When Diablo III made the jump to PS3 and 360, most people were skeptical about the visuals and the controls. Thankfully, Blizzard nailed the controls with various tweaks to make the game that was built for keyboard and mouse work great on a gamepad. The game eventually became quite the couch co-op phenomenon on consoles and even saw great ports to PS4 and Xbox One. Blizzard finally brings Diablo to Switch in the Eternal Collection that has been ported by Iron Galaxy who also ported Skyrim. Read Eli’s impressions of Skyrim on Switch here.
Diablo III: Eternal Collection includes the base game, the Reaper of Souls expansion, the Rise of the Necromancer DLC, and exclusive Switch cosmetics and amiibo support. It also has the advantage of including all the fixes and additions the game saw for years on other platforms and is the most polished the release yet. When it comes to exclusive content, you get Ganondorf armor, a pet, some wings, and amiibo support in addition to what the Switch hardware offers thanks to the various gameplay and control options.
While it already is a great couch co-op game on other consoles, the Switch offers a lot more with local wireless support and even single screen single Joy-con play. It is pretty mindblowing that you can play with a friend using a single Joy-con each on the same small Switch screen in tabletop mode. Local wireless lets you team up with friends on their own Switches locally to play together. So far both the local wireless and online have been near instant to connect to someone else to play together. You still need to sadly use your own voice chat solution since the Switch doesn’t have a native solution.
I loved Skyrim on Switch but Iron Galaxy outdid that with Diablo III on the Switch. Visually, Diablo III adjusts the resolution depending on the load on screen to maintain the frame rate which is always great for action games where smoother performance is more important than visuals. The visual differences are more noticeable on TV than on the smaller screen but the best part of all of this is the framerate holds up very well so far. It is super smooth in both docked and handheld modes. You’re obviously not buying this on Switch to play on TV and the handheld mode is awesome across the board.
The biggest complaint I have so far is the inconsistency with B and A buttons where you need to press one to initiate a conversation and another to continue said conversation. Many games struggle with this on Switch because of how they handle things on other platforms. Hopefully this gets patched. The other aspect that disappointed me a bit is the lack of any touchscreen support. LA Noire did a great job of using the touchscreen and while I didn’t expect that here, being able to navigate the UI or even the map with touch would’ve been great.
Stay tuned for our full review on Friday but Diablo III is pretty fantastic on Switch so far. I just hope they fix the button inconsistency and also the homescreen icon because the one it has right now has to be a placeholder icon or a mistake. It cannot be the final icon. Blizzard’s first Nintendo platform release in years is shaping up to be the definitive version of one of the most fun games out there.
Does TA have an affiliate link for Diablo III on Switch? I'd happily use it before I buy the game. :)
Actually got excited for a moment thinking iOS would get a Diablo III port ... In hindsight, pretty silly of me of course, most mobile devices couldn’t handle the game.
But really shows how little is happening in the iOS gaming scene atm when half of the TA articles are about Switch stuff.
I miss the times when there were frequent high quality premium releases/PC ports. Now the Hot Games list is nearly staying the same over months and releases like Grimvalor are a huge - ofc welcome - exception.
And you really see the decrease in interest. Great iOS premium games often had at least over a thousand of TA forum posts up until about one or two years ago. Now even absolute top games like Grimvalor are lucky to get 200.
People now talking about "such a good week for premium releases" because they found one or two halfway decent titles seem to have forgotten those - not so long ago - times completely. A time when TA could healthily sustain itself and was able to report about one iOS release after the other.
Can’t wait for this tide to - hopefully - change and have less Switch and more iOS again.
There's one Switch roundup per day, and sometimes less than that. We post on average 10 stories a day. I don't see how someone could think that's half of what we post.
You realise I’m not criticizing TA for doing all the Switch coverage? I’m aware you guys have to find some new branches that garner main stream interest especially with the headwind you get from Apple and the decreasing interest in mobile gaming atm.
And I’m aware it’s not half but it certainly feels like it. Just miss the busy times of mobile gaming up until ~a year ago. No need to get defensive.
I didn't take it as criticizing us personally, but I see a lot of presumptions about TA that just aren't true. A popular one is "TA only talks about free games" which statistically isn't even close to accurate. If I sounded defensive it's because I spent A LOT of hours digging up news and writing about mobile games.
In terms of premium releases and cool games, it's about the same as it has been even a year ago. Again people seem to just get it in their head that it's "bad" now and swear that there was some magical time in the past where dozens of premium games would come out every week, even though that was never true.
Forum activity is a different story, but there's a number of reasons for that. First and foremost is that most developers have figured out social media and roll their own forums or discord chats. Back in the day TA was the only place you could interact with devs and they could interact with customers, it was really unique. Not so much anymore.
Finally, I love the Switch and feel it fits in well with mobile games coverage. I would love us to cover it even more and do more impressions articles like this one and full reviews. As if I didn't have enough mobile games in my backlog and not enough time to play them, the Switch vies for my free time too, and it's absolutely flooded with games. I just don't understand what more people could want. I've been gaming for almost 40 years and, especially if you throw consoles and PC into the mix, it's never been as good as it is right now.
I’m playing on iOS for eight years and am a gamer for 30 years now and I’m definitely not wrongly glorifying "the good old times" with saying that there were much more, frequent and better iOS (especially premium) game releases up until one or two years ago. Even one of your writers said in an article not too long ago that a few years ago was a much busier time for iOS game releases.
And I get your explanation for the decline in forum posts but blaming only social media for that certainly is only half the truth.
