I’ve always been a fan of “Diablo” and “Diablo 2″, and late last year a game was released called “Torchlight” that had a large number of the development team from the first two Diablo games working on it, as well as the creator of another popular action RPG in the same vein called “Fate”. Earlier this year Torchlight was on sale, and being the Diablo fan I am, I just had to pick it up. With “Diablo 3″ not coming out anytime soon, this seemed like a great opportunity to get back in to one of the funner genres out there.
Now first I want to say to the people that just put the game down as “ripping off” “Diablo”, you guys should really grow up and get over it. This game is very similar to the “Diablo” series, certainly, but I find it hard to say someone is ripping off something that they themselves designed. The same people that made this game made those games, so I can’t really accuse them for using game mechanics that were their creation in the first place. As far as I’m concerned, the people responsible for the game are more relevant than the company that they worked for.
Gameplay
This is a standard point and click action RPG just like “Diablo” and “Fate” were. The HUD has been improved a great deal and brings a number of elements similar to MMO’s to help with the flexibility of gameplay. One thing I never liked about the “Diablo” series was the fact you’d often spec specifically in a few skills because the game mechanics didn’t really make it easy to switch between skills in combat, when you most often had to. While “Torchlight” isn’t perfect in this regard, it is a huge improvement from how “Diablo” handled skills.
The game also has spell scrolls, which allow you add to your skillset by learning 4 different spells based on scrolls you find in the dungeon, which helps give all classes access to a number of base spells. These spells aren’t as powerful or as useful as the skills you can give your character, but they help level the classes off a bit by giving anyone access to heals and combat spells. The “Diablo” series was always a bit imbalanced in the skillsets, and this simple introduction of base spell scrolls helps level the playing field a bit while also adding to the gameplay diversity.
Another big part of the game is your pet, which starts as either a cat or a dog (more like a wolf or a lynx to be honest). Over the course of the game you can go fishing at various fishing holes, which allow you to catch all sorts of different types of fish. These fish can be used to temporarily or permanently transform your pet in to something else, like an elemental or a spider or a dragonkin, among others. These transformations make your pet more powerful and capable, and bring various additional skills to the table as well. The permanent transformation fish are a bit rare though, and most of them are temporary, about 5 or 10 minutes.
Your pet also has other users aside from a transforming combat companion. You can also equip it with rings and amulets to give it bonuses and improve its damage. On top of that the pet can also hold inventory for you, and can even run to town on its own to sell that inventory so you don’t have to cast a portal every five minutes to go sell. The pet also has 2 spell slots of its own, so you can arm it with base spells to also improve its output. This is particularly nice with summons as you sort of get 2 pets since your pet will consistently summon whatever summon you gave it. The one spell you should not give it is a heal spell as I found out; the pet seems to just cast heal over and over and over whether it’s hurt or not which only ends up with its mana pool sitting at the bottom constantly so it never ends up casting the other spell you gave it.
Another nice improvement from similar games that came before this one is the death penalty. In the “Diablo” games, if you died you’d get sent back to town without a damn thing. You’d then have to bum rush to your corpse and pick up your equipment before the monsters that killed you manage to do so again when you have no gear. Sometimes you’d have to buy up a new batch of gear just to go down there and get your gear because you couldn’t survive otherwise, provided you have the funds to do so since your gold is also down by your corpse, so you’d have to leave a rainy day fund in your vault.
There is one genre specific problem that this game, like the others of its type, still suffers from. The game uses a point and click interface that uses clicks to move, unless you click a target which then initiates an action, usually attack. The problem is that when you have monsters running around sometimes you your click misses. Now instead of just not attacking or having an attack miss, your character instead rushes forward to stand wherever you click, which sometimes gets you killed, but usually just irritates you or brings more enemies your way. At the very least it makes the character stop what they’re doing to rush to where you clicked, meaning you’re no longer attacking or fighting back in any way.
