Torchlight II Review

Torchlight II Review
The first Torchlight was a surprise hit in 2009, one that has robbed several hours of my life on launch. It didn't have a story that I felt was oozing with lore like the Diablo series, but for a point and click action RPG Torchlight kept me engaged with the amazing dungeons and hundreds of loot to find.  The biggest feature about Torchlight II most gamers would be interested in is the multiplayer, yet I was looking forward to just experiencing more Torchlight.  The sequel does carry over some of the flaws with the original Torchlight, but Torchlight II improves just enough to feel like a more polished point and click action Role Playing Game experience. Torchlight II takes place right after the death of Ordrak, the final boss found deep underground in the first game.  The corrupted dragon's death seems to have caused a greater threat with the corruption of the Alchemist – one of the three original heroes in the first game.  A short cutscene at the beginning shows the Alchemist destroying the town of Torchlight in a rampage, very similar to the Wanderer's story arc in Diablo II. Unlike Diablo II, this story-arc for Torchlight II doesn't sync up well with the events of Torchlight.  At the end of Diablo it was implied your character was corrupted, but they consensually jammed the cursed soulstone into their forehead.  Here we are just told that the Alchemist became corrupted right at the beginning, which means new heroes have to come in to save the day while the originals stand around as quest givers. This leads to another flaw about the story of Torchlight II being one big laundry list of things you should do.  Each character you encounter serves little to the plot other than giving you quests.  These are always visible on the right side of your screen, constantly reminding you that you are meant to do X for Y person for Z reward.  This isn't the epic tale of a hero going out to save the world, but an intern that has to do mediocre work. The lore to Torchlight II is just a to-do list for your character, but at least the dungeons you are tasked to clean out stick to a theme.  If a lazy character sends you off to a dungeon infested with undead pirates, then expect skeletons holding flintlock pistols aimed at your pretty forehead.  Other dungeons will lead you towards dens of wild animals, which are more than willing to gnaw on your bones. The dungeons in Torchlight II are filled with life, which is surprising for a randomly generated dungeon game.  Minor aesthetic details like skeletons hanging from cages reaching out to your character, then giving up a few seconds later shows how pissed off they are for you to screw up their Feng Shui.  Other details will show rats or small spiders coming out of debris you break, and then going splat when you walk over them to get that…

Torchlight II

Game play - 8.5
Presentation - 8
Story / Creativity - 4
Lifespan - 8.5

7.3

Torchlight II has gotten a lot of hype from point and click action RPG fans over the past couple months since the mixed opinions of Diablo III, and in a way Torchlight II delivers a great package.

User Rating: 5 ( 1 votes)
7

The first Torchlight was a surprise hit in 2009, one that has robbed several hours of my life on launch.

It didn’t have a story that I felt was oozing with lore like the Diablo series, but for a point and click action RPG Torchlight kept me engaged with the amazing dungeons and hundreds of loot to find.  The biggest feature about Torchlight II most gamers would be interested in is the multiplayer, yet I was looking forward to just experiencing more Torchlight.  The sequel does carry over some of the flaws with the original Torchlight, but Torchlight II improves just enough to feel like a more polished point and click action Role Playing Game experience.

Torchlight II takes place right after the death of Ordrak, the final boss found deep underground in the first game.  The corrupted dragon’s death seems to have caused a greater threat with the corruption of the Alchemist – one of the three original heroes in the first game.  A short cutscene at the beginning shows the Alchemist destroying the town of Torchlight in a rampage, very similar to the Wanderer’s story arc in Diablo II.

Unlike Diablo II, this story-arc for Torchlight II doesn’t sync up well with the events of Torchlight.  At the end of Diablo it was implied your character was corrupted, but they consensually jammed the cursed soulstone into their forehead.  Here we are just told that the Alchemist became corrupted right at the beginning, which means new heroes have to come in to save the day while the originals stand around as quest givers.

This leads to another flaw about the story of Torchlight II being one big laundry list of things you should do.  Each character you encounter serves little to the plot other than giving you quests.  These are always visible on the right side of your screen, constantly reminding you that you are meant to do X for Y person for Z reward.  This isn’t the epic tale of a hero going out to save the world, but an intern that has to do mediocre work.

The lore to Torchlight II is just a to-do list for your character, but at least the dungeons you are tasked to clean out stick to a theme.  If a lazy character sends you off to a dungeon infested with undead pirates, then expect skeletons holding flintlock pistols aimed at your pretty forehead.  Other dungeons will lead you towards dens of wild animals, which are more than willing to gnaw on your bones.

The dungeons in Torchlight II are filled with life, which is surprising for a randomly generated dungeon game.  Minor aesthetic details like skeletons hanging from cages reaching out to your character, then giving up a few seconds later shows how pissed off they are for you to screw up their Feng Shui.  Other details will show rats or small spiders coming out of debris you break, and then going splat when you walk over them to get that blue cannon.

However, some flaws from Torchlight show up here.  Moving your character behind walls is still a problem as you have a hard time seeing where you can walk to or what is going on.  All you get are silhouettes showing monster and player locations, but this could be solved by making parts of the foreground obstructing the camera transparent.

Another complaint comes with the character models.  The details for each character are very minor when you look up close at them, resembling high quality models found in a PlayStation 2 game.  This hurts the character creation process as there is little aesthetic detail options to pick when designing your character.  But the camera is usually far away from your character when the game is playing, so you won’t be looking at them much.

The difficulty for Torchlight II has been improved over the original, which does make some boss fights really engaging.  These huge titans are recognizable with their gold font-names and a swarm of respawning monsters surrounding them.  Other challenges will require you to destroy respawning nodes before killing a host of monsters, thus giving you an endurance challenge.

The multiplayer feature for Torchlight II is a nice addition, though don’t expect this to be the holy grail for the game.  Mechanics like trading and specific loot drops keeps the game pretty fair.  However the game can also get boring if you get separated by your friends, then having to follow in their footsteps to pick up your loot through dead monsters.

Another feature added to Torchlight II which was desperately needed is to redistribute your character’s skill points, however this isn’t a great system.  A new character is found in hub-worlds that can refund your skill points, but only the last three you spent.  It’s better than nothing, though I would like to get more skill point refunds from this mechanic.

Torchlight II is a game that will keep you playing for a long time, most of that thanks to the randomly generated dungeon.  Each area will provide plenty of loot, monsters, and traps to keep you on the edge of your chair.  The traps are varied enough from summoning ghosts that drain your life, to accidentally awakening a lich.

Munchkin-lovers will enjoy the variety of loot found in Torchlight II.  You got plenty of weapons with their own tactics like wands delivering ranged elemental damage, to hammers doing slow but wide area of effect damage.  Plus with the tiers of enchantments on them, you’ll be always comparing new items to your old gear to see if you get better knockback with a flintlock pistol or that blue crossbow.

Torchlight II is a very easy game to pick up, but probably only for people familiar with point and click action RPGs.  If you know that clicking around makes your character move and hit anything that isn’t a quest-giver, then you should feel right at home in this game.  However the game does little in teaching you how to adjust your map or how valuable it is to using the shift key in combat.

I think newbies to the genre could use a tutorial, and there should be more context to the story explaining the situation to old and new players.  But once you look past these, you find that the randomly generated dungeons are breathtaking in terms of design along with plenty of loot to clutter your inventory.  Runic Games stated the free demo for the game is essentially the same, and a quick download after that should let you develop your own opinion.  Just be sure to say goodbye to your social life if you end up addicted to the game like I did.