I just beat Torchlight a few days ago and I wanted to pen my thoughts while they are fresh in my mind. This is a odd review to write as its now taken me over two years to finally complete Torchlight and we are still in the throws of the Diablo 3 release. That said, Diablo 3 won't change too many of my thoughts as ive had years to solidify them.

I picked up Torchlight about a two+ year's ago after trying the demo out and enjoying it. Since I wasn't really into purchasing games digitally at the time, I bought the box copy for $20. I installed the game and I was pleasantly surprised the full game just used my existing demo character. No restarting, just continuing on. That was a pretty nice feature as most games don't allow you to pickup after the demo when you buy the full game.

I started playing Torchlight as the tank class on a whim because, typically I play magic user and I just wanted to do something different. Immediately I loved the tank and felt like I was a pretty hefty bad-ass killing everything that stood in my way. I was happy that Torchlight ran smooth on my old Desktop. I was running the best AGP video card you could get and it looked fantastic on the old hardware. Torchlight is a game optimised for Netbooks so you can run it on lower power hardware. That said, the game looks beautiful and the art doesn't suffer all all in my opinion.

After a few days of playing it I noticed the game wasn't too much fun after an hour or so of play and over a week or so I stopped playing it and only picked it up every two weeks to a month. Torchlight is fun its just not immersive enough for me to play it more than once a month.

One huge problem I had with Torchlight is if I hovered over a bad guy with my mouse and clicked on them I had no idea my guy was attacking that specific enemy. In Diablo when you hover over a enemy it highlights it. This really helps me understand what I am going to attack. In Torchlight often I would be clicking to attack and I wasn't actually swinging at anything. I evolved a play style where I would use my other abilities more because they were area of effect attacks and I knew I would be hitting things. It wasn't frustrating, I just didn't feel effective and the game seemed broken in that way.

The game also very easy and I didn't feel challenged. I don't believe I died once.

The story wasn't much to think about. I honestly don't remember what went on. Some evil Wizard did something bad? Something about Embers? I don't really remember it wasn't very important to the game.

The hack and slash of the game is fun but there must be a point to all of it or I stop playing. The game was fun enough for a few days of a few hours of play but long term it flattened out for me.

The soundtrack is good and it is VERY reminiscent of the Diablo soundtrack as Matt Uelmen composed it. You can hear the nods to the Diablo 2 themes in the village music and other areas. Fun to hear it and it brought me right into the dungeon crawling mood.

I will most likely check out Torchlight 2 at some point and hope they improve some of the core mechanics and spend a bit longer on the story and characters. The game isn't too far off the mark it just didn't resonate with me in the way it did for other people.

Did you play Torchlight? What did you think of it?

vdogmr25 wrote on 06/10/2012 at 01:14am

I enjoyed Torchlight quite a bit. I went as the mage my first outing on medium, and by the time I got to the final 5 floors, it was touch and go. I went back and played as the gunslinger on hard, and it was a milk run. I think they have some class balancing to do. I found the aesthetic really nice in particular. I really enjoy the art style they went with. I also had a similar problem getting into the story. Thankfully, the TL2 beta was a lot more story/quest driven. We'll see how the next one does.

jdodson   Admin   Post Author wrote on 06/10/2012 at 05:20pm

That's great news. They have a lot of great things to really build on so I hope TL2 really ups the ante.

If you want to join this conversation you need to sign in.
Sign Up / Log In