‘Diablo Immortal’ is Blizzard’s best and most worrying game in years

engadget.com:

Nearly four years after Blizzard announced Diablo Immortal to a mostly apathetic audience at Blizzcon 2018, the game is finally here. And if you’re like me, there’s a good chance you haven’t followed Immortal’s development since its first showing. Not knowing what to expect, I had a chance to play the game ahead of its official launch tomorrow and left the experience both excited and worried about what I saw.

Set five years after the end of Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction, Immortal opens with your character arriving by boat in the town of Wortham, a location from Diablo 3. You find the hamlet under attack by Skarn, the self-styled Lord of Damnation.

I haven’t played the game’s story through to its end, but what unfolds following the introduction is a far more interesting narrative than what Diablo 3 had to offer. Immortal inherits some of its predecessor’s more annoying tendencies. Characters, particularly villains, talk too much, and the game is missing the atmosphere that made past Diablo games so memorable. But on the whole, Immortal serves as a more fitting sequel to its predecessors than Diablo 3 ever did.

One early zone in the game sees your character venture to the Dark Wood, an area from Act One of Diablo 2. There, you’re reunited with characters like Akara and Kashya. The voice actors aren’t as memorable as their Diablo 2 counterparts, but the way Immortal pulls on the narrative threads established in its predecessor to continue that game’s story is satisfying and memorable.

But what is even more impressive is that Blizzard tells the story in the context of an MMO. As you go about your adventure, you’ll see other players doing the same, and you can freely group up to tackle the campaign – in addition to dungeons,