The good news is that no matter how you slice it, Diablo Immortal offers a tonne of gameplay without the need to spend any money. The bad news is that the value proposition for any money you do spend feels incredibly low, and if you’re a highly engaged player you’ll butt up against a number of systems designed to slow your progress to a crawl. I’ve largely enjoyed my time with Diablo Immortal to date, but it has seemingly taken great pains to ensure it’s not a game I’m likely to sink huge amounts of time into long-term.
The early going, however, is a heap of fun. I couldn’t help but be sucked in by the breakneck pace established across the first 30 or so levels as I grew in power, ranked up my gear, unlocked new skills and found out more about the latest existential threat to Sanctuary, largely via series mascot Deckard Cain. This forward momentum is helped a great deal by the rhythm of combat, which is quintessential Diablo thanks to a solid array of skills to keep combat interesting, paired with the palpable power of being able to cut through most opposition with ease.
The moment-to-moment gameplay feels great, whether you’re using touch controls (which is what I’ve spent 99% of my time on) or a controller tethered to an iOS or Android device. For both, all your key controls are within easy reach – primary attack, skills, health potions, and your ultimate, and it’s really satisfying being able to aim and move independently. Controllers are definitely a lot clunkier than touch when it comes to navigating the interface, but it’s workable.
On PC, using a keyboard and mouse generally feels good, but the platform has a number of other issues to contend with, and it seems very much like a quick port at the moment (hence the “open beta” tag). There’s no option to adjust resolution, for instance, and I’ve been unable to get a controller working reliably on PC, whether wired or through Bluetooth. If you’re a seasoned keyboard and mouse-based Diablo player, however, it’s still nice being able to play Immortal on a big screen, but I actually really liked the touch controls, so for me, adventuring on iPad was the way to go.
I’ve primarily been playing Necromancer since launch, but have also spent considerable time with Demon Hunter, Barbarian and Crusader over the course of pre-launch review access and various betas (with only Monk and Wizard still on the to do list), and each has fun synergistic gameplay options to explore. I’m definitely a fan of the way skill modifiers have been handled in this iteration of Diablo too. Collecting them as you go – via “inscriptions” on legendary items – means you’ll always have options, but also limitations to work around, thus forcing you to potentially try out different combinations while you wait for the modifiers you particularly want to drop on items.
I’ve shifted up the skills I use and the modifiers I assigned to them a lot during my time since launch. That said, I’ve settled into a strong Corpse Explosion strat now, where I use inscriptions to increase its range and add stacking freeze effects, then combo it with a Dark Curse modifier that makes enemies explode when they die, letting me chain together insane sequences of explosions. Plus, what self respecting Necromancer doesn’t want to make their build about blowing up corpses to create more corpses? Ah, the circle of life. I mean, death.
Short Bursts of Carnage
Diablo Immortal has a story it wants to tell, but the game’s MMO-style backbone and zone-based structure means that there’s some grinding to see it through. After that heady initial rush I hit level gate after level gate, leaving me with some work to do to reach the appropriate power for each new zone. There are a number of activities for farming XP, from bounties (generally “go here and kill X of a particular monster”) through to zone dungeons that can be played over and over again, Elder Rifts (short gauntlets tied to legendary gems), and Challenge Rifts (another brand of short dungeon, but with escalating difficulty). Once I joined the Shadows – part of the overarching PVP system – that also opened up numerous things to do, from taking on contracts (slightly more involved bounties) to raiding the vault of the ruling players on the server – the Immortals.
Every activity is short: bounties, rifts, and dungeons can all be completed in a matter of minutes.
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Every activity is short: bounties, rifts, and dungeons can all be completed in a matter of minutes. There’s even an auto-navigation system to take you to your destination, whether that’s heading to the right area to farm for a bounty, popping over to Charsi the blacksmith in Westmarch to salvage some gear, or finding your way to a dungeon entrance. You can turn it off and run there the old fashioned way, but personally I think it’s great. I’m also a big fan of auto pick-up for gold and (non-legendary) loot, as well as the short, random events that trigger on a regular basis out in the overworld. All these design elements speak to how focused Immortal is on being a game you can carry in your pocket, and hop into for short bursts as time permits.
