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Torchlight II
Torchlight was one of many action role-playing titles that arrived in the wake of Diablo II's success. Though many have come and went, it was Torchlight that really struck gold in the hearts and minds of gamers all over, offering up an experience that was both familiar and unique, all at the same time. It was an immensely enjoyable romp through countless dungeons that increased in difficulty the longer you played. Random loot drops are always huge draws for games in this genre and Torchlight offered up random loot drops by the truck load. Its random dungeon layouts, unique visual art style, and addictive gameplay propelled Torchlight to the top of the charts on Steam.
From the onset of Torchlight II, you can tell that this is a game that doesn't mess around. You're immediately thrown into a world where you can hack, slash, and magically destroy countless foes until they drop some of that precious loot that fans of this genre crave. After the battle, a scan of your inventory quickly tells you if you have a better item ready to be equipped and then it's on to the next group of foes to test out your shiny new gear. Do this for dozens of hours until the final fight and then you go back and you do it again. See, the huge appeal of games like Torchlight II doesn't necessarily lay with the story. Rather, it's the draw of finding better gear, leveling up, and working towards building a total badass of a character. Needless to say, Torchlight II excels at this like none other.
Though it may be unimportant to you, the story in Torchlight II is told through a few sporadic animated cut-scenes. The cut-scenes were done by the fantastic animation team behind Shank (Klei Entertainment), so if the unique visual style looks familiar to you, you now know why. When you aren't sitting through a few minutes of cut-scene, the story is played out through interactions with NPCs encountered in your journey. This should seem at home to anybody who has played an RPG at any point in their life. The basic gist of the story is that the Alchemist from the first title has become corrupted by the Ember Blight. The Blight creates a lot of bad monsters throughout the world and it's up to you, our hero, to stop it. Most players will probably listen to the story and read through much of the NPC interactions on their first play through, but will ultimately skip past it all on subsequent romps through the game. The story probably won't win any awards but it's a competent attempt at explaining the who, what, where, why, and how of what is happening in the world.
The game plays as you might expect a game in the ARPG genre to. You have a skill bar that allows you to quickly access your favorite offensive or defensive abilities once you've unlocked them. There is a place to view your health and another place to view your magical reserves. Each of the four primary classes also have an additional bar that fills up as you kill large groups of enemies. This bar simply allows the player to have increased attack speed or improved defenses until a time in which the bar is depleted from a lack of action. If you thought your mouse needed a rest after Diablo III, then it's in for a world of hurt here. Torchlight II's action feels a bit faster paced than what you may be used to in other games in the genre. The clicking of targets allows your character to execute basic attacks while you ready your special abilities. Clicking is also used to move about the game's immense environments. Having both actions bound to one key is sometimes an issue as you may end up clicking on an enemy, throwing your character into an attack, when what you really meant to do was run away to safety.
That is the basic idea behind Torchlight II. You click, you kill, you get loot drops, and you click and kill some more. It's a simple premise but the draw is always in discovering new areas, exploring difficult dungeons, and picking up that rare weapon that nobody else has yet. In case you were still unaware, the loot drops in Torchlight II are random. It is essentially a roll of the invisible dice as to what items will drop from which mobs, though tougher enemies will almost always have a higher chance at dropping rarer items. Sell the items you cannot use, or store them for later use on another character. You may even trade with some online buddies if you would rather not fly solo.
Visually, Torchlight II retains the same colorful and exaggerated art style that its predecessor had. The lighting, texture work, and cel-shaded like visuals are easily recognizable and remains visually appealing through the game's three acts. Magical abilities and other special actions are typically highlighted with bright, flashy displays of colorful visual flair. At times it's almost as if you're playing through a masterfully drawn cartoon, which is a great thing here for the most part. There are times where there is just so much happening on the screen at any given time that it is possible to lose your mouse in the fray.
The visual options for Torchlight II are rather sparse, but it's not really a very demanding game to begin with. One thing I applaud the team at Runic for in the fact that there is an option to disable white level (lowest) items from being highlighted on the ground. This makes it a lot easier to avoid junk gear filling up your inventory when your player is rolling in the finest of blues, greens, purples and gold items.
The atmosphere extends beyond the game's visuals thanks to the fantastic soundtrack highlighted with low drum beats, excellent orchestral string work, and guitar. The music and environmental sounds are almost haunting in nature, really driving forth the idea that despite the colorful visuals, uncertainty and the potential for death are always just around the next corner. More powerful attacks and critical hits pack an incredible punch and actually sound like a truly devastating devastating attack. The sights sounds, and onscreen feedback in the form of floating combat numbers make for a wonderful experience for the senses.
