At its core, Diablo Immortal is just Diablo III being played on a smartphone. That’s a good thing, because Diablo III brought some much-needed changes to the franchise, in addition to spectacular graphics and the much-loved demon hunting that the series is known for. The ability to log in to the world of Diablo at any time from your phone or tablet is a wonderful luxury to experience, especially for those long train commutes to work or if you’re sitting around waiting for someone and need to pass the time.
It’s also easy to brush off Diablo Immortal as not a ‘pure’ Diablo game because it’s designed for a smartphone experience. Veterans will scoff at the idea of hunting down the demons of hell on a palm-sized screen rather than the glory of their PCs that they’re used to. Having played two betas of the game and spent a week with the final build, I can safely say that Diablo Immortal isn’t aiming to target the veterans of the series. It’s a familiar Diablo experience, but one that has been dialed down a bit to allow for more curious players to pick up the game and explore the world of Sanctuary at their leisure.
Diablo Immortal presents you with six familiar character classes to choose from before you begin your journey. Surprisingly, there’s a lot you can do with customizing your character’s look and features, even if it appears on a small screen. From scars to hair color, you can tweak just about everything you like, before naming your new creation and venturing into the darkness.
One thing that has to be applauded with Diablo Immortal is the control scheme. The left side of your screen is used for movement, while large buttons on the right give you access to your abilities. Some abilities can be held down for channeling or targeting a direction and can be easily swapped around as you level up and unlock more abilities. There’s no need to worry about mana or stamina either as each ability has a simple cooldown before it can be triggered again. This immediately makes the game a lot easier to control your character and manage your attacks between swarms of enemies. You can also connect a wireless controller via Bluetooth, should you grow tired of holding up your phone for long periods.
As you defeat enemies and explore lost dungeons, you’ll accumulate a lot of loot. Diablo Immortal assigns just one power number to any item, so you can quickly see which items are better than what you’ve currently equipped. As you collect stronger pieces of armor and weapons, these will augment your attacks or add random bonuses, or even affect how some of your abilities function. Of course, anything that you don’t need you can simply salvage in a few taps, gaining upgrade materials that can be used to better your equipped gear. These ranks can be easily transferred to new gear as well, so you never feel like you’ve wasted any time or resources by levelling up your gear. Colored gems can also be equipped into matching gear sockets for further bonuses.
You’ll also eventually run into high-level gear that can slot legendary gems, which are very important in the game. Some of gems can be crafted with the right resources, while others drop in particular dungeons or high-level encounters. They can drastically affect how your abilities work or give your character PvE/PvP bonuses, depending on your play style. These too, can be upgraded with the right resources, and swapped to different pieces of armor with just a few taps.
You can comfortably reach level 30 in Diablo Immortal without feeling too restricted, and there’s enough loot and things to explore to keep you busy. After that, it becomes a slow and slightly painful grind to level up and reach certain milestones in order to progress in the storyline. You’ll mostly gain this extra experience by completing bounties, or by running through rifts.
Rifts in Diablo Immortal are a simple dungeon filled with random enemies that you must kill before the timer runs out. Should you succeed, a boss will spawn for you to defeat, which drops experience and loot before you repeat it all over again. The Challenge Rifts go up a level each time you complete one, with enemies becoming progressively harder. The Elder Rifts follow a similar suit, but you can drastically alter the enemies and playstyle of the rift by equipping a maximum of three crests before you begin. Ordinary crests can be collected for free once a day and are purchasable from an in-game vendor in exchange for hilts. Legendary crests are more complicated – these can only be swapped for hilts once a month, so if you want to acquire Legendary crests, you’re going to have to part with some real-world money.
This is where things start to get murky, and where the interest in Diablo Immortal may start to dwindle. The game will quite regularly remind you to spend money on it, whether it’s for a Battle Pass or for more in-game currency. Even when you defeat certain bosses or complete a section of the story, a limited-time bundle will unlock for you to purchase, granting currency and XP accordingly. The biggest frustration will be with the game’s Legendary gems, which are mostly obtained through Elder Rifts by equipping Legendary crests. Here too, the chance of one dropping can be quite low, and even upgrading existing gems require a lot of very limited resources. For players who are trying for a specific character build, it’s going to be extremely frustrating to hunt for the right gems and gear, with the grind after level 50 becoming ridiculously tiring.
There are other elements in Diablo Immortal that are meant to keep players coming back even after they’ve finished the main story. Weekly high-tier demons and events can take up to eight players to complete, and you can easily band together with other players to form temporary parties and take on these challenges. The struggle between the Immortals and the Shadows is another interesting thing to take part in – each faction has unique objectives to try and wrestle control over the other, culminating in an epic raid-style battle for supremacy in the end.
The game can also get quite unstable at times, despite Blizzard’s frequent patches. Texture popping, looping dialogue, NPCs in combat during cutscenes – there are definitely times when the game does not play nice. Despite running on a Samsung S22+, the game stuttered when set to 60fps, so you’re probably better off keeping it at 30fps instead, despite having more than capable phones to run this game on.
Whether you’ve played a Diablo game in the past or not is irrelevant in Diablo Immortal. The game has been made accessible to players of all ranks, and that’s an excellent strategy. You can easily pour 40 hours or more into the game before it gets tiring with the grind, and if you choose to stay on you can still continue to play the game without spending any money at all. But if you truly want to master the demons of hell, you’ll have to fork out some of your hard-earned cash for the chance to get the right gear. At face value, Diablo Immortal is a fun distraction to play whenever you’re bored but dig deeper and you’ll find that it’s a long and tiring journey to undertake if you’re not willing to part with your cash.