Rating of
3.5/5
A Warm, Fluffy Diablo Clone
Chris Kavan - wrote on 12/15/12
I can't help but think of Torchlight II in comparison to Diablo III (which I had finished not too long before diving into the multiplayer aspect of this game). Both are hack n slash adventures with the same type of elements (including different character classes, leveling up stats and abilities and, of course, all that lot) and essentially the same goals. That being said, while Torchlight II isn't a failure, it doesn't reach the heights of the king of hack 'n slash pleasure for a a variety of reasons.
Presentation: Compared to Diablo III, Torchlight II takes on a much more vibrant, slightly cartooney feel. The game does a good job of giving each character class a nice unique range of abilities (I was the Berserker - with an affinity for duel-wielding one-handed weapons). I also like implementation of the pets - who not only have their own set of spells and fight for you, but, more importantly - can carry and sell your loot on the go (you can even send them to town to buy more potions or scrolls - though I never had to). While you can pick from a pre-determined list of pets, by feeding your pet various fishes you can raise their abilities and transform them (temporarily or permanently) into things like spiders, crabs, mimics and more.
The background and enemies likewise share that same slightly cartooney feel as the main characters. The game does tend to get a bit hard to follow when there are four characters firing off spells and attacks, along with an untold number of enemies doing the same thing - the worst part about clicking all over the place is that sometimes you don't click where you want and either find yourself way too close or too far from the action. Chaos aside, the game follows the same beat as Diablo in this aspect as well.
Although the game has a few cutscenes and some voice acting - for the most part, it's unremarkable and generic - much like the music. Whereas Diablo's few cut scenes and voice acting were quite well rendered and interesting, Torchlight II is not exactly cutting edge in this department and it shows.
The multiplayer element was quite fun - provided the game didn't suffer from a number of glitches like A) crashing while shopping in town (I learned to save in town, and save often so as to not lose valuable progress in buying, selling and crafting or losing an item altogether), B) suffering from random occurrences where enemies would just stand there doing nothing while I killed them while other characters were seemingly killing the same enemies in their own version of the same game or C) Simply freezing on a load screen requiring the complete shutdown of the entire game (and often Steam) in order to reload the entire thing and hope you didn't lose too much. Such bugs are a the main reason I can't award this any higher score, no matter how much fun it was to play.
Story: Another area where Torchlight II falls short is its story - which, I gather, follows the events in Torchlight (apparently, much like the original Diablo, one of the characters from the first game is corrupted, and become the new big bad enemy). Apparently the corrupted alchemist plans to open a portal to allow the denizens of the Nether World to cross over an essentially destroy everything else. But he needs to harness the power of the guardians to do so - that's where the new heroes come in to play - seeking out and helping the guardians while keeping the various nasty enemies at bay - all the while chasing the Alchemist.
This story isn't exactly deep or forthcoming. There is little information regarding the nature of the people or cultures and whatnot - in fact, without playing the original Torchlight, I'm not sure how you're supposed to know anything about the history behind the game. While other games often give you tomes or narration explaining things, Torchlight II offers no such help and thus the story suffers for it.
Gameplay: The bread and butter of a Diablo clone is, of course, determined by how much fun it is to kill things and gather loot afterwards. Torchlight II is quite fun in this aspect. You can collect sets of items that give you various stat boosts (some to main stats like strength, vitality, ect. others to damage or health recovery or other such effects) or you can just imbue items with certain sockatable gems and unique items to boost yourself even more. Scattered throughout the game are enchanters who can likewise pump up your gear (though it's a crapshoot as certain enchantments are quite useless compared to others). All this requires a fair amount of gold - so killing enemies and selling off useless loot is the basis for the entire economy.
As is typical in this kind of game - you can point, click and kill to your hearts content. You also have hotkeys that can be assigned to various things - health and mana recovery is paramount, but there are plenty of useful spells and abilities that can help you kill more efficiently or (depending on character class) protect you from them. I'm not a hotkey user by default, but even I found plenty of useful abilities - when I remembered to use them.
Still, like Diablo III - this game is best conquered in small chunks. We had a weekly game where we played for a few hours at a time. A game like this does tend to get repetitive and the somewhat generic nature didn't help things. Still, I did like the variety of loot and different builds you could create. Overall enjoyment is going to be determined by how much you truly like this kind of game, but for me, gameplay was quite fun - just as much as Diablo III, even if it was a streamlined version of it.
In the end, Torchlight II is a competent Diablo clone that fans of that game will like, even if it falls short of the lofty standards set by that franchise. If all the bugs could be hammered out, the game would be much more enjoyable, but, as it stands, it's like an uncut diamond - rough around the edges, but still an impressive specimen.
Presentation: 3.5/5
Story: 2/5
Gameplay: 3.5/5
Overall (not an average): 3.5/5
