Diablo Immortal Review: Blizzard returns to hell

The arrival of Diablo Immortal on the Android and iOS stores, which took place more than a month ago, generated a jolt worthy of an earthquake, and within a few days it raised an unprecedented fuss due to the Diablo Immortal microtransactions that punctuate the experience, and which seem to become more invasive with the continuation of the adventure around Sanctuarium. It is precisely for this reason that we have decided to wait longer than necessary to express an opinion on the game and evaluate how much the system of microtransactions is incisive compared to everything around it. We tell you about it in our review.

Hell of Diablo on smartphone

Despite being a spin-off for the mobile market, Diablo Immortal is not simply set in the universe of the iconic Blizzard series: the events narrated in the game take place in the time between the end of the second chapter and the beginning of the third.

This means that some of the places explored and the NPCs encountered are already known to the most hardcore fans of the brand, such as the old Deckard Cain that will guide us in the fight a Skarn, the new threat from the underworld who fills the role of the villain on duty. The narrative premise is not the most exciting: also thanks to the scarce detail of models and animations during the dialogues and the topical moments of the plot, unfortunately the story was not able to convince us as we would have hoped.

However, the beating heart of Diablo Immortal is his gameplay, which is largely inherited from the third chapter. The six selectable classes they are very similar to those seen in Diablo 3 and, with some minor differences, they all work very well and offer a decent variety in terms of skills (this is how the skills in Diablo Immortal work) and attacks. From the point of view of playability, Diablo Immortal is a product that is almost free of big stumbles, especially when played on touch screens. The development team has succeeded in a feat that is not at all obvious, namely that of packaging a product with a highly enjoyable control system in portable mode even without the aid of external peripherals. Regardless of the class used, Blizzard free to play plays so well with the touch interface that you don’t feel the need to connect a controller to your tablet or smartphone: whether it’s character movement, inventory management or of skill execution, everything is perfectly responsive and manageable with a touch.

We also really appreciated the way the inventory, which makes the transition to stronger pieces of equipment intuitive and immediate. Diablo Immortal is also designed to be an entry point into the series for casual users: in this regard, the strong social component since Immortal is in effect an MMO whose explorable areas are populated by other players with whom you can team up to take down a world boss, complete an event or access one of the dungeons that appear randomly on the scene.

Towards immortality

The progression system of Diablo Immortal is a cross and a delight of Blizzard production, since it alternates perfectly successful aspects with others that make anyone turn up their noses to start playing with the intention of investing large amounts of time.

As already reiterated in the preview, in its early stages Diablo Immortal runs smoothly as oil, and allows the protagonist to acquire more and more power thanks to the equipment characterized by increasing statistics. This trend, however, undergoes one violent setback between level 40 and level 50, as the accumulation of experience starts to slow down (by the way, here’s how to quickly reach level 60 in Diablo Immortal) and it becomes increasingly difficult to find loot worth wearing.

However, there is a gameplay mechanic related to the legendary armament that we enjoyed a lot and we are happy to know that it will also be repeated in the fourth chapter. We refer to the possibility of destroy legendary pieces to extract perks and transfer them to other equipment. In the case of the Necromancer, for example, we were able to take advantage of this system to alter the shape of the summons and make sure that, regardless of the equipped pieces, to accompany us were enormous creatures with great offensive power, far superior to that of the minute versions. standard.

Another system that we have found virtuous is that linked to Paragon levelsthat is the mechanism through which it is possible to strengthen beyond the level cap, set at 60. Once this threshold is touched, the higher difficulties are unlocked, you start to get the pieces of the sets and you access a further upgrade screen, whose skill points are always linked to the accumulation of experience.

And it is precisely in the way in which XP is obtained that the secret of the Diablo Immortal endgame: in order to avoid that overly active players create a difference in height with other less assiduous participants, the developers have seen fit to create a mechanism that modifies the percentage of experience obtained based on the Paragon level. Basically, those who play less and are further behind will be able to progress much faster than those who spend hours and hours on the servers and belong to the group of users with a higher degree.