The MMO side of it is also designed for maximum ease. Sure, it’s simple to get into a four person party with friends, but you can also very quickly join up with random players to run a dungeon together or blast through an Elder Rift. Immortal even goes out of its way to connect you to others – if another player discovers a hidden lair (another type of randomised dungeon) you may get a pop up message asking if you’d like to group up and go through it with them. And if someone else is on a similar bounty to the one you’re running, you may be prompted to do said bounty together.
Diablo Immortal’s world certainly feels very busy thanks to its MMO aspirations, and this is both a good and bad thing. As I mentioned, it’s fantastic being able to group up with others almost instantaneously, and it’s great to be in a city like Westmarch and have it feel like a bustling place, with countless adventurers going about their business. World events can also be fun – if a little absurd. It makes sense to get together a huge group to take down a world boss, for instance, or to have an assembly of Shadows and receive rewards for being there, but at other times the crush of players was completely over the top and left me with a slideshow of what was going on. Or staring at my iPad’s home screen.
The thing I dislike most about Diablo Immortal as an MMO is that it ruins the fantasy of being an elite warrior braving demon-infested wilds in search of monsters to slay and loot to find. It’s a mood killer having so many other people all running around in the same area, and becomes nothing short of comical when the game is trying to deliver, say, some serious storytelling, all while other people are going berko around the NPC you’re talking to – not that the largely throwaway storytelling is much to be protective of.
Diablo Immortal as an MMO ruins the fantasy of being an elite warrior braving demon-infested wilds…
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And then there’s the fact that you’re often competing with a bunch of other players in any given area. I lost count of the number of times I saw an elite pop up on my map, only for it to be felled by another player by the time I got there. This is a constant annoyance when farming mobs for a bounty, but it’s particularly aggravating when you miss out on an XP boost or an ancient (orange) elite, which is a guaranteed legendary drop the first time you encounter one each day. Spawn rates are high enough that the competition is usually a temporary irritation, but the times when a zone I’m farming is quiet tend to be much more fun than when it’s super busy. Or, put another way, I don’t think it’s a good sign that my instinct when seeing another player is to go in the opposite direction and to try and avoid them at all costs.
Stay Awhile and Tune Out
Diablo Immortal’s rendition of Sanctuary is gratifyingly moody and grim, however. The character models aren’t at all detailed, but viewed from up high the excellent art direction really kicks in, and is complemented by superb sound design. Every environment feels like a genuinely distinct place, whether it’s a dark and foreboding cemetery, where you’re wrecking undead and tombstones alike, a scorching desert overrun by beasts and marauding bandits, or a hellish world of lava flows, soaring wraiths and ground made from the bones of the dead.
As alluded to earlier, Diablo Immortal’s story is pretty standard fare, but is serviceable enough as a means to move us along from zone to zone before hitting the end game. I can’t say I was too invested in the major demon antagonist Skarn, or in many of the characters, but given this game is set after Lord of Destruction, there were numerous nods to Diablo II, which I dug.
I also appreciated the fact that the linear story was integrated with many of the activities that are the focus in the end game. The dungeons, for instance, are designed to be run over and over, but they also slot neatly into the main story, helping to complement the aesthetic of a zone as well as providing a counterpoint to its overworld gameplay. They contain some interesting set pieces too, such as rafting down a river fighting off waves of Festishes in Bilefen, taking out an enormous spider limb by limb in Shassar Sea, or being swallowed whole by a giant worm in the Realm of Damnation.
The dungeon bosses, however, are laughably easy unless you’re deliberately punching up in difficulty. They rarely call on you to do much more than get out of the way of telegraphed attacks. For the most part they’re there to drop loot, as are the bosses that pop up in the overworld. Immortal’s PVE combat in general, in fact, is clearly meant to be fun as opposed to challenging; to let you slice and dice your way through hordes of enemies and fell towering monstrosities.
