Diablo Immortal feels uncomfortably mercenary

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

A lot of fans of the franchise felt that a mobile version of their beloved game would come at the expense of a more traditional experience. I found two things to be true after a short time with the game ahead of its release on June 2nd, though the game has been rolling out early in some regions today. The first is that the game created by the company captures the look and feel of a traditional game. The game is designed to get the most money out of its players.

The map is large with many different areas that are gated by level requirements and many places in which you can get up to all the demon-killing shenanigans you desire. You can either have the game auto-run you from objective to objective or you can get random loot.

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

The auto-run feature made me like it. I appreciated the ability to get to the meat of the game without the time-wasting travel. When I had time to sit with the game for a longer period, I was rewarded with a chance encounter with a challenging world boss.

Combat has the same complexity as Diablo prime, with classes given multiple abilities that can be triggered at different levels of size and impact. I liked playing the Crusader class, a melee class with both physical and magical abilities, and I liked bashing enemies with my mace or blinding them with holy light. An ultimate ability that you can use for an extra boost of power is similar to ultimate abilities in the game. I don't know what the criteria is for triggering an ultimate, but it's nice to have a world boss.

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

The character customization of Diablo Immortal won me over. I assumed that you saw what you got when you played a mobile game like Diablo. In an interview with the principal game designer, Joe Grubb, I learned that the developers were really passionate about offering customization options.

There is full character customization of everything you can imagine. If you want to modify facial structure in Immortal, we're excited for you to do that and create the expression of characters you want to be.

It's not Black Desert Online in terms of sheer numbers of options, but being able to tailor my avatar to my specific specifications is pretty neat for a mobile game, especially after my poor experience with the racist pastiche of the Witch Doctor.

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

I don't have much to say about the story. There wasn't enough time for the bad guys to get a piece of the power crystal.

Every so often, I detect the sour whiff of this mobile game designed to keep me on a treadmill for as long as possible.

I am not against mobile games. I understand that games need to make money so the people who made them can continue to survive because the executives who actually reap the benefits of billion-dollar mobile games are sated with their massive profits enough to hopefully allow the developers the privilege of earning a meager paycheck. I understand. Dropping cash for items and cosmetics is a standard operating procedure in mobile games and beyond, and it's ignorable when I play a game where I expect those features.

Even though Immortal is a mobile game, it is still a game with a set of rules and expectations that are not yet associated with the rules and expectations of a mobile game. It feels like a game is trying to get me to play in hopes that I'll spend a dollar or two and that, at the press of a menu button, I can bring up an in-game shop that lets me pay. I don't mind if this is a completely new property, like the new mobile game. This feels like your best friend with whom you lost touch suddenly hitting you up on Facebook to ask if you want to buy leggings.

I'm really happy that a PC option with cross-progression is now available because playing on a phone is not it. The game on the A21 is smooth, but it's not comfortable to play on a phone. Clicking through dialogue is fine, but I need a button for combat. It feels wrong to be emulated with touch controls. I'm really glad I got a phone controller peripheral from Blizzard because I can feel my screen get warm to the point of concern.

There is still a lot of game left for me to uncover. I haven't unlocked the character progression system yet, but there are some social features like clans and the Cycle of Strife. I hope that these as-yet-undiscovered features are interesting and well-developed enough to counterbalance the mercenary fact of the game. Fans were right to be concerned, but I need more time to see if those concerns are enough to outweigh the novelty of the game on a phone.