In the first Torchlight, the core game really just consisted of one very deep dungeon. The player was tasked with diving deeper into a single dungeon in order to progress the story. In Torchlight II, the game takes a more traditional approach by featuring an open, explorable world. Dungeons and world environments are randomly generated, just as the loot drops are, meaning that multiple playthroughs may never yield an identical gameplay experience. Throughout the games various explorable environments, players will encounter additional side-quests and random dungeons. Completing these quests and dungeons will typically yield the player with gold, experience, and possibly a new item. As is the case with most games in this genre, the quest rewards usually aren't all that much better than what you'll find in a random drop ten minutes down the road.
It's this move to a more explorable gameplay style that gives Torchlight II a more engaging experience for the player. The pace of the game flows smoothly from one area to the other without the need to do senseless grinding. The game's later acts pull the player away from lush, green landscapes to deserts, deadly swamps, and other desolate and forsaken landscapes. For those players firing up Torchlight II after playing other games in the genre, it may be worthwhile to bump the difficulty up a notch as Normal may largely feel like a cakewalk at times. At other times, especially when random challenges pop up that whisk you away to a new area, the difficulty could be overwhelming for just one player to tackle.
Fortunately, Torchlight II offers players the ability to easily play with a few buddies. All that is needed is an account through the Runic website that links back to your Steam account. Once enabled, players can easily connect to their friends' games or hop into any number of public games going on thanks to a simple server browser. The more players that join a game, the harder the mobs become and the better chance for better loot to drop. It provides a decent challenge without becoming absurdly difficult. Unlike in Diablo III, the multiplayer experience in Torchlight II isn't quite as refined. It's not possible to link items in chat for others to see, which is slightly disappointing.
Much to the joy, or perhaps disdain, of gamers is the fact that Torchlight II does not feature an auction house. Personally, this seems like a huge plus for Torchlight II. Now, if you want some of the best loot in the game you will actually have to work for it instead of plunking down a few of your hard-earned dollars to cheese your way to earning better stats. Naturally, players may always go the old-school route and set up personal trades through message boards or sites dedicated to trading items.
After your first complete playthrough of Torchlight II, there is still plenty for you to do. Either continue along exploring dungeons you may have missed, or purchase any number of random dungeon scrolls using some of that surplus currency you've accumulated on your journey. Perhaps you may wish to simply jump right into New Game+ on a harder difficulty. Torchlight II is all about player choice and even the end-game content shines brightly in this aspect.
Want to know the best part about Torchlight II? It's moddable, just as the first game was. The modding community made some fantastic tools and content releases for the first game and I would not be surprised to see the same effort put into the Torchlight II mod scene. Runic has also promised to release free content updates down the road for Torchlight II that will add new dungeons and areas at no extra charge to the player.
Sadly, the game isn't all sunshine and rainbows. There are a few issues that I encountered on my journey but nothing that was severely game breaking. Companion pathing will sometimes go a bit haywire, occasionally placing pets in areas where they cannot easily path back to the player. This is especially apparent after they return from selling items back in town. They will, however, warp to your location once you move a short distance away. Player customization at the start of the game is rather limited. There are preset heads, hair styles, and hair color for both male and female avatars. That is it. Sure, the unique gear you pick up along your journey will show on your character, but their facial features are still limited. However, this doesn't matter too much given how you are typically busy bashing some skulls in to ever pay too much attention to what you look like.
One more issue, one that is a bit more game breaking than the others, is the fact that movement and the primary attack are both on the primary mouse button by default. This will sometimes result in situations where your character will attack an enemy when what you really meant to do was escape to a safer location. It's actually impressive that these were the only real issues I had with the game, especially for a title that can easily offer up hundreds of hours of gameplay and multiple playthroughs.
Torchlight II offers up a tremendous value for the price. At just $19.99 (USD), you will be hard pressed to find a modern game that offers up as much gameplay at a similar price point. Honestly, I'm rather surprised that Runic didn't end up charging more for this, because they could have easily charged more than double the price, and it would still be a great value.
In a gaming world dominated by Diablo III fatigue, it's nice to see that Torchlight II is capable of picking up the reigns to become the new standard to beat in the action role-playing genre.
Relevant Links
Torchlight II on Steam
Torchlight II Website
Torchlight II was provided to TGN for review purposes from Runic Games.
