Since Diablo Immortal's announcement fans have been wary of the mobile title even at the best of times. Following the reveal of Diablo Immortal in 2018, many fans found the idea of a mobile Diablo title to be a cruel April Fool's joke, especially due to the fact that, at the time, Diablo 4 had not yet been announced. However, Blizzard soon proved that Diablo Immortal was very much a real game, with it officially releasing on mobile and PC platforms just recently.
Since Diablo Immortal's release, fan fears have become a reality as the game is heavily bogged down with microtransactions that can result in a player spending over $100,000 and still not fully being able to upgrade their character. Due to the extremely high price of entry for Diablo Immortal, combined with the accusations that the game is entirely based on a pay-to-win mechanic, Blizzard's latest release has seen horrendously low scores from its user base.
While the critical reception to Diablo Immortal has been positive, with the game overall scoring a 79 on Metacritic's critic score, the user scores is where Diablo Immortal is getting review bombed. Recently, when the total number of user-submitted reviews was around 1600, Diablo Immortal had an overall score of 0.6, making it one of the worst user scores for a Blizzard game. Now, it has officially gained the title of having the worst user score on Metacritic, with 2485 users bringing the game's score down to 0.5.
This makes the third Blizzard game in as many years to reach a user score of below 1.0 on Metacritic. Previously, the 2021 re-release of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade also gained a score of 0.5. However, with only 371 user reviews for that game it does not have nearly the same negative reception as Diablo Immortal's user scoring. The third Blizzard title to receive a score of less than 1.0 was Warcraft 3: Reforged, which was accused of lacking many features from the 2002 original game.
Whether Blizzard will listen to the overwhelmingly negative reception of Diablo Immortal is unknown. Currently, fans and gamers are questioning Blizzard developers like Game Director Wyatt Cheng on what improvements can be made to the game. Many have found Cheng's previous comments that there would be no way to rank up gear through real money in Diablo Immortal to be disingenuous following the game's release. One streamer has making the news through trying and failing to find gems in Diablo Immortal, and has so far spent $10,000 without getting a 5-star legendary gem, showing how flawed the current loot system can be.
Diablo Immortal is out now for iOS and Android devices with a PC version in early access.
Source: Metacritic