Torchlight II Review

So three years ago a team with some top talent known for creating Diablo came together to form Runic Games and released the very well received Torchlight. It’s now 2012 and on the eve of armageddon they decided to grace us with one last game before the end of days.

Torchlight II
Developer: Runic Games
Price: $20
Platform: PC (reviewed)
An PC copy of Torchlight II was supplied to us

Taking a page from Diablo (not surprising since Runic Games is home to various Diablo veterans) the Alchemist from the first game has become corrupted and it’s your job to stop him. That’s the basic gist of the plot without getting into too much detail and it does its job decently enough.

Torchlight II plays like your typical dungeon crawler with the mouse controlling everything and the numeric buttons being assigned for skills. Everything feels incredibly polished and tight with my only small complaint being that sometimes environmental objects will block your view from things such as enemies. The game does highlight your character and any enemies in your view when your view is obstructed, but sometimes clicking on things there doesn’t always work. The three classes from the first game return as NPC’s so you’ll be treated to four new classes: the berserker is your dual wielding ‘in your face’ class, the engineer is the guy to play if you want to smash things with heavy weapons, outlanders are your ranged fighters, and embermages are your wizards. People will be happy to know that the classes have male/female variations and some little character customization this time around. Each class has a charge meter you fill each time you hit an enemy and when filled will allow you to get a big bonus for a brief period. For example the berserker will dish out constant critical hits as long as the meter remains full and the embermage gains bonus damage along with all skills requiring no mana cost for the duration of the charge. Once you beat the game (and it’ll take a while) you can start up New Game+ that will let you restart the game with your stuff and bump the enemy levels considerably.

Players who moaned at Diablo 3’s more streamlined approach to skills and leveling will feel comfortably at home with Torchlight II. Each time you level up you’ll get 5 points to put into your stats (strength, dexterity, focus, & vitality) and 1 point to upgrade a skill. Each class has three tabs each focusing on something different and there are around 30 skills total spread out among all three tabs. You’ll be able to use the skill points to acquire to upgrade skills (15 points to max one out) or one of your passive skills. Your action skills can be upgraded in 3 tiers, each giving a bonus. I’d recommend focusing on a single tree and only putting points into a very few things in the other two only if you feel it’ll help your build. Unfortunately T2 takes the classic approach at skill building by forcing to you spec in a specific way or else it punishes you for building randomly. There is an NPC you can go to for a quick respec, but it’s incredibly limited in what you can do; I really hope Runic puts in a full respec option because it’s infuriating to not be able to experiment with a build without having to create a new character and build it exactly how you want.

Pets return and you’ve got quite a few to chose from compared to the first game. So your pet is a pretty handy little guy; he can sell your stuff for you while you keep playing, he can buy potions while he’s out, you can teach him spells, and he’s perfectly fine with me naming him butts. Why did I name my dragon snake butts? Because I already called the bull dog on my other character Dudley and the ferret in my third character took donut too so I was out of ideas. Your pet can also be set as offensive, defensive, or passive which helps when you either want it to scout ahead for enemies or stick close to you.

Multiplayer is probably the biggest addition to the game with players now able to join with up to six other players. Something everyone will love to hear is that multiplayer works without having to encounter 37 different errors on your way to the settings menu. You’re able to browse a handy server list and begin slaying hordes of monsters with friends. I didn’t find many issues playing online, especially on release, and any sort of network issue I had was on the host’s end. There’s also mod support.

As with any dungeon crawler there’s tons of loot to find in this game, and when I say tons of loot I mean chests you will drop half a dozen pieces of gear and tons of gold. With Diablo 3 being the last in the genre I’ve played, it’s refreshing to see actual loot that gives me multiple things to consider when equipping a new sword or some pants other damage and attack speed. While Diablo 3 had me sitting there pretending to be surprised when I got my hundredth iron ax, Torchlight II consistently has me scratching my head trying to decide between two pieces of gear that both assist me in one regard while requiring me to take a stat hit in another. It’s stuff like this that keeps your loot interesting (it also helps that there’s a lot of variety within the weapons and armor too) and not succumbing to what I now call the Borderlands Syndrome; this is what happens when the loot system in your game revolves around looking only at the damage stat since it’s the only one that matters. You can also have two sets of weapon/armor setups which is nice if you want to switch play styles during a battle or if you just want to test out a weapon quickly. You can also pimp out your weapons and armor with gems that will grant specific bonuses depending on the gear you socket it into. Although at first I did start getting annoyed at the massive amount of loot I’d get, it became no issue once I realized I could send my pet to town for me to sell all the crap I was hoarding. It was as simple as shifting anything I didn’t want to its inventory, telling it to go to town, and continuing to play until it returns 2 minutes later. This is another thing I really preferred over Diablo 3 because it didn’t slow down the pacing and kept me engaged while playing and collecting tons of loot. There was no need to drop a portal to town, wait through a loading screen, run over to the merchant, sell my crap, then go back through the portal. Selling stuff to merchants is also incredibly easy with a “sell everything in pet inventory” option or you can simply shift+click on whatever you want to sell. Seriously though, you’re going to get loads of stuff. I had to send my dog to sell all that crap probably half a dozen times in just some random dungeon I went into.

So let me stress how long this game is, because it’s pretty damn long. I spent around two hours in just the first open area exploring and doing sidequests. That’s chump change compared to the time you’ll spend once you hit Act 3. I’d mention how long it took me to finish the game but Steam was being a dick and erased my playtime when the game was “officially” out. Just expect to be putting in 25+ hours into the game, more if you do sidequests of course. Of course for all you manly players out there you can try your luck on the veteran difficulty level and there’s even a hardcore option to add to any difficulty you play on that will make death permanent.

Everything about this game just screams charm and beauty. The graphics are simply gorgeous and it’s just so consistent in its art style. It’s also got a lovely soundtrack and what little of the voices you’ll hear is decent enough.

The Final Word
Torchlight 2 is everything a sequel should strive to be and everything you would want out of a dungeon crawler. It doesn’t exactly do anything drastically new, but what it does do it does fantastically. At a $20 asking price it’s a complete steal considering the amount of hours you’ll be putting into this game.

– MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good