This article is about game systems, time gates, paywalls, end game and whether Immortal is worth playing for a fan of the series without investing money. In short, forget about the rating and the ability to compete with those who donate. This is a game for a couple of hours a day, do not expect more from it.
In my time, I have played many thousands of hours of various Action RPGs, including the original Diablo 2, Poe, and others. These games had one obvious thing in common – you can enhance your character as much as time and player involvement allows. In Diablo Immortal, this truth was brutally raped in favor of Pay To Win.
Leveling and plot
The game starts quite briskly – new items are available, skills are given every few minutes, locations change and there is even socialization with other players in dungeons and in the open world (after all, this is an MMO).
The plot, as expected from Diablo, sends from the cemetery to the desert, then to the jungle, to the snow-capped mountains, to hell, and so on – in fact, all the locations that we have seen in past games in the series.
Every now and then, familiar faces appear, as well as mobs and bosses taken from other parts of the series. We will meet Valla, Zoltan Kull and Tal Rashad, Gluttony and Assault Beast from Diablo 3 and many others (including regular mobs, with the same models and animations).
At the beginning of pumping, Diablo Immortal shows its best gameplay sides, while not forgetting to hint at various donations. There are “discounted” chests after each dungeon, a paid Battle Pass, and much more. But on pumping, this is not necessary and can simply be ignored.
The first leveling proble
ms start around level 30. In the course of the quests, we run into the need to grind experience in order to open story missions. At the beginning, this is covered by the study of additional content that opens up as you level up – rifts, assignments, Battle Pass tasks, and so on. But there will be at least five such “stops” in the level during the game, and some of them take more time than it is then spent on open story missions.
As a result, after a small portion of the plot, we return to the already completed instances or rifts in order to finish the required level. If you went to Diablo to find out “what was there between parts 2 and 3”, then such grind walls can beat off any desire.
At the same time, the story quests themselves contain a lot of conversational moments that not everyone will like in Action RPG. However, after farming experience in rifts or dungeons, listening to Deckard Cain and destroying shards of the soul stone can come in handy.
Gameplay
Diablo’s gameplay fits perfectly with the format of the phone – the controls and targeting are convenient and it’s nice to kill demons. The best experience comes from the basic gameplay in the first hours after launch. As a long-time fan of the series, having an almost “full-fledged” Diablo on your phone is something that even 10 years ago could not even be dreamed of.
At the same time, it plays better on a PC than on a phone, but much worse than it was in the same Diablo 3. The screen resolution does not change, it is not possible to press several keys at the same time, the main attack does not always work and the mobile interface is very striking.
But there are more various “super systems” that are needed solely for pulling money (I will talk about them later).
Classes don’t have any energy or mana, abilities are simply pressed by cooldown, and the main attack, one of the two to choose from, accumulates a resource for an ulu, which simply strengthens this very attack. Moreover, you can simply hold down the attack button, then the character will search for targets in the nearest radius and switch to them.
Runes for abilities from Diablo 3 are not here, but they have been moved to legendary items. That is, there will be no gain from legging in the style of “+ 150-200% damage from such and such an ability”, I saw a maximum of 10% up.
For example, they add a slowdown, a DoT effect, or some additional feature: contraction, stun, and so on. That is, everything that the runes did in Diablo 3.
For each class, you can make several effective builds, and the game itself suggests several options and what items will be required for such a set. But usually one Pave and one P2P build is made, which differ primarily in skills and legendries.
The combat system, which is a spam of one attack button and squeezing abilities on CD, starts to tire after a while, since it does not have much variability either in gameplay or in building builds. Sets do not change the gameplay and do not enhance individual abilities, but are common to all classes and are rather boring.
Itemization: Legendries, Gems, and Sets
All items of equipment are divided into two categories – basic (helmet, breastplate, shoulder pads, pants, two weapons) and additional (gloves, boots, belt, two rings, amulet).
In the endgame, the main slots use legendary items, while the additional slots use set sets. In each slot there are several legendries to choose from, which allow you to build a build around a specific class ability.
Legendries are made quite conveniently – you can get a legendary property from an item and apply it to another item without spending any resources. For example, you extract a legendary effect from a low-level chest, and after knocking out any other legendary chest at level 60, you simply apply the desired legendary effect to it.
Characteristics in Immortal are much less than in other parts of the series, while they have a minimal impact on gameplay. It is impossible to choose the type of weapon, it is actually pre-installed for each class.