For skills each character has a unique skill tree that they can specialize in as they gain in levels, similar to how it was done in “Diablo 2″. Each skill has a cap of 10 levels, so there’s no endless speccing to make one all slaying uberpowered skill. Another improvement (though maybe some might disagree) is that there are a number of base skills that each of the three classes have access to, like weapon and magic and armor specializations. In fact, I’d say these are some of the more important skills, and I tend to spec in my weapon type and armor right off the bat as passives are extremely useful.
The first of the three classes is the Destroyer, who is your typical tank type. His skills primarily center around melee range damage and area of effect spells that generally impact the area immediately around the player. His attacks are extremely powerful and his skills can wipe out large groups in his immediate vicinity. His primary weakness is a lack of range, although a number of his area of effect skills branch out pretty far.
The second class is the Alchemist, who is the caster class of this game and probably the most common class from what I’ve seen. His skill set is very diverse, providing skills that are effective at both melee and long range combat. Some of the spells are homing, while others are single target or area of effect. One of the most effective is the Ember Lance, which shoots out a beam of energy that you can hold down to sweep entire areas and do loads of damage if the skill is high enough. One of his spell lines is also full of summons, so you can get quite a pack of pets with the Alchemist if you spec this way. The Alchemist is probably the most diverse class, and the easiest one to play and beat the game with.
The third class is the Vanquisher, who is the typical range archer/gunner class. The nice improvement with “Torchlight” is the lack of having to run for ammo all the time, which makes the archer class a lot more viable. Her skills are very direct missile attacks that are generally targeted as well as a few homing shots. She also has a number of device, trap and melee skills she can make adequate use of. She lacks summons in her skill set though, so those will have to come from scrolls.
Setting
The game takes place in the town of Torchlight, and the mines and other caverns beneath this mining town. The town is a boom town built over a mine that was built to extract Ember from the mountain, which is a mineral at the core of much of this worlds magic and technology. The Ember vein is corrupted though, and its corruption is spreading and causing a great deal of turmoil in the area due to the corrupted people and monsters caused by it.
As you progress you find the mines enter in to another older civilization, and as you go down you find another civilization buried under that, and it progresses like that. Thankfully this keeps the game world from becoming too bland, as 30+ levels of mines would get old after awhile. The diversity is pretty impressive; you get tombs, prisons built amongst molten lava, underground marshes and jungles, and more. For taking place in one town and the underground area that accompanies it.
The enemies are equally diverse, with every area having different types of enemies specific to that region. Like Diablo these monsters do tend to each be one of a specific base archetype or class, though there is decent diversity amongst them, particularly in the final area.
The dungeon itself seems to be about 35 levels or around there, though there is an NPC in town that will continually teleport you to new generated levels of a random type for little side quests, which gives you an almost endless supply of levels per game. There are also treasure maps that can be won from quests or purchased which will also create levels, though these seem to have puzzle elements added to them instead of the more typical hack and slash layout. Then in the dungeon itself there are phase beasts that create portals on death which will lead the player to a side area that is mostly a small region that is loaded with masses of monsters and bosses, but also a lot of treasure as well.
So while this game is similar to the first “Diablo” in that it takes place in one town and the entire adventure basically stems off of one single dungeon, it is also different in that it has a lot more diversity in its levels and is much much larger. The endless supply of quest dungeons and treasure maps pretty much allows you to play indefinitely. Once the boss is defeated the “Shadow Vault” is opened, which is an endless supply of randomized levels with random enemies in a random setting that scales to the players level.
Story
The story for the game is really simple. There’s a mining town that’s having monster problems and as you explore the mine you find it connects with deeper dungeons below and that there’s an evil force behind what’s going on that you have to combat. It’s really not a particularly clever or amazing story, but it works pretty well.
The characters get a little development at the start, but not a whole lot to be honest, and the quests provided are pretty simple without a whole lot of background as well. There’s a number of NPC’s in the town that talk a bit, but they don’t add a whole lot to the story either to be honest, and most of the town is completely forgettable with the only relevant portion being where the merchants are.
Don’t get me wrong, the story works for what it’s trying to do, it’s just nothing particularly special and doesn’t go above and beyond the bare minimum. The most development the story sees are from various short in-game cutscenes and text based excerpts from a specific antagonists journal. “Diablo 2″ did a fantastic job with its story, though a lot of that is from supplemental material, so I know “Torchlight” probably could have done better.
