A Torchlight 2 video review, superb action role-playing game by Runic Games.

Video Transcription

Hello ladies and gentleman.

I am Icel and this is a video review for Torchlight 2 by Runic Games.

Runic Games was founded by two former Blizzard North employees who worked on the original Diablo and Diablo 2, and so they sought out to make a spiritual successor to these games, but this time with more colorful graphics and lighter tones. The result was the original Torchlight.

The game basically leads you through several dozen levels of dungeons going deeper into the Torchlight mine until you confronted Ordrak, the final boss. In many ways it was a lot like the original Diablo in which you travel to the catacombs of Tristram. Now, with Torchlight 2 you can compare it to Diablo 2 in which Runic games built an outer-world gameplay as well as random questing and dungeons and the like. The game is much more extensive than the previous one. The game has three acts each of them takes place in unique locations with different quests and monsters.

Torchlight 2’s storyline takes you through a quest to stopping the alchemist, one of the characters from the previous game, which took Ordrak’s heart and removed the balance within the mortal world and the Nether, a realm of crazy purple tentacle creatures reminisce of Lovecraftian mythology. All through the campaign you will fight the influence of the alchemist to save the guardians of the world in order to stop if from collecting their essence which is vital to this quest.

Undoubtedly this game’s strong point is the combat system which is to be expected from an action RPG. The combat can be described as meaty, as you do various skills and magic and use your different weapons enemies will more often than not explode before your eyes and you will even get an achievement from it. Some skills even designed specifically to make mobs explode with different effect when they do so.

The game has four character classes, the Embermage, which is the quintessential spell caster as you expect; the Berserker, which is a dual-wielding barbarian-esqe melee fighter; the Outlander, which is the mirror class to the Vanquisher from the previous game; and the Engineer, which can summon various robots to help him and use other technological skills.

Even though it may seem that each of these classes has a specific way to play the game skill system leaves a lot of room for making your own build. I put so far 45 hours into this game with about six different characters. Every one of them with a different skill builds. I have three majors. One of them is, well, a classic maid that fire, fire bolts and the like and another example is a melee oriented mage with a main skill to create a massive fiery maze that distracts all enemies around me and it pushes them back.

The Engineer for example can be a tank with one of the weapons and a shield and on the other one he can also be a range fighter with giant cannon, as you can see in this footage. The same can be said for the Outlander and the Berserker. The Outlander, while his main focus is on range weapons can be equipped with any weapon and take in skills that make him a very good tank. Overall the skill system lets you do whatever you like.

Another thing worth to note is both the extensive difficulty system and the various options for playing the game. You can play the game for the single player locally on your computer without any internet connection except for Steam; a multi-player lobby system which allows you to open the game and invite your friend or anybody. The lobby system has also a friend system which you can add your friends by their Runic Games username and you can create games which are friend only.

Of course, there is a LAN, local area network, multi-player option. I say of course but this day it’s quite rare to see this option in many games including the Torchlight 2 main competitors Diablo 3.

Now, the game isn’t perfect by any stretch. It still has a few bugs here and there. We experience glitches like characters popping up between height levels and during multi-player one of us will see a boss monster and the other wouldn’t, and the like. Those aren’t major bugs. It’s not game wrecking bugs. The game is completely playable and enjoyable and they’re patching it constantly. Since launch, the game has seen two major patches I think and they will continue to make it better overtime all the time.

Two minor complaints I have with it. One is the “respec” system, your ability to remove all the skills you know and learn other skills if you want to change up your character. That doesn’t exist in this game. You can respec up to three skill points, the last skill point you spend and that’s it. This, for me, it’s a drawback but it’s obviously a well-thought out mechanic by the creator of the game to promote a strategic and thought out play crew of the player.

You need to look over the skills, try them out, and not commit a lot of skill points at the start. At one time with my mage I took the three points you get in the beginning and put them in the three starting skills for each tree, and just tried them out and see what I prefer. That’s the way to build it. Obviously, I didn’t know this in the beginning so the first one or two characters I created sucked and I took skill I didn’t use and stuff like that.

The other thing that is a minor issue is the difficulty. Like I said there are seven levels of difficulty. They are all opened up from the start. There are casual, normal, veteran, and epic difficulties and I must say that beside up to veteran the game is still too easy. One of the complaints