Of course, there are places to test your strength and skill, such as the escalating difficulty of the Challenge Rifts and Path of Blood trials, but these give you little incentive to replay completed challenges that sit at your ideal difficulty level. Instead, you push as far as you can, then have to come back once you’ve raised your combat rating further. PVP also promises stiff competition, but as we’ll get to soon, this is where Diablo Immortal’s can of corpse worms really spills out and all over the floor.
Immortal’s PVE combat… is clearly meant to be fun as opposed to challenging; to let you slice and dice your way through hordes of enemies and fell towering monstrosities.
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The story is fine when it’s a means to an end, but most of the supplemental stories that you’ll come across in the end game are disappointingly banal, and almost always glorified fetch quests. Plus, with a limited number of contracts to take on and NPCs in the overworld to talk to, you’ll come across the same ones again and again. The best attempt at an engaging scenario for me was probably the optional elite quest that tied back into Valla, a headstrong character that was introduced during the main storyline. This was a tale of a demon on the loose, haunting Valla with visions of the tragic events from her past, but even that just felt a bit clunky. The presentation may look great during combat, but the low-poly, low-detail character models don’t do the cutscenes and storytelling any favours.
This was also compounded by frequent issues with in-game audio. Diablo Immortal’s characters and NPCs are fully – sometimes questionably – voiced, but I went through periods where the audio simply didn’t play. Mind you, this was far from the biggest technical issue I encountered. I spent the vast majority of my time playing on iPad (the current model – generation 9) and I found Diablo Immortal aggressively unstable. This may not be a problem across all iOS devices or on Android, and anecdotally my friends who are playing on PC haven’t experienced anything like the number of crashes to desktop that I have, but it’s still unacceptable, particularly when PVP and time-based world events are such a core part of the experience. Getting back in is quick, thankfully, but I’m shocked by how frequently it happens and I haven’t been able to find a solution for it.
A number of more minor issues also reared their ugly heads, from missing animation frames on NPCs and bugged out enemies that I couldn’t interact with, through to the way the auto navigation button often changed its position on-screen, cosying up to my skills. Whoops, just wasted my ultimate when I meant to hit auto navigate!
We’re All System Admins Now
Let’s talk about one of the most crucial aspects of any Diablo game – the way gear works. Diablo Immortal has a pretty convoluted itemisation architecture, but it’s worth outlining as some of its biggest strengths and greatest drawbacks are found within it.
I’ll run through secondary items first because primary items will occupy the bulk of the discussion. Each character has six secondary item slots: amulet, two rings, gloves, belt, and boots, and the way they work will be familiar to seasoned Diablo players. This is where item sets are, and significant perks open up with every two pieces of a set you have equipped. My Necromancer, for instance, has two of the Shepherd's Call to Wolves set pieces, which makes my summons deal 15% more damage. Finding all six pieces of a particular set will be a long road, however, as the first two only drop in Hell 1 difficulty, then two more once you reach Hell 2, and the final two in Hell 4 onwards. Much like Diablo II, secondary items are slotted with stat-boosting gems, and these start out at rank one and can be upgraded by crafting three of a kind into the next rank. Secondary gear itself can also be ranked up using scrap (from salvaging unwanted items) and enigmatic crystals (earned through beating Challenge Rifts), with ranks transferring across to new items as you equip them.
Characters also have six primary item slots: helm, torso, shoulder, legs, weapon, and offhand, and each of these can be equipped with legendary items. Every piece of legendary gear also has a skill modifier, called an inscription, and these are similar in effect to skill runes in Diablo III. Some of them are straight stat changes, such as boosting damage and range on a skill, while others fundamentally alter how they work. If you’re a necromancer, you may decide to turn your army of skeletons into a single skeletal captain that can be ordered to whirlwind at a location, or you may change the stationary Skeletal Mage into a roaming grim reaper. The best part of this system is that as you get better items you can extract these inscriptions and then apply them to the new gear, so you’re not forced to give up a favourite ability as you progress. And then when that item is no longer useful you can extract the underlying inscription – not the one you applied. The more you play, the more inscriptions you have access to and thus, the more ways you can mould your skills to suit your play style.
