- Nov 16, 2006
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I just completed one very fun run through the game Torchlight 2. For the unaware: the Torchlight series is an almost point for point clone of the Diablo series with some quality of life improvements and a gentler 3d WoW style (still an isometric perspective and plenty of gore).
Let's get the story out of the way: There is the trappings of a story and some drawn cutscenes in the single player campaign. For anyone that has played Diablo 2, you'll find the story tends to revolve around some very similar if not outright lifted ideas. Much of the story is hidden in the text of characters that give you quests, and the game definitely shows more than tells. Long and short, this isn't a game to be played for the story or cutscenes.
You play the game for that sweet ARPG loot and character building. If you're like me and was burned by Diablo 3's auction house and complete removal of stat points and "weird" character builds, Torchlight 2 will be right up your alley. On a normal difficulty setting, Torchlight tends to be very forgiving in what it will accommodate in terms of builds and stat point distribution. In many ways, the game handles this much better than the Diablo series ever did, with all stat points having some sort of relevance to any of the 4 character types.
For example, I ran through the campaign with a 2H- Strength/Dexterity heavy Engineer class with the majority of my skill points placed in the "summoning" tree that is normally meant for ranged builds. It worked great and I really only died a handful of times through the entire game without assigning a single stat point to Vitality despite engineers fitting the archetypal "tank" roll. Then again, I've also read that Engineers are the most versatile class, so I may not have had the most representative playthrough either.
Loot also tends to hang around for a bit after you equip it thanks to enchantments (which add extra special abilities to items) as well as socketable gems. There is plenty of vendor trash that you pick up while dungeon crawling, but thankfully your pet (one of the major QoL improvements in Torchlight, who has their own inventory and equipment slots) can run up to town to sell your wares so you don't have to stop dungeon crawling.
Quality of Life improvments here are nice. As mentioned, your pet is there to round out your character and can act as a mini-tank or magic user (thanks to a compliment of learnable spells, another QoL feature, that are available for all classes and pets to use). I always like playing a summoner type character, so I outfitted my pet with a number of summoning spells, while outfitting my own character with a number of passive experience and gold boosting spells.
As for endgame content, you have two choices: The Mapworks, which is basically a random dungeon generator that you can run your character through for more loot and experience, or New Game + which as we're all familiar with re-rolls the world and levels it up to match your character.
All in all, I had a great time with Torchlight 2. It also makes a great "2nd monitor" game: it doesn't have much story and doesn't require a huge amount of attention, there are no timers and its very easy to run through a dungeon in roughly 30 minutes to an hour so its very pick up and playable. Tons of loot, very accessible to non-min/maxed character builds, solid mechanics that do a familiar thing very well as opposed to trying something new and failing.
Let's get the story out of the way: There is the trappings of a story and some drawn cutscenes in the single player campaign. For anyone that has played Diablo 2, you'll find the story tends to revolve around some very similar if not outright lifted ideas. Much of the story is hidden in the text of characters that give you quests, and the game definitely shows more than tells. Long and short, this isn't a game to be played for the story or cutscenes.
You play the game for that sweet ARPG loot and character building. If you're like me and was burned by Diablo 3's auction house and complete removal of stat points and "weird" character builds, Torchlight 2 will be right up your alley. On a normal difficulty setting, Torchlight tends to be very forgiving in what it will accommodate in terms of builds and stat point distribution. In many ways, the game handles this much better than the Diablo series ever did, with all stat points having some sort of relevance to any of the 4 character types.
For example, I ran through the campaign with a 2H- Strength/Dexterity heavy Engineer class with the majority of my skill points placed in the "summoning" tree that is normally meant for ranged builds. It worked great and I really only died a handful of times through the entire game without assigning a single stat point to Vitality despite engineers fitting the archetypal "tank" roll. Then again, I've also read that Engineers are the most versatile class, so I may not have had the most representative playthrough either.
Loot also tends to hang around for a bit after you equip it thanks to enchantments (which add extra special abilities to items) as well as socketable gems. There is plenty of vendor trash that you pick up while dungeon crawling, but thankfully your pet (one of the major QoL improvements in Torchlight, who has their own inventory and equipment slots) can run up to town to sell your wares so you don't have to stop dungeon crawling.
Quality of Life improvments here are nice. As mentioned, your pet is there to round out your character and can act as a mini-tank or magic user (thanks to a compliment of learnable spells, another QoL feature, that are available for all classes and pets to use). I always like playing a summoner type character, so I outfitted my pet with a number of summoning spells, while outfitting my own character with a number of passive experience and gold boosting spells.
As for endgame content, you have two choices: The Mapworks, which is basically a random dungeon generator that you can run your character through for more loot and experience, or New Game + which as we're all familiar with re-rolls the world and levels it up to match your character.
All in all, I had a great time with Torchlight 2. It also makes a great "2nd monitor" game: it doesn't have much story and doesn't require a huge amount of attention, there are no timers and its very easy to run through a dungeon in roughly 30 minutes to an hour so its very pick up and playable. Tons of loot, very accessible to non-min/maxed character builds, solid mechanics that do a familiar thing very well as opposed to trying something new and failing.
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