As we reported earlier today, Blizzard made a huge announcement for its mobile fans with the announcement of Diablo Immortal, a new Diablo game for mobile devices. Billed as being a “full fledged RPG,” Diablo Immortal looks to bring the full experience of the Diablo series to mobile while providing an opportunity for Blizzard to explore the twenty series of history y between Diablo II and Diablo III. This is all well and good, but can Blizzard really do a good job of translating its venerable series onto a mobile touchscreen? I had the opportunity to check out their floor demo today and I have to say, the answer is an unequivocal yes.
I checked out the Diablo Immortal demo on a Samsung device with similar dimensions to the iPhone XS Max, which means a decent sized screen with high end specs and no bezels to speak of. As soon as I launched the demo it was very apparent that this is the real deal in terms of Diablo gameplay. For my first playthrough I decided to check out the wizard, whose move set focuses on lot of ranged attacks with a glass cannon stat sheet. Immediately I’m launched into a dungeon like setting where Deckard Cain is there to provide me my first quest. That quest? To take out a few cultists that are summoning throngs of demons into the world. The demons were fairly easy to take out with my fully charged magic, but if I didn’t make a beeline for those cultists I would have been overwhelmed eventually.
Once I succeeded, I went into a portal that took me to a plague-filled countryside where I fought through a variety of enemies and bosses. I eventually I ended up at the Court of Madness, where I was asked if I wanted to proceed by myself or join up with a party. This is one of the points of emphasis for Diablo Immortal a push towards party-based gameplay that has always been a staple for Diablo but is taking on a new meaning with Immortal. After tapping on the solo option, I took on a giant demon with scores of hit points, the ability to do massive AoE damage and summon minions to take me on. A full five minutes later the battle was won, the loot was mine and the demo was over.
If this sounds like any other classic adventure in the Diablo series that’s because it was. The locales, enemies, and loot were all amazingly familiar. I could have been playing this exact adventure on my PC and wouldn’t have bat an eye except for a few small changes. For one, there are a few more loading points in Immortal which take the form of portals that take your from region to region. The second is, of course, the controls.
If you’ve played the MOBA Arena of Valor, the Diablo Immortal controls will feel extremely familiar. In fact, it’s pretty much the exact same control scheme, with an invisible virtual joystick on the lower left side of the screen for movement, and your hero’s ability laid out around your basic attack on the right side. Depending on the ability you select, you can tap and hold the ability to aim. For example, holding a cone attack will let you select the direction of the cone while holding down on a projectile gives you the total range and lets you drag to move where it will land. This is probably one of the best control schemes to have for a Diablo game on a mobile device and I’m glad they chose it.
Visually speaking, Immortal looks just as good as Diablo III running on a decent rig (to be honest, it’s not like Diablo III is particularly demanding to begin with). I was more impressed with the fast, stable frame rate that held steady even as the screen started to be filled with a dozen or so enemies. Playing the wizard, I was impressed with all the various spell effects, and the weather and overall ambience that has been a staple for Diablo III all seem to be there in Immortal. This does not appear to be a stripped down version based on this demo.
While certain types of gamers may turn their nose up to Immortal, in my mind, it can succeed with four basic tenets: tons of enemies on screen, a super smooth frame rate, controls that work, and that oh so important loot system. Based on my limited time with Immortal, I can say that I think it will achieve each one of those. Of course, there are a few outstanding important questions: Will this be a premium game or freemium? Will it have IAP? How will the storytellers at Blizzard continually refresh Immortal’s content, which was a point of emphasis in the reveal? We’ll be sure to ask these questions and more when we get an opportunity to chat with some Diablo folks tomorrow.
I believe if Diablo mobile feels like Diablo it will almost certainly succeed in being the action rpg to beat on the AppStore. If it has IAPs (which I’m expecting it will have) I am more hopeful that anything associated with Blizzard will be more consumer friendly than a couple other f2p publishers that give the business model a bad name.
The fact I kept asking for a good Diablo like for my iPad seem to have been heard....by a literal Diablo game for mobile,just hope it will deliver.
The amount of dislikes under this mobile diablo videos says it all. Shame on you Blizzard.
Blizzard properties have a pretty good track record at being good to great. We all know there will be a knee jerk reaction outside of the mobile realm to dislike anything that even hints at free to play. If it turns out horrible I’ll definitely be vocal in my disappointment but I am optimistic that a Blizzard game will deliver even under the free to play umbrella.
Have a bucket of dicks to eat with your glass of qq
You’re in the wrong place to bring on the Blizzard Mobile hate. People around here are actually looking forward to the release of this game.
How dare they make a game for the vast amount of people that like mobile games!
Yeah, they shouldn't have announced it in front of a bunch of PC or die fanboys, but there's nothing shameful about this.
It's $59.99, just an FYI
Source?
His butt
Lol at this guy’s smirk its as if he is a representstive of all gamers on twitter and social media right now in an uproar:
https://twitter.com/skillup...
I'm excited about this game on mobile, and it's looking cool...!
I'm just worry about how they gonna monetizing this game... You know how F2P games on mobile nowadays, and it's look gonna be F2P game too... 😥
If the quality is as good as what they did for Hearthstone Mobile (a freemium game), I’m pretty sure this game will be a hit.
I love how the 2 articles posted so far about this have barely mentioned any of the controversy and reactions surround this title. Some hard hitting journalism right there!
I'd argue focusing on the game instead of the absurd reaction to it by angry PC gamers to farm rage clicks is journalism. *shrug*
None of those people read TouchArcade anyway.
I’d feel better about the game if the developer wasn’t such a known entity in the soulless diablo/wow/moba clone arena.
As it stands, I was really pumped about the idea and dismissed all the butthurt pc users as just that.
Then I actually looked into the games, read articles on both sides of the discussion and watched the gameplay trailer.
After having played D3 on the switch with my family this weekend, watching the gameplay trailer just felt empty. Knowing the developer is exclusively FTP, seeing how they’ve removed a lot of things that would be problematic to the audience in China (primarily the extrication of the witch doctor, removal of blood and gore and that’s just based on the snippets we have), watching blizzard work to manipulate the votes on YouTube... it slowly chipped away at my enthusiasm for the potential.
To then read blizzard talk about it didn’t help.
But the thing that bugged me the most and made question everything is blizzard feigning surprise at the backlash. This isn’t hearthstone, a new property that people were uncertain of at first but willing to accept. This is a property that is near and dear to those attending BlizzCon. The biggest issue was blizzard used a mobile, clearly FTP style diablo game to close the show and then acted shocked when they got a poor reception.
Their follow ups have been vague and “typical” to what we’ve come to expect.
Do I think blizzard is dead? Nah. Do I regret paying for the switch version of d3? Nope.
But do I have any excitement for this game? Sadly no. I’m sure I’ll give it a go when it comes out, but if it’s a FTP style system I’ll just stick with playing d3.
I’m sure it’ll make money hand over fist, though. Especially with the modifications they’re making to fit into the “global” market.
The story is the game, not the entitled children crying. Fuck off back to reddit
The only "controversy" is that they made the announcement in front of a bunch of die-hards at a convention who only care about the PC.
For anyone out of that 1% of the player base, there nothing even slightly controversial about it.
The loot system is really the question.
I can't wait. All die-hard-pc-exclusive-holy-notMyDiablo rednecks of the internet can go and .... don't play it. I will!