Diablo Immortal Class Art
Like secondary items, each primary item can also be ranked up to boost its base stats. This is done at blacksmiths using materials from salvaging unwanted items, and means that even if you’re not getting legendary drops your time hasn’t been completely wasted, as even subpar loot is grist for upgrading your gear. As mentioned, the rank is never lost, either – any time you swap in a new item you can port your rank across to it. Each item will also get bonus attributes at certain ranks, with the first one at 6, and these can be re-rolled using reforge stones.
The final – and most contentious – part of primary gear itemisation is the legendary gem system. One can be slotted in each primary item, so six in all, and these can have some seriously powerful effects, such as summoning shadow clones, inflicting agony on critical hits, and preventing fatal damage. They come in three rarities: one star, two star, and five star (although confusingly, five star gems come at different quality levels – two, three, four, and five out of five). These too can be ranked up, upgrading their existing stats and abilities and adding new ones at certain ranks. The fuel for ranking up? Unwanted legendary gems.
Let’s say you have a one star legendary gem you want to rank up. Well, you can go from rank one to two by using one other one star legendary gem. From two to three you’ll need five, from three to four ten, and so on. Two star gems and five star gems provide more power – four and 32 respectively, but have inordinately higher requirements to rank them up. You need 50 gem power just to take a five star legendary gem from rank one to rank two.
No, Money Down!
The system, then, requires tonnes and tonnes of legendary gems in order to get anywhere, but they’re essentially treated as Diablo Immortal’s most precious commodity. And that’s because this is the major component that’s driven by real-world money. In this game you can think of legendary gems as loot boxes that are disguised behind a gameplay facade: Elder Rift runs.
While you can simply buy legendary gems through the player-driven marketplace using Platinum (one of several currencies) – at prohibitive prices for the best ones, and you can craft them with runes, and you can get a handful through systems like the battle pass, the main way to obtain them is through powering up Elder Rifts with crests. Crests come in rare and legendary forms, and you can add up to three for each run. These do have a gameplay impact: the more crests players have put in, the more modifiers – both positive and negative – are applied to the rift. Perhaps your movement speed is increased and your attacks call on chain lightning, but at the same time acid pools slow you down and monsters sometimes explode on death.
You can think of legendary gems as loot boxes that are disguised behind a gameplay facade: Elder Rift runs.
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This keeps things interesting, but the main reason people are running Elder Rifts is because of legendary gems. Rare crests have a low chance to drop a legendary gem at the end of a Rift, whereas legendary crests have a guaranteed drop – with one star being most likely, two star being an outside chance and five star (of any quality) being very unlikely. When I said legendary gems were the most precious commodity, what I was actually talking about was legendary crests, as these are the gateways to legendary gems. Diablo Immortal is circumspect with its access to rare crests for free-to-play players, but when it comes to legendary crests it is miserly to an extreme degree. You can get one from the free battle pass track, for instance, as well as being allowed to buy one from the Hilts trader each month. If you make a small real money investment in the right places as I did, meanwhile, you’ll be able to cobble together a decent set of six one and two star legendary gems for your gear, and rank them up a little, but good luck going any further than that.
While Elder Rifts are quite fun, the difficulty is pitched so low that it’s clear that they’re primarily designed as a small speedbump to negotiate before your next loot box drops. I actually found playing them solo or with one other player the most satisfying, as when you’re in a group of four the Rift is over before you’re really even getting started – mobs and elites alike explode in all directions, their bodies barely hitting the ground before all four fighters resume their headlong sprint to the rewards at the end.
There’s a reason to run Rifts as part of a group even if you don’t have crests, however, and that’s because if other players are using crests everyone will get a small number of Fading Embers at the end. These can then be used to buy runes which in turn can be used to craft legendary gems. (Runes also drop as part of the rewards for running Elder Rifts with your own crests.) So yes, that’s another way to get legendary gems but I can tell you from experience, it’s an unrewarding slog.
