By now, I'm sure many of you are already familiar with Torchlight, the inaugural opus of developer Runic Games. It was a class-based action RPG/dungeon-crawler that bears an uncanny resemblance to a hypothetical hybrid of Diablo and Gauntlet.
I played Torchlight 2 for about an hour at PAX 2011, experimenting with the Outlander (a lithe rogue-esque class) and the Embermage (a ranged magic class) in the game's second major area. The overworld is randomly generated using large pre-made chunks. So while a landmark might be in a different place with each playthrough, the landmark itself will be the same.
Those familiar with the first title in the series will have no trouble with the new content. This really just is Torchlight with tighter graphics a MUCH bigger world, spells, items, talents, and content. And that's definitely not a bad thing.
I started my playtime with the Outlander, having a natural inclination for rogues. I had access to about a dozen different abilities that had some nice variation and gorgeous animations. Within a few minutes, I set off to challenge a boss in the area and had relatively little trouble. I don't know what difficulty I was on, but I could see the game being a bit too easy, especially if baddies don't scale with the number of players. The Embermage was fairly intuitive as well, and I had a lot of fun with rudimentary adventuring.
A lot of work has gone into making sure Torchlight 2 has replayability. When your characters hit the level cap (I was told to expect it to be around 50), they can confer buffs and perks to new characters. There's a match-making system, full modding support, and suite of other features to to ensure you get your money's worth, all for the paltry sum of $20.
Torchlight 2 is due out later this year. If you haven't played the first one, it's $15 on Steam, and it's really good, especially if you like dungeon crawlers.
Is there more atmosphere? Torchlight had everything going for it in terms of design, but.. Jesus.. I just didn't give a crap at all. I quit after 5 hours just because it felt like busy work.
Like I said, I can't argue with the mechanics. However, there was something so naked and obvious about the whole thing. I couldn't help but feel like a mouse on a wheel, just going through the motions. Maybe ARPGs just aren't for me, but neither Diablo really did that to me.
I'm probably the only person in the world to play both Diablo 2 and Torchlight -for my first time- back-to-back. This was just a few months ago as well. Diablo 2, despite it's aging mechanics, just drew me in. Torchlight, despite playing a lot better and dealing with many of my frustrations with D2, left me feeling like I was playing a flash game. It was very well designed, but it just felt entirely vacuous and soulless. I had fun making baddies go squish, but I just couldn't get excited about it at all.
Maybe Torchlight 2 will change that. If not, there's always Diablo 3.
-Not all landmarks will be the same. Some have multiple versions.
-You were on normal. We are still balancing out difficulties.
-Difficulty of baddies does scale with multiple players.
-Also you didn't to mention anything about co op, and lan support, which were both shown at PAX. :/
-And of course nothing in that build was final, its still all going through revisions and polish.
:)
@Red: good point. Although, to be fair, I played D2 sans multi. Cash sellers have basically ruined D2 multi. (which makes all the criticism of the auction house sort of hilarious)
I'm really excited for this game, but having it be so close doesn't make me want to spend money on the first title, since this seems like such a vast improvement.
TORCHLIGHT is everything GAUNTLET: DARK LEGACY would've been as a franchise if it were allowed to continue, rather than SEVEN SORROWS driving it into the ground. Long live TORCHLIGHT.
Now I can only hope that when you get a set that you like you can somehow transfer stats from other armor sets to it.. because I could totally see myself in steampunk armor with smokestacks, ALL THE TIME.. of course then you just get the PvP whiners all "Oh I couldn't tell what set they were actually wearing so its unfair, whaaaaa whaaaaa"
I loved a lot about Torchlight 1, except player direction.
I wasn't sure where to go after I unlocked a few different dungeons. My journal wasn't much help. I found myself going back into dungeons I had already been in, and going further down, and down, past empty halls that I had cleared before, and trying to complete this quest that I must have missed somewhere. Eventually with a bit of trial and error, I found the latest dungeon I should be in, while still having lower level quests I hadn't completed.
It would have been nice to have just a little more player direction on which dungeon was which, and where I should be.
I believe Torchlight 1 gave dishwater-taste-in-the-mouth due to the slow run speed and the swivel turning of the character. The run speed was SO unstimulating and the swivel turning was aesthetically painful to my eyes. Now when I used haste, I started to feel Diablo 2.
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Contest:
8:30 PM on 09.08.2011 | 
Maybe Torchlight 2 will change that. If not, there's always Diablo 3.
-You were on normal. We are still balancing out difficulties.
-Difficulty of baddies does scale with multiple players.
-Also you didn't to mention anything about co op, and lan support, which were both shown at PAX. :/
-And of course nothing in that build was final, its still all going through revisions and polish.
:)
Torchlight 2 has multiplayer and that will make the game so much better when you're grinding with someone else.
God I want this.
Now I can only hope that when you get a set that you like you can somehow transfer stats from other armor sets to it.. because I could totally see myself in steampunk armor with smokestacks, ALL THE TIME.. of course then you just get the PvP whiners all "Oh I couldn't tell what set they were actually wearing so its unfair, whaaaaa whaaaaa"
I wasn't sure where to go after I unlocked a few different dungeons. My journal wasn't much help. I found myself going back into dungeons I had already been in, and going further down, and down, past empty halls that I had cleared before, and trying to complete this quest that I must have missed somewhere. Eventually with a bit of trial and error, I found the latest dungeon I should be in, while still having lower level quests I hadn't completed.
It would have been nice to have just a little more player direction on which dungeon was which, and where I should be.