Seems I was really bored, so I played a little more of Diablo Immortal on PC. And I might actually be done with it.
As I said previously, it's pretty impresive for a mobile game, and in certain gameplay areas it's even better than Diablo 3.
Aside from the monetization galore, where you truly feel that even though a lot of the game is free and you don't have to pay, it's so "in your face" that you're constantly pulled out of the immersive experience.
Aside from that, the game also constantly feels like fan-fiction and pandering in terms of the story and world. I mean they actually constantly make use of story points or characters or locations from Diablo 2, so much so that it's getting annoying. You meet Charsi again, and Akhara, and Kashya, you reach the Tree of Innifus, you fight the Priestess, or whatever she was, of the Forgotten Tower. It's constant name-dropping from Diablo 2. Feels very lazy, and I'm not sure why they did this. It's not like the hardcore fans of Diablo 2 are either gonna play it or really enjoy all of this pandering. And the main audience will likely have no idea of any of these references.
It really feels like any respect to the Diablo lore pretty much died with Diablo 2. Diablo 3 took a steaming shit on it. DI seems to be doing an even bigger one. I wonder how Diablo 4 will feel, since that looks a little more like Diablo 2. I hope they take it seriously again. It's not that there was anything exceptional with how D2 handled it, but at least it took itself a little more seriously.
Oh, forgot to mention this. Another thing which makes it hard to enjoy DI as a singleplayer experience is the fact that there is no sp mode. So while you're trying to pay attention to character animations and whatnot, the other players are just fighting demons right beside you while you're in a dialogue sequence. Awful. This is one of the reasons I really hate mmos or multiplayer games where you can't control how much of it you're exposed to. It's constant noise on my screen that has nothing to do with me. It's just messy and obnoxious.