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Diablo Immortal Preview: Diabl-MMO

Thank goodness we have phones.

It’s been four years now since the birth of one of gaming’s most infamous memes. Wyatt Cheng, on stage at Blizzcon 2018, was in a Q&A fresh off the back of the announcement of Diablo Immortal. Cheng’s assertion that the game was going to be mobile only was met with boos from the crowd; he then uttered those famous words: “do you guys not have phones?”

A lot has changed in those intervening years but now Diablo Immortal is finally here, and not just on mobile any longer. Yes, the latest entry in one of the stalwarts of the ARPG genre is coming both to PC and mobile devices, and we were lucky enough to get some hands-on early access to see how this new Diablo is shaping up.

Diablo Immortal is set between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3. Players arrive in the town of Wortham and meet an old familiar face, who eventually tasks them with collecting and destroying the shards of the Worldstone released at the climax of Diablo 2’s campaign.

I must admit that booting into the game on my iPhone 13 Pro felt strange for some reason (and we weren’t provided with the option of playing on PC, I might add). I was met with trepidation that I couldn’t quite put my finger on (pun intended). Perhaps it was the stigma around games on mobile phones – so often lootbox-filled flip factories that developers pump out and forget about. It doesn’t help that seemingly every ad for a mobile focussed game is often misleading and sometimes entirely unrepresentative of the actual gameplay.

Don’t get me wrong: great games exist on phones, but Blizzard was always launching into a hard market given the perception of the segment as a whole. While seemingly incredulous in 2018, gaming has come along way since then and the reality is that Diablo Immortal looks — and more importantly, plays — very good.

The on-screen mobile controls aren’t the easiest thing to use but that’s the unfortunate reality of the medium. Even still, Immortal is infinitely more playable than the movement clunkfest that is Diablo 2 — recent remaster included — though it lacks the fluidity and finesse present in the much-maligned (and better) Diablo 3.

Abilities and their cooldowns are accessed through on-screen buttons – that aren’t even a little reminiscent of classic Diablo fare – and aimed by dragging your thumb around. This brings up a MOBA-like cast indicator that lets you make sure you’re hitting just who you want to.

The game handles basic attacks in a much nicer fashion, targeting the closes enemies in front of you and providing auto aim for those ranged classes like the Demon Hunter and the Wizard. While relatively effective, it all feels a bit sluggish, though Blizzard have done a good job working within the confines of the mobile environment.

Phone control issues aside, modern day phones are big and playing for any length of time without a controller became borderline RSI-inducing. I spent a good chunk of my Immortal time using my Backbone, and I’d highly recommend some controller solution if you’re intending to pump a lot of mobile hours into the game.

In the first few moments it becomes crystal clear just what this latest Diablo is intended to be. Gone are set in stone characters, with only a choice of gender to differentiate them. Now characters offer a variety of customization options to get them looking just how you want them.

It won’t be long after you dive in that you’ll see your first other player running around too, and it’s only a short hop into the campaign that introduces you to your first group dungeon. Gone are the days of organising lobbies in general chat to farm rifts or the like, now the game will do it for you – finding some peppy randoms to plough through them with you.

In case it’s not clear already, Immortal is not just an ARPG – it’s an MMOARPG. Gone is that feeling of taking on the forces of evil alone, instead you’ll see others just like you as they wheedle their way around along the same quest lines. It feels like we’ve lost something there, and I hope this isn’t a path that the eventual release of Diablo 4 treads too.

Packed with loot boxes, a battle pass (of course) and all manner of modern gaming tropes, it’s clear that this will be yet another instance of Games as a Service. It feels like you can’t launch a AAA game in 2022 without GaaS elements, and so here it is within Diablo Immortal too. It remains to be seen just how much they impact gameplay, though Blizzard swears black and blue that it won’t.

In spite of all of that, the game is fun. Very fun, in fact, and it’s absolutely a game I’ll dive into when it launches in a few days. The voice acting is top notch, the story is compelling enough and the gameplay is great, if hindered by the need for phone accessibility. Most importantly, it’s free, so why not wade into battle against the forces of evil? I’ll see you out there.

Diablo Immortal will soon be available on Windows PC, iOS and Android devices.

Diablo Immortal

2 June 2022
PC iOS Android
 

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About the author

Hamish Lindsay

Avid reader and general geek, justifying the time I spend playing games by writing about them. I try not to discriminate by genre, but I remember story more than gameplay. I’ve been playing League for longer than Akali and I’m still Silver. Fallout 3 and MGS3 may be the pinnacle of gaming.