The truth about Diablo Immortal is that it is a Diablo game for people who choose all the M & Ms from the trail mix. Built around the dopamine that comes from devil’s piñatas for robbery, it’s carefully designed to give you satisfaction every 30 seconds – and then, if that’s not enough anymore, you’ll pay for it. For Diablo Immortal and games like it, the fun part of the game is the money extraction device (opens in new tab).
Diablo Immortal first started as a mobile game, and the PC beta made no effort to hide it. Big buttons, almost no graphics options, a very magnified camera on your character, and a blank level. Despite all that, it plays like Diablo wants it to. You click or WASD through sprawling levels and poke demons until they pop into loot. Then you do that over and over again while collecting weapon and armor upgrades.
I play as a Wizard and a Necromancer whose echo class is already available in Diablo 3. Wizards can channel Frost beams and energy beams and Necromancers can send undead minions out into the fray as they set dead corpses like bombs. Eternal replaces mana with ability cooldowns, which simplifies things a little. It’s still satisfying to blast through hordes of demons in the same way as in other Diablo games. There’s even some neat spell interaction here: Wizards can plop down ice crystals that cause any channeled beams to be sent to reflect in the direction of nearby enemies.
It’s interesting in a game that focuses heavily on MMO-like cooperation: Other players pass by as you complete quests in the open world, and each dungeon can be played with other people. You are rewarded for your cooperation and quickly clean the prison with extra robberies. I’m nowhere near seeing endgame dungeons, but I can see a version of this game where people have to work together and play abilities to defeat tough monsters.
But now, the Diablo Immortal multiplier dungeon is usually about a group of players you collide with a group of demons and clear gold afterwards. Everyone is running and dungeon in the same way to fight a very slow leveling speed once you reach level 35 — which, to me, looks like a soft cover directing you to engage in daily battle pass activities and so on. The game funnels everyone into a desire to get to the max level to start a slog into the real game: gem grinding.
Robbery box with another name …
This Diablo game revolves around gems, small crystals that give special gear perks, such as turning a filled spell into a quick one or giving it a lifesteal. On paper, it sounds like a normal Diablo upgrade path. The goal of this loot based collecting game is to equip yourself from head to toe with the best little knickknacks you can get. But Diablo Immortal has been designed around grinding for gems to the point that it’s hard not to see how this game wants you to spend either a lot of time or a lot of money.
Since Diablo Immortal was launched, people have opted for a monetization scheme, and it looks bad (opens in new tab). Elder Rifts is actually a robbery box. They are randomized levels filled with enemies who may or may not drop the rare gems you want, and you can increase your chances or guarantee that you will get a rare drop by spending money on Crests or Legendary Crests.
Diablo 3, a 10 -year -old game, is still a much better experience even if it’s about spending a lot and a lot of time to get better stuff.
The only thing for Rifts is that you technically have to play the game before you know you are profitable. The endgame grind is about farming for a little invisible gem to slot into the gear and not the gear itself, because it’s best-looking reserved for saving real money. Diablo Immortal feels like it was designed to exploit people’s love for Diablo instead of being a good Diablo game.
The shoddy PC release reinforces that understanding. Even a small quality-of-life bonus that was in the previous Diablos is missing here: You can’t use multi-key keybinds, you can’t overlay minimaps onto the screen, and you can’t even dye the switch. All the friends who gave Diablo Eternal a shot stopped when they came to the same conclusion: 10-year-old Diablo 3 is better than this.
The funny thing is Diablo 3 also about spending a lot and a lot of time trying to get things better. The difference is trying to make myself satisfied enough to justify all the time it eats up instead of trying to get me to put my money down by stymying my progress.
Diablo Immortal takes the addictive part of Diablo and makes it explicitly exploitative. It’s hard to see how an update on the road could remove that. And even if you have to eliminate monetization (which obviously won’t happen), Immortal can’t compete with modern action RPGs like Lost Ark or Path of Exile. It’s shamelessly trying to live off of love for the established series, adding nothing but a way to tie power gear to open your wallet. This is hopefully Diablo 4 is almost nothing like it.