Diablo Immortal isn’t just miserly for free-to-play players when it comes to legendary crests, it’s miserly for anyone who only wants to spend a modest amount of money. The “empowered” battle pass (AUD $7.99 / USD $4.99) gives out five legendary gems (one and two star) and two legendary crests across its entire 40 levels (the free track gives out two legendary gems and one legendary crest), the Boon of Plenty (AUD $14.99 / USD $9.99) gives you a handful if you log in consistently, but largely just hands out rares, and even the paid track of Prodigy’s Path (AUD $30.99 / USD $19.99), which has level-based rewards, alternates between giving out one and two at each level threshold.
If you want to make meaningful progress towards ranking up your legendary gems you’re going to need to spend and spend big…
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If you want to have enough legendary crests to be able to make meaningful progress towards ranking up your legendary gems you’re going to need to spend and spend big, and Diablo Immortal has no shortage of ways to do that. After reaching milestones (generally beating a new dungeon), you’ll be notified about a new single purchase bundle that’s now available in the shop. These start out at AUD $1.49 (USD $0.99), then $2.99 (USD $1.99), then $7.99 (USD $4.99) and continue escalating. One of my most recent ones costs AUD $79.99 (USD $49.99)! What will that get me? 20 legendary crests and enough “Eternal Orbs” to not quite buy another 20. Oh, and some regular gems. That doesn’t seem like great value given the insatiable appetite of the legendary gem upgrade system. And those are the “one-time purchase” bundles. Elsewhere in the store are opportunities to spend any amount of money the player wishes, over and over again, and all for increasingly dubious value.
Blizzard has really missed the mark here, and if the game was a bit more generous with legendary crests in general, and then offered better value bundles, I’d be much more inclined to try and make some proper progress towards levelling my legendary gems up. As it is, I’ve almost entirely opted out of it.
Diablo Immortal – Launch Screenshots
Gameplay to Win?
And the real rub when it comes to this system is that a big chunk of Immortal’s end game is built around PVP, and legendary gems add significant power to any build. If you want to compete in the Battlegrounds, Dark Clan fights and so on, the playing field simply isn’t level. Players who have spent hundreds, potentially thousands of dollars will have a significant advantage. Sure, everyone still has to get their items by playing, but even that is skewed because at rank 5 legendary gems increase your magic find stat. This means that anybody with legendary gems at rank 5 or higher will actually get better loot drops, and thus will be able to improve their builds faster than other players. There are also significant enigmatic crystal rewards (used for ranking up secondary items) for placing on the Challenge Rift co-op leaderboards, which again, is easier for players who have spent large sums of money. The system essentially means that succeeding in PVP isn’t just about skill and dedication, but is about having to buy in – and the more the better.
It’s not like there are other ways to outscale people who spend more, either. Diablo Immortal has a number of caps in place to slow or even arrest progress for the most engaged players. Each server, for instance, has a steadily increasing “server paragon level” – basically the recommended max level for players. If you’re at the same paragon level as the server you’ll earn 100% XP, whereas the further underneath it you are, the higher the XP boost you’ll get. (Meaning the game has a pretty serious catch-up mechanic.) Conversely, the higher your level is beyond it, the less XP you’ll earn. Players who have been grinding Diablo Immortal in and out have been so far beyond server paragon that they’re getting as little as 10% of the XP they would otherwise.
Succeeding in PVP isn’t just about skill and dedication, but is about having to buy in – and the more the better.
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Why does that matter? Because gear is gated behind levels. Items that drop in Hell 2 difficulty, for instance, require paragon 30 to equip, which is also the recommended starting level for that difficulty, but if a player’s combat rating is high enough to farm Hell 2 before paragon 30, they’ll earn items they can’t equip. And if the server paragon level is also well below paragon 30, players looking to hit that level to equip their Hell 2 gear and get an edge earn increasingly diminishing returns the further they move beyond server paragon. Without that system in place, those players would simply be able to power through the paragon system and escalating difficulty levels and get ahead that way. Instead, the only real way to be more powerful than other players is through legendary gems.
