Even small quality-of-life additions that were in previous Diablos are gone here: You can't use multi-key keybinds, you can't overlay a minimap onto the screen, and you can't even dye your gear. The shoddy PC release reinforces that perception. Diablo Immortal feels like it was designed to exploit people's love for Diablo rather than to be a great Diablo game. The endgame grind is about farming for little invisible gems to slot into your gear and not the gear itself, because the best-looking stuff is reserved for the real money store.

The only thing going for Rifts is that you technically have to play a little bit of the game before finding out if you were lucky. They're randomized levels stuffed with enemies that may or may not drop the rare gem you want, and you can increase your chances or guarantee that you'll get a rare drop by spending money on Crests or Legendary Crests.ĭiablo 3, a 10-year old game, is still a much better experience even though it's also basically about spending loads and loads of time trying to get better stuff. Its Elder Rifts are essentially loot boxes. Since Diablo Immortal's release, people have been picking apart its monetization scheme, and it seems pretty bad. There are even some neat spell interactions in here: Wizards can plop down an ice crystal that makes any channeled beams sent into it reflect in the direction of nearby enemies. It's still satisfying to blast through hordes of demons in exactly the same way it is in the other Diablo games. Immortal replaces mana with ability cooldowns, which simplifies things a little. Wizards can channel frost beams and energy beams and Necromancers can send their undead minions out into the fray as they set corpses off like bombs. I played as a Wizard and a Necromancer that echo the classes already available in Diablo 3.

And then you do that over and over while accumulating weapon and armor upgrades. You click or WASD through sprawling levels and poke demons until they pop into loot. Despite all that, it plays just like you'd expect Diablo to. The buttons are big, there are almost no graphics options, the camera is way too zoomed in on your character, and the levels are empty. Diablo Immortal started first as a mobile game, and its PC beta makes little effort to hide that.

Diablo immortal game review