Technical first impression with benchmarks and tips for better graphics

Diablo Immortal is out and the open beta is free to play. We have thrown ourselves into hellish battle for you – not only on the PC, but also on various mobile devices. This article does not claim to be complete, but is intended to provide a first impression of the free-to-play Diablo with a technical focus. It is particularly interesting which hardware does justice to the former “mobile phone game” and which does not.

Diablo Immortal PC: Requirements and launch

That’s right, Diablo Immortal is, at its core, a game for mobile devices, such as tablets and cellphones, to have shallow fun on the go. This concept angered both fans and critics, so Blizzard gave in and developed an official PC version. The focus on compact devices, which offer significantly lower power (consumption) than full-fledged PCs, becomes clear when looking at official system requirements clear.

If you own a ten-year-old gaming PC, you can basically get started. It’s different with mobile phones, even devices half as old don’t stand a chance here. We take the requirements around a Geforce GTX 460 and Radeon HD 6850 (GPUs of the year 2010) seriously and check how Diablo Immortal runs with them. Experience has shown that it is not necessarily the performance of the graphics chips that is problematic, but the software side: Old GPUs are no longer supplied with fresh drivers, but have to fall back on more or less old legacy code. Modern low-end chips are thus much better positioned than, for example, a Geforce GTX 580 or Radeon HD 7970.

This fact can also be seen in the recommended system specifications, which mention a Radeon RX 470 next to an actually far inferior Geforce GTX 770. The Kepler-based Geforce and Polaris-Radeon (GCN) are both still getting brand new drivers, while Geforce 400/500, Radeon 200/300 and contemporaries are officially on the sidings. But don’t worry, according to our tests, most models, such as a Radeon HD 7950, run perfectly. The game can be played extremely smoothly even with a GTX 460 – more on this on the second article page.

Diablo Immortal: A Helpful Hint. Since its release, the non-skippable announcement has been presented on all platforms as a figurehead before the actual start of the game and the content can certainly be expanded.

Source: PC Games Hardware

Diablo Immortal PC: Graphics options

The graphics options of Diablo Immortal (PC) are relatively sparse. There are some graphics settings, such as post-processing, shadows, effects or level of detail, and you can use several presets. Diablo Immortal also offers some color filters for the look. Very unusual for PC gamers: There is no resolution choice, the render resolution always remains the same on the PC, even if you start the game on a 4K desktop, the game runs in Full HD, the window is simply upscaled to the screen resolution and looks correspondingly crumbly. On the other hand, it is pleasing that the frame rate can be set to 30, 60, 120 fps or completely activated.

The graphic presentation is reminiscent of earlier Diablo parts with its rather gloomy comic graphics and colorful effects, but especially part 3. The graphics are suitable for a mobile game – and the fact that modern gaming computers can achieve almost four-digit fps – quite reasonably respectable, primarily the lighting and the colorful effects provide optical variety. On closer inspection, however, the low-resolution textures, some of which are marred by compression artifacts, the low-polygon display and the generally very low-resolution presentation that clearly flickers, especially when moving, are noticeable. Also ugly: The user interface is huge for the desktop PC, it is not uncommon for you not to see the game because of the large, brown text boxes, instructions and touch screen icons. There is not (yet) a scaling option for this, such as in WoW.

Diablo Immortal PC: Technical issues and teething problems

In view of Blizzard’s focus on mobile devices, the user interface is hardly or not at all adapted to PC needs. On top of that, the open beta is full of small bugs. Empty announcement windows (see image above) are the more harmless examples. The clickable frames of some confirmation fields may deviate from the boxes actually displayed. The chat can be deactivated, but a restart is required to hide messages that have already been sent. The unusual control methods are particularly annoying for PC players. Not every menu can be closed with the Escape key, but when you instinctively press it, the general overview always opens with main items such as shop, skills, quests and friends – a long-time PC user will never get used to that.

As already mentioned, the resolution cannot be adjusted on the PC, instead the content is always rendered in Full HD. Owners of WQHD and Ultra HD monitors will inevitably have to live with blurring at the moment. On mobile devices, on the other hand, it is possible to change the resolution from very blurred to acceptably sharp, depending on the device, but the setting options depend purely on the device recognized and the permitted parameters. In the test with a Snapdragon 845 (Pocophone F1, Android 12), the frame rate cannot be set above 30, regardless of the user’s wishes. With stronger models like the Snapdragon 865 Plus (Samsung Tab S7 Plus, Android 12), the frame rate can be selected at 60, but not the maximum render resolution.

The controls on the mobile devices are intuitive given the development history, gamepads such as the Xbox One S controller are supported, however, confirmation and return functions under the A and B buttons are often set reversed. On the PC, the controls are individually customizable, which is recommended depending on your habit in games like classic Diablo or Path of Exile. But even with the correctly configured settings, there are bugs, such as the character running into a corner randomly activated – by the way, this does not mean the integrated automatic quest path finding. The German language translation is peppered with minor inconsistencies. There is no German dubbing of the dialogues.

From the second page you will find the first benchmark results from Diablo Immortal, from flagships like the RX 6950 XT and RTX 3090 to old cards like the GT 630 and an extreme example of an old notebook. One graphics option turned out to be particularly problematic in the test.