negative

• It's very clearly a beta. The point of interaction is occasionally nowhere near where I think it is, to the point I got stuck in a dungeon because something was up with the passageway. Some real weird movement and hitching with my character during combat has also almost gotten me killed several times.
• While I haven't found as obtrusive as I was warned it would be in reviews, the microtransactions are undoubtedly predatory towards a certain subset of players. I have a friend who would love to play but can't because she knows it would be trouble. That's a suckass way to design a game!
• No Witch Doctor :(

I'm interested in hearing what other people think of it. Jeff Gerstmann was saying it kind of made him just want to play Diablo 3, which I totally get.

If only I weren't disgusted with Activision Blizzard.

@facelessvixen: Yeah, I should have added that to the "negative" column. It's certainly incentivized me to spend exactly zero dollars on the game (knowing full well they don't care about an individual person's financial decisions). I avoided the Diablo 2 Remaster altogether because I couldn't even stomach seeing the Blizzard logo last fall. Yours is still a very valid reason to avoid the game, in my opinion.

I've been really enjoying Diablo Immortal, both on phone and PC. I pretty much agree with everything in the OP. I'm at level 37 or something (I think), haven't spend a dime, and I'm still having fun.

That said, I'm not really an expert in "endgame Diablo." All I did in D3 was get a handful of characters up to the max level and invested some paragon points. So I don't know if that part of the game will disappoint fans or not. But so far it's everything I, personally, was hoping it would be.

I like it as well, and I hate myself a little since, you know, Activision. Only spent $6 and don’t see myself spending too much more a month. I just like seeing some loot drop. I don’t need to be competing in leader boards or anything.

I live in Belgium. Not a lot of pros on this side of the pond.

I haven't played Diablo Immortal, but they say it's off to a terrible start

Dutch/Belgium laws are doing me a favor on this one.

I was listening to Triple Click. They said they didn't like Diablo Immortal, then proceeded to list every single thing that makes Diablo a Diablo game as the reasons they didn't like it, but they liked the other Diablos. It made me go, "So Diablo Immortal is a Diablo game and you're upset that it's a Diablo game?" Glad to hear another take that is, "Yes, this is a Diablo game."

@ginormous76: I actually really like the argument they were making: that Diablo Immortal is an example of a game that gets worse the more its mechanics are exposed and intensified. It’s such a streamlined version of Diablo that it lays bare how the game sucks up your time and manipulates you.

I haven't played this, and likely never will, but I feel like I keep running into discussions about how much people hate this game. It's apparently now the lowest rated game ever on Metacritic, and I keep wondering how much of that is due to the game actually being terrible and how much of it is due to a desire to continue dunking on Activision-Blizzard, or to people who haven't run into what is fairly common mobile game design being lured into that environment by the Diablo name.

Sucks on a PC with gamepad, the gamepad controls are terrible. It's actually great with the touchscreen, but it's so small on my phone I can barely make anything out.

I hear the endgame is where you will have to spend upwards to 100,000 to max out a character etc. I could see someone reporting this game to congress and we get a lot more legislation on f2p games. (honestly we probably need it, there is no moral way to justify preying on compulsive gamblers and compulsive children).

it's also apparently banned in a couple countries because of it's monetization.

@darkholmme: That's literally every Diablo. If DI is the game that made them realize this, they're very slow.

I got to level 40 or so and bounced, wasn't having much fun. I like Diablo 3 just fine but those same combat mechanics and assets shoved into a mobile game a decade later is just not something I am going to put any serious time into, even if it didn't take 6 figures to max out your character.

I guess it got me to play PoE again?

Got a new iPhone a while back and decided I may as well take advantage of the Apple Arcade trial...though I haven't even touched Fantasian (the game I primarily was interested in) because I also figured, for GotY purposes, I should see what Immortal is all about. Turns out, having never played a Diablo before, I should've never balked at spending $20-$30 on Diablo III on PS4 whenever it was on sale! These games seem to spool out pointless, pronoun heavy dialogue, garbage loot and easily surmountable challenges at such a pave the concept of time ceases to have meaning.

If I had to wager, I've probably put about 15-20 hours into this game in just a matter of days, I'm level 38 Crusader and love the little loop of AoE, drop a couple debuff and damage pads, then ride my big horse around and drag a half dozen demons into the fray. It's absolutely mindless action paired with admirable production values and absolutely no challenge to the point the game sometimes may as well be described as a clicker rather than an action RPG.

That being said, I find the economy of this game absolutely inscrutable. It gives me the worst of the worst Destiny 2 vibes, and at level 38 I feel like I'm coming quite close to a point where the game either becomes something I take a graduate course on or find a convenient moment to put on my big boy pants and cut my losses before the hooks sink too deep. For what it's worth, I think all of this stuff is far too arcane for me to ever want to put money into it, which is nice. If I'd have gotten in earlier I'm sure I'd have given Blizzard the same "thanks for such a fun way to kill some time and watch the numbers go up!" I gave Genshin Impact last year via a one-time Battle Pass purchase but fortunately the curtain's been lifted on how silly that would be so I'll let the whales swallow the plankton here.

All that to say, I wouldn't be surprised if much in the same way I've played the hell out of this game over the weekend and find myself oddly drawn back to it while already doing other things I enjoy...if by this time next week the game were uninstalled from my phone and I were happily dodge rolling my way through Diablo III. But setting all of the monetization/in-game economy stuff aside, Diablo Immortal is a pretty impressive accomplishment for a phone game. Other than that weird feeling of your thumbs often obscuring the action you're trying to react to and not having the tactile response of your key presses, it might as well be a Real Game™ and the discourse surrounding it doesn't always allow for expressing that.