The endgame of Diablo Immortal, however, is not made up of only Paragon levels and is largely made up of both raid powerful enemies such as Skarn and Vitaath (introduced just a few days ago, with the Season 2 of Diablo Immortal) and from the eternal conflict between the factions of the Shadows and the Immortals.

The way in which these groups are managed and the system through which it is possible to become part of them are elements of great charm which, however, ends up weakening due to reasons that we will go into further on and which, as you can easily guess , are connected to the monetization system. If it is possible to enter the Shadows both with an invitation and thanks to the lottery that is held daily, being able to be part of the Immortals requires a particularly strong character and a clan capable of adequately supporting him, both factors to which only a very small slice of the players of Diablo Immortal can aspire. In our experience, we have joined two different ones Cycles – periods after which everyone is stripped of their place in a faction – of Shadows and we enjoyed robbing the Immortals of their treasures, as well as completing a series of daily quests exclusive to party members.

Self the Immortals are unapproachable to ordinary playerswe must say that belonging to the Shadows seemed to us sufficiently stimulating both because it does not require much effort, and because it provides a series of passive bonuses that contribute to making the character stronger.

Is Diablo Immortal pay to win?

Let us now turn to the age-old question of microtransactions, which deserves an in-depth study to understand its real weight on the gaming economy. It should be noted that what we are talking about is the ‘free to play’ user experience, i.e. those who have downloaded the game for free and who have avoided any form of microtransaction: Put simply, we didn’t spend a dime from start to finish.

A little further above, we have deliberately omitted a detail in the examination of the progression system: to determine the growth of the parameters of our hero and to significantly increase the damage output is not so much the equipment, but the legendary gems that can be set in some pieces. The microtransactions of Diablo Immortal revolve precisely around this element, since the legendary gems not only represent a rarity, but the few methods to earn them do not guarantee in any way the obtaining of their most precious versions.

On balance, Blizzard has introduced a loot box system disguised as a game mode which takes the name of Varchi Antichi. We are talking about procedural dungeons – not particularly complex to complete – whose rewards are assigned based on the consumables sacrificed at the start of the activity.

These ‘tokens’ are available in free (one per day) and premium form: only with the latter, however, you can get a gem of random value, since the daily ones do nothing but give resources to accumulate in enormous quantities to generate a legendary gem. Seen the disproportionate cost of these tokensyou can immediately understand how complex it is to enhance a character without putting your hand to the credit card or without spending months upon months in the ‘common’ gates.

As much as it is right to turn up one’s nose at the way in which the loot boxes have been implemented, it is undeniable that in some respects the fuss raised on the subject is excessive. In any free to play title it is possible, moreover, to pay to speed up progress. We must also consider another factor that makes Diablo Immortal profoundly different from the multitude of free to play that invades the mobile market: you can download the game and complete the entire campaign with more than a few extra activities without paying or grinding for hours on end. The only modes that are closed to players who do not want to give in to the in-app purchase system are the PvP component – completely marginal as well as limited to well-defined time slots – and the Immortals faction.

Diablo Immortal on PC

By the developers’ own admission, Diablo Immortal is a title created specifically for the mobile market, but Blizzard has also released a PC version of the game in Open Beta.

Unfortunately, at the moment this edition presents important qualitative fluctuations and shows the side a numerous shortcomings. Sure, take advantage of the cross-save and going from mobile to PC seamlessly is incredibly pleasant and we hope that more and more software houses decide to implement solutions of this type.

The desk version however, it is not that beautiful to look at and, despite the maximum graphic detail, we were not faced with the polygonal models and high-definition textures proclaimed by Blizzard in the weeks leading up to the release. As of today, the Diablo Immortal Open Beta on PC it’s a pretty lazy port of the mobile version which suffers from some annoying bugs, the absence of a modified interface to better support mouse and keyboard or controllers, a greater number of graphics settings and the possibility of scaling the size of the UI to be able to adapt it to any type of screen . Even more than a month after its release, therefore, there is still some work to be done. To conclude, we would like to fully praise the design of Diablo Immortal: from enemies to armor (partially recycled), passing through the settings that are the background to the slaughter of demons, everything is done very well, and is much closer to the vivid and colorful style of Diablo 3 than to the darker one of the second chapter.