Torchlight was one of many action role-playing titles that arrived in the wake of Diablo II's success. Though many have come and went, it was Torchlight that really struck gold in the hearts and minds of gamers all over, offering up an experience that was both familiar and unique, all at the same time. It was an immensely enjoyable romp through countless dungeons that increased in difficulty the longer you played. Random loot drops are always huge draws for games in this genre and Torchlight offered up random loot drops by the truck load. Its random dungeon layouts, unique visual art style, and addictive gameplay propelled Torchlight to the top of the charts on Steam.
From the onset of Torchlight II, you can tell that this is a game that doesn't mess around. You're immediately thrown into a world where you can hack, slash, and magically destroy countless foes until they drop some of that precious loot that fans of this genre crave. After the battle, a scan of your inventory quickly tells you if you have a better item ready to be equipped and then it's on to the next group of foes to test out your shiny new gear. Do this for dozens of hours until the final fight and then you go back and you do it again. See, the huge appeal of games like Torchlight II doesn't necessarily lay with the story. Rather, it's the draw of finding better gear, leveling up, and working towards building a total badass of a character. Needless to say, Torchlight II excels at this like none other.
Though it may be unimportant to you, the story in Torchlight II is told through a few sporadic animated cut-scenes. The cut-scenes were done by the fantastic animation team behind Shank (Klei Entertainment), so if the unique visual style looks familiar to you, you now know why. When you aren't sitting through a few minutes of cut-scene, the story is played out through interactions with NPCs encountered in your journey. This should seem at home to anybody who has played an RPG at any point in their life. The basic gist of the story is that the Alchemist from the first title has become corrupted by the Ember Blight. The Blight creates a lot of bad monsters throughout the world and it's up to you, our hero, to stop it. Most players will probably listen to the story and read through much of the NPC interactions on their first play through, but will ultimately skip past it all on subsequent romps through the game. The story probably won't win any awards but it's a competent attempt at explaining the who, what, where, why, and how of what is happening in the world.
The game plays as you might expect a game in the ARPG genre to. You have a skill bar that allows you to quickly access your favorite offensive or defensive abilities once you've unlocked them. There is a place to view your health and another place to view your magical reserves. Each of the four primary classes also have an additional bar that fills up as you kill large groups of enemies. This bar simply allows the player to have increased attack speed or improved defenses until a time in which the bar is depleted from a lack of action. If you thought your mouse needed a rest after Diablo III, then it's in for a world of hurt here. Torchlight II's action feels a bit faster paced than what you may be used to in other games in the genre. The clicking of targets allows your character to execute basic attacks while you ready your special abilities. Clicking is also used to move about the game's immense environments. Having both actions bound to one key is sometimes an issue as you may end up clicking on an enemy, throwing your character into an attack, when what you really meant to do was run away to safety.
That is the basic idea behind Torchlight II. You click, you kill, you get loot drops, and you click and kill some more. It's a simple premise but the draw is always in discovering new areas, exploring difficult dungeons, and picking up that rare weapon that nobody else has yet. In case you were still unaware, the loot drops in Torchlight II are random. It is essentially a roll of the invisible dice as to what items will drop from which mobs, though tougher enemies will almost always have a higher chance at dropping rarer items. Sell the items you cannot use, or store them for later use on another character. You may even trade with some online buddies if you would rather not fly solo.
Visually, Torchlight II retains the same colorful and exaggerated art style that its predecessor had. The lighting, texture work, and cel-shaded like visuals are easily recognizable and remains visually appealing through the game's three acts. Magical abilities and other special actions are typically highlighted with bright, flashy displays of colorful visual flair. At times it's almost as if you're playing through a masterfully drawn cartoon, which is a great thing here for the most part. There are times where there is just so much happening on the screen at any given time that it is possible to lose your mouse in the fray.
The visual options for Torchlight II are rather sparse, but it's not really a very demanding game to begin with. One thing I applaud the team at Runic for in the fact that there is an option to disable white level (lowest) items from being highlighted on the ground. This makes it a lot easier to avoid junk gear filling up your inventory when your player is rolling in the finest of blues, greens, purples and gold items.
The atmosphere extends beyond the game's visuals thanks to the fantastic soundtrack highlighted with low drum beats, excellent orchestral string work, and guitar. The music and environmental sounds are almost haunting in nature, really driving forth the idea that despite the colorful visuals, uncertainty and the potential for death are always just around the next corner. More powerful attacks and critical hits pack an incredible punch and actually sound like a truly devastating devastating attack. The sights sounds, and onscreen feedback in the form of floating combat numbers make for a wonderful experience for the senses.