I love TA, it’s my main mobile gaming website since I’ve started iOS gaming but it’s no coincidence that the site is struggling and depending on donations while the interest and frequency of great (especially premium) releases is decreasing.
Again, I get that you guys have to try for different consoles/operating systems and if you want more Switch the more power to you.
I don’t have a Switch though and for me TA will always be an iOS gaming site first and foremost - I’d rather prefer an own TA site just dedicated to the Switch but I know this is not feasible atm.
Apple treats websites and apps dedicated to mobile gaming as cr@p as it is (unless they do it themselves - Best seen in the quiet burial of the iOS Steam Link app or restricting the TA app to 32bit or giving up referral links for iOS etc) and despite what you say, (especially premium) mobile gaming has gotten less popular over the years.
I’m not imagining that it’s much harder to find new top premium releases like Grimvalor. Even your reviewer says "I’m a little surprised to see such effort behind a paid original title on mobile in 2018 ..." so please stop telling me that this decline is all just in my head ..
I mean, we can compare. October just ended so let's look at this year compared to last in terms of premium releases:
October 2018
Help I'm Haunted
Old School Runescape
Farabel
Funzel
Squids Odyssey
Shining Force Classics
Element
Tower Power
Tesla vs Lovecraft
Fidel Dungeon Rescue
Euclidean Skies
Stardew Valley
Indian Summer
Hell Raider - Wheel of Fate
Reign of the Ninja
Siralim 3
The Quest - Caerworn Castle
Crush the Castle: Siege Master
Max the Curse of Brotherhood
Pivotol
Reigns: Game of Thrones
Warplanes: WW2 Dogfight
Smash Puck
Mirrors
Steamburg
Grimvalor
Galerider
ELOH
Super Cat Tales 2
The Tower of Egbert
Tokyo Ghoul Rebirth
Graveyard Smash
Hordes of Enemies
Mountain Climber: Frozen Dream
Marenian Tavern Story
Hooky Crook
October 2017
REKT
Batman: The Enemy Within
Stranger Things: The Game
Cottage Garden
Beyond Oasis
Our Ways
Dragon Hills 2
cmplt
The Quest - HoL 2
Smash Up
Time Recoil
Returner 77
Warhammer Quest 2
Campfire Cooking
PUSH
Sheltered
Decap Attack
ICEY
Subsurface Circular
Night of the Full Moon
Bury Me, My Love
Afghanistan '11
The Sun: Origin
Abi: A Robot's Tale
Million Onion Hotel
Final Fantasy Dimensions II
Runic Rampage
WitchSpring 3
Like I said, when they start adding up over the weeks, there are TONS of premium games released on iOS and it's been comparable to years past. If there was a year that was like a standout, "peak" year I'd say it was 2016. We did a top 100 list for our best of the year stuff and it easily could have been two or three times that long with no drop in quality. We did another top 100 list for last year and while all the games we included are very much good, deserving games, I wouldn't say they were all absolute standouts and the list probably would have been more impactful if cut down to like 50.
I understand what you're saying but I'm telling you it's a perception issue. My source for this is that I read every single one of the thousands of emails that get sent to us each month, read and format every single new thread posted on our forums, and compile the Out Now posts each and every week for the better part of a decade. There is literally no one else in the world more familiar with mobile releases than me, which is sad, but whatever. The many hundreds of games on my phone would also disagree that there's some sort of decline.
When you say something like "shows how little is happening in the iOS gaming scene" it's just flat out not true. There is ALWAYS a lot happening in the iOS gaming scene, maybe not everything to your particular taste, but that doesn't mean it's not happening.
Same. Got excited for a quick second. I really want to see a full-on premium ultimate edition of diablo III on iOS that takes advantage of the latest and greatest apple hardware. Even if that means limited compatibility with the latest devices and the gen before. I’m sure blizzard, if they put the big effort in, could deliver a iOS version on par or near par with the PS4 / XONE visually.
It probably doesn’t make business sense for blizzard but it’s a nice thought.
I think a more likely scenario would be a mobile port of Diablo 1 or 2, which I actually wouldn't be mad at at all.
Both would be day one purchases if that happened. I actually never completed the original Diablo and wouldn’t mind finishing it on iOS (I picked it up a few short months before the release of part II). Diablo II took a good portion of my teenage years. I played countless hours of D2 and it would, IMO, be the king of action RPGs on the AppStore if it made its way to iOS.
I think most mobile devices could handle it, actually, Hard to imagine touch controls working though, so many skill combos require such precise timing. Would be a mandatory controller game, I think. Which is probably a deal breaker.
Eternium cracked the code for perfect controls on touch screen mobile action RPGs. You use quick, simple to draw, images to target enemies with skills. Sounds like it might be messy but the Eternium devs made it work flawlessly and if I was blizzard I would take note and use that system (along with giving people, the classic v-stick/bottom right action buttons config for the alternate control method).
Agree about Eternium having a very unique and innovative style regarding fight/spell controls.
Of course Eternium is a very stripped down Hack’n’Slash in it’s core with a lot of recycled enemies, levels and environments.
But if a Diablo port ever should happen, Blizzard could definitely take a page out of their touch controls book. Nothing would beat controller support though, unfortunately mfi never made a real breakthrough on iOS.
Suppose you’re right at least concerning the newest iPhones and newer iPads. Android would be a completely different story though considering the huge software and hardware fragmentation there.
But I suppose only some of the latest iOS devices are just too small a market to be profitable for Blizzard. Hopefully the story is different in a few years.