Graphics
Not surprisingly the graphics are very reminiscent of “Warcraft 3″ and “World of Warcraft” with a similar cartoonish appearance. This isn’t surprising since there’s a lot of former Blizzard employees on this project, and that many of them were also involved in “Warcraft 3″ aside from just the “Diablo” series.
The graphics are pretty good, but still simple enough so that the game will run on a variety of machines, and it even has a netbook mode for those playing on netbooks. Like “World of Warcraft” the graphics use a simpler style in a way that not only looks good, but also keeps the game accessible. Sure, it’s not really going to wow anyone with amazing state of the art graphics, but it doesn’t have to and it works quite well.
One thing about the graphics is the female character, and the sultry “armor” she is often wearing. I’ve never cared for the whole metal bikini thing that many games seem to do, as it’s just not even remotely realistic. “Torchlight” never does that luckily, but her armor is notably either completely absent on her legs or reveals ample cleavage, or is skin tight. It’s not a big deal really, and it does provide eye candy I suppose, but considering the lighter detail level and the fact you usually play zoomed out, such eye candy is entirely unnecessary.
There is a lack of cinematics or rendered cutscenes in the game, which is definitely an area where it lacks visually. The only cutscenes are short in-game pieces, usually when a boss appears or is defeated. There’s also a few text scrolls and narrations, but nothing cinematic, not even so much as a short intro. Considering that Runic is a small company as opposed to Blizzard, which is a huge corporation, it doesn’t surprise me that cinematics are missing since they’re unnecessary, and are very expensive to produce.
Audio
The music is really good in this game, and is also very reminiscent “Diablo”. This, again, should be of no surprise since the same composer from the “Diablo” series was also involved with “Torchlight”, so the style of the music is very reminiscent. The music while in “Torchlight” itself is itself quite similar to the Tristram music from “Diablo”.
The only voice acting in the game is the occasional cutscene related performance or narration along with the text scrolls. Other than that the only voice acting you hear is when you click on a merchant, or your characters pack is full or health/mana is low.
The sound effects are pretty typical hack and slash effects, although I really like the sounds used for the guns. A lot of games use ridiculous gun effects, but “Torchlights” guns make a somewhat more realistic pop like sound. It’s still not completely realistic, but it’s actually better than what a lot of other games use.
Single-Player
The single-player is nearly endless, and as long as you have a will to play there will be new levels there to play due to the random nature of the dungeon generator. This really helps the replay value of this sort of game as you can never really memorize how to get through every area and its a little different every time.
The primary problem would be the gameplay might get older after awhile. The skill tree helps augment that a little since you can roll three different characters and spec them all differently to change the gameplay, but it’s definitely not the kind of game you can play indefinitely non-stop, but it’s a good type to return to again and again for a little fun.
Multi-Player
Sadly this game has no multi-player, which is really its one biggest shortcoming, particularly since all the competition out there for this game have some level of multi-player. There is an MMO version in the works, but a “Diablo” style multi-player at the very least would have been nice.
Closing Comments
If you liked “Diablo” or “Fate”, then I highly recommend “Torchlight”. Considering it’s available on Steam for a mere $20 at full retail, and is occasionally found on sale for as low as $5, it’s easily worth the price. I mean, this game easily compares to “Diablo 2″, and Blizzard still tries to charge $30 for that one in spite of its age.
The fact that a lot of the “Diablo” team worked on this game is really obvious from the start. The music and the gameplay and the mechanics are all very reminiscent of the “Diablo” series. As long as people can avoid making the “ripped off” accusations, which are ludicrous since these are the same people responsible for “Diablo”, then I’m sure any fan of that series, or of the also similar “Fate”, will find this game a great deal of fun. Considering how long we have to likely wait for “Diablo 3″ anyways, this is definitely a good game to tide you over until then.
© 2010, Keonyn. All rights reserved.
Tags: Runic Games, Torchlight, Video Games