In the first Torchlight, the core game really just consisted of one very deep dungeon. The player was tasked with diving deeper into a single dungeon in order to progress the story. In Torchlight II, the game takes a more traditional approach by featuring an open, explorable world. Dungeons and world environments are randomly generated, just as the loot drops are, meaning that multiple playthroughs may never yield an identical gameplay experience. Throughout the games various explorable environments, players will encounter additional side-quests and random dungeons. Completing these quests and dungeons will typically yield the player with gold, experience, and possibly a new item. As is the case with most games in this genre, the quest rewards usually aren't all that much better than what you'll find in a random drop ten minutes down the road.
It's this move to a more explorable gameplay style that gives Torchlight II a more engaging experience for the player. The pace of the game flows smoothly from one area to the other without the need to do senseless grinding. The game's later acts pull the player away from lush, green landscapes to deserts, deadly swamps, and other desolate and forsaken landscapes. For those players firing up Torchlight II after playing other games in the genre, it may be worthwhile to bump the difficulty up a notch as Normal may largely feel like a cakewalk at times. At other times, especially when random challenges pop up that whisk you away to a new area, the difficulty could be overwhelming for just one player to tackle.
Fortunately, Torchlight II offers players the ability to easily play with a few buddies. All that is needed is an account through the Runic website that links back to your Steam account. Once enabled, players can easily connect to their friends' games or hop into any number of public games going on thanks to a simple server browser. The more players that join a game, the harder the mobs become and the better chance for better loot to drop. It provides a decent challenge without becoming absurdly difficult. Unlike in Diablo III, the multiplayer experience in Torchlight II isn't quite as refined. It's not possible to link items in chat for others to see, which is slightly disappointing.
Much to the joy, or perhaps disdain, of gamers is the fact that Torchlight II does not feature an auction house. Personally, this seems like a huge plus for Torchlight II. Now, if you want some of the best loot in the game you will actually have to work for it instead of plunking down a few of your hard-earned dollars to cheese your way to earning better stats. Naturally, players may always go the old-school route and set up personal trades through message boards or sites dedicated to trading items.
After your first complete playthrough of Torchlight II, there is still plenty for you to do. Either continue along exploring dungeons you may have missed, or purchase any number of random dungeon scrolls using some of that surplus currency you've accumulated on your journey. Perhaps you may wish to simply jump right into New Game+ on a harder difficulty. Torchlight II is all about player choice and even the end-game content shines brightly in this aspect.
Want to know the best part about Torchlight II? It's moddable, just as the first game was. The modding community made some fantastic tools and content releases for the first game and I would not be surprised to see the same effort put into the Torchlight II mod scene. Runic has also promised to release free content updates down the road for Torchlight II that will add new dungeons and areas at no extra charge to the player.
Sadly, the game isn't all sunshine and rainbows. There are a few issues that I encountered on my journey but nothing that was severely game breaking. Companion pathing will sometimes go a bit haywire, occasionally placing pets in areas where they cannot easily path back to the player. This is especially apparent after they return from selling items back in town. They will, however, warp to your location once you move a short distance away. Player customization at the start of the game is rather limited. There are preset heads, hair styles, and hair color for both male and female avatars. That is it. Sure, the unique gear you pick up along your journey will show on your character, but their facial features are still limited. However, this doesn't matter too much given how you are typically busy bashing some skulls in to ever pay too much attention to what you look like.
One more issue, one that is a bit more game breaking than the others, is the fact that movement and the primary attack are both on the primary mouse button by default. This will sometimes result in situations where your character will attack an enemy when what you really meant to do was escape to a safer location. It's actually impressive that these were the only real issues I had with the game, especially for a title that can easily offer up hundreds of hours of gameplay and multiple playthroughs.
Torchlight II offers up a tremendous value for the price. At just $19.99 (USD), you will be hard pressed to find a modern game that offers up as much gameplay at a similar price point. Honestly, I'm rather surprised that Runic didn't end up charging more for this, because they could have easily charged more than double the price, and it would still be a great value.
In a gaming world dominated by Diablo III fatigue, it's nice to see that Torchlight II is capable of picking up the reigns to become the new standard to beat in the action role-playing genre.
Overall: 9/10
Gameplay: 9.5/10
Audio: 9/10
Visuals: 8/10
Value: 9/10
Gameplay: 9.5/10
Audio: 9/10
Visuals: 8/10
Value: 9/10
Relevant Links
Torchlight II on Steam
Torchlight II Website
Torchlight II was provided to TGN for review purposes from Runic Games.
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