There are other limitations in place, too. Ranking up your legendary items is also locked behind level – you have to hit paragon 20 to rank up to 7, for instance, and paragon 30 to rank up to 8. As mentioned, set items are gathered across multiple Hell difficulties too, and with the server paragon setting the pace for all players, it takes a lot of work to get an edge through effort.
These caps won’t greatly impact most players, but it does mean that there’s less incentive to play a lot if you’re heavily invested, which is not at all how Diablo games have worked historically, and I don’t think it’s a change for the better. I’m not in that camp – I still have levels to gain and gear to rank up further – but even so, I’m definitely feeling my progression slow. Better item drops are few and far between, I’ve hit the end of the battle pass so am now only earning hilts and scrap (plus a good XP bump with each level), I have miles to go before I can upgrade any of my legendary gems further, and in general, my progress is feeling extremely incremental. Once my combat rating, which determines how much damage I do and take, is a little closer to the recommended level for Hell 2 difficulty I’ll probably feel more motivated again, as a whole new tier of gear will become available, but for now, it’s very slow going watching that number inch ever higher, especially as Hell 1 is now way too easy, so I’m really craving more of a challenge.
Diablo Immortal Key Art
There are numerous other systems to make progress along, but they’re all similarly incremental. The Legacy of the Horadrim, for instance, sees you steadily unlock magical vessels that can then be powered up to add to your character’s base stats. This is done by earning Aspirant’s Keys (just one of so very many currencies and collectables) and using them to unlock chests to get precious stones to feed into the aforementioned vessels. If you’re lost, don’t worry: it’s needlessly complicated and not that exciting.
The Demonic Portal in Westmarch, meanwhile, offers up eight-player raids and completing these will help you level up your Helliquary (just go with it), boosting your combat rating and unlocking perks for Challenge Rifts.
Ranking up as a Shadow impacts your power too. What’s a Shadow? Well, the mythology that Diablo Immortal’s broader game is built around centres on a group of warriors known as the Immortals, who are charged with ensuring Sanctuary doesn’t fall to the demons, monsters and, erm, ne’er-do-wells. To ensure they’re up to the task, a rival group, known as the Shadows, exists to test them and look for weaknesses. This vying between the two groups is meant to be at the heart of Diablo Immortal’s PVP, although in actuality, most of the time it’s a battle to be among the top Shadow Dark Clans (sub-guilds), as that competition determines who will earn the right to try and overthrow the current Immortals and take the crown for themselves.
In any case, it’s easy enough to become a Shadow (although having to jump through the same hoops every time new Immortals are crowned is going to be a bore), and once you do, there are a host of activities to take part in, many of which will earn you Marks (status points, basically) and help you level up your Shadow ranking, which increases both your damage and defence.
It’s a lot to wrap your head around. Only, it’s also not, as so many of the game’s activities and events are effectively items on a checklist to tick off daily or weekly in order to keep your character slowly ticking along. Fun combat underpins all the PVE gameplay, but even so, some of those items, like Shadow contracts, are a bit of a chore, and I’ve certainly gone through periods in which I was playing out of a sense of obligation to make progress to hit the next important milestone, rather than out of a drive to play for fun.
Verdict
There’s so much to like about Diablo Immortal that it really pains me to see it so close and yet so far from being a game I can heartily recommend. As a casual, purely free-to-play experience it offers a lot to do, with its empowering ARPG combat and interesting skill system, whereas for those that want to be competitive in PVP it quickly becomes restrictive, punitive, and money-grubbing. And for everyone in between? It just doesn’t offer good value for money spent. If the Empowered Battle Pass and Boon of Plenty offered more, I could definitely see myself renewing them each season and steadily working my way through the many difficulty levels as I ascend Immortal’s 600 paragon levels, and gradually – oh so gradually – ranking up my legendary gems. Instead, that dream is so far out of reach that it’s not feasible, and the further in I get the less the rewards offered by those paid services are actually likely to be meaningful. I’m still going to keep playing Diablo Immortal, but without overhauls to the monetisation and the many restrictions, it’s going to be a dip in, dip out game, as opposed to a world I want to live in.