When Diablo Immortal was released in 2022, it was hard to look past its egregious monetization. I even wrote at the time that it was "a game designed to exploit your love of Diablo," and in many ways it still is. Half of the game is still a gaping chasm of menus and daily bonuses and price tags that make Genshin Impact look tame. It desperately wants your money in the way that a lot of free-to-play mobile games catered to people outside of the West often do.
But it's still a Blizzard game that doesn't sacrifice that immediate hit of joy you get from clicking monsters and watching big numbers pop onto the screen. I've put close to a thousand hours into Diablo 4 over the last couple of years, so I can see why Immortal's the perfect kind of game to hook a certain type of person into playing it like it's their day job. At some point the gothic facade falls away and you're just pulling levers for the exact piece of loot you need for your build. I get it—that's where my head goes at the end of every Diablo 4 season. And it's also where I always take a break until the next one comes around.
As soon as Diablo 4 becomes a clicker game where I'm chasing minor gear upgrades and ignoring everything else, I call it. By all accounts, Diablo Immortal is made to capitalize on that chase and puts a price tag on significantly reducing the amount of time you could spend searching for items. Unless you're an avid PvPer or a PvE leaderboard obsessive, the game is as free as it can get. You can pay for better odds at good loot in its hardest dungeons, but unless you're driven to be the best (at the cost of enjoying the grind), it's a pretty legit Diablo game even if you don't spend money. Hell, I'd say it's a pretty fun Diablo game.
Fun enough that it got me to play a druid, a class archetype that has never really been my thing. I love all of Diablo 4's classes in their own ways and typically cycle between them based on my mood—except druid. I am blissfully unaware of how druids work and I have no desire to learn. I do not want to turn into animals, nor do I want to control the elements. Or at least I thought I didn't want those things until I played Diablo Immortal's new take on the class.
Shapeshifter
Despite being designed as a mobile game, Diablo Immortal never feels too simple as a PC game.
With Diablo Immortal's druid I can suck enemies up into a giant tornado, yank the earth up underneath their feet to launch them into the air, and then tear apart whoever's left with my werewolf claws. I can also soar forward as a flock of ravens and shred anything I land on. And I can do all of this repeatedly within a few seconds.
As you level up, you gain access to more skills, like one that lets you summon some wolves to fight for you. It's easy to swap new ones in from a menu to try them out. Shapeshifting is cool and all, but I wasn't a fan of stomping around as a giant stag, so I ditched that skill for a shield made of thorns that automatically counters enemy attacks. It helped keep me safe for the few seconds I was forced to be a boring human waiting to go werewolf mode again.
Balancing when and when not to transform is satisfying when your moveset changes so dramatically. As a human, I'm stuck standing there whacking enemies with my staff and gathering them up. But once I can grow out my hair and claws, I can dash around and clear out enemies with a big debilitating howl. It gives combat a simple, effective rhythm that I wish was easier to do with Diablo 4's druid before you're deep into its endgame.
Despite being designed as a mobile game, Diablo Immortal never feels too simple as a PC game. Just like Diablo 4, you have a fixed amount of slots for your skills and a full inventory screen to study your loot. Its biggest offense is its oversized UI made for touch inputs on a phone. Otherwise, moving your little guy around as you shred demons is as seamless as it is in any other Diablo game—and it even has WASD support, if you prefer.
In the pre-release build Blizzard provided me, I could also play a fully decked out druid with everything unlocked. It wasn't nearly as fun to have the gear that allowed me to almost permanently stay a werewolf, however. I'm not surprised that you'd eventually minimize your downtime as a human to the point that you're barely even a druid anymore, but I much preferred the tension of having to juggle both.
Diablo, but a little different
One thing became very clear to me in the first hour: Diablo Immortal is more of a sequel to Diablo 3 than Diablo 4. Not only does it carry forward the same slightly goofy aesthetic, but it leans on having a variety of powerful skills rather than a deep skill tree for creating them yourself. Part of me wishes I could invest a skill point in something that imbues my tornado with frost or grants me new werewolf attacks, but after settling into a potent rotation of skills, the lack of customization didn't really bother me. There's a level of excitement in trying a new skill knowing it doesn't need any additional items or skill tree points to actually be good. Everything hits hard out of the gate, which goes against all my Diablo 4 instincts.
For a game where every activity can fit within a lunch break, I don't mind that.
The trade-off seems to be how loot works early on in the game. My character is wearing a full set of rare gear that only slightly changes how I approach combat. I've got a chest piece that reduces damage while I'm moving and shoulderpads that increase the damage of my channeled skills. This approach to loot that gives you general bonuses is a lot different than Diablo 4, which dumps legendary items on you that are often catered to specific skills and playstyles.
Diablo Immortal is mostly about equipping the items with big green arrows to indicate an upgrade and going back to smashing demons. For a game where every activity can fit within a lunch break, I don't mind that.
In fact, the condensed structure means you'll be fighting bosses with telegraphed, MMO-like attacks and timed challenges right off the bat. I completed a dungeon where I only had a few minutes to slay a room full of vampires while avoiding giant swinging blades, forcing me to use my skills carefully to dodge out of attacks and move from pack to pack efficiently. This is the kind of pace that Diablo 4 reserves for its endgame, when your build is properly online. Diablo Immortal doesn't have time for that and introduces these little moments of friction during its campaign.
While I can't say Diablo Immortal is the kind of game I see myself investing thousands of hours into, I appreciate how quickly it starts to activate my action RPG brain. I'm not necessarily thinking about builds, but I am thinking about how to effectively use my skills to clear out dungeons unscathed. There are moments where it felt more like playing Hades than Diablo and, as a big fan of both styles of action RPG, I'm simply not mad at that blend.
As long as you're OK with clicking past about a 100 different menus tapping you on the shoulder to claim some XP or materials, Immortal is a fun mini Diablo. It's certainly not healthy for anyone easily tempted to drop $100 to dunk on people in PvP or to top the leaderboards, though. There are far better games to play for that competitive experience that don't require a credit card. But as far as loot-based action RPGs go, Diablo Immortal stands on its own, especially if Diablo 3 grew stale for you and Diablo 4's complexity doesn't grab you.
It costs nothing to carve through some classic Diablo dungeons as a speedy werewolf and pick up some sparkly loot, and then do it again. I can't really argue with that.
Diablo Immortal's druid class will drop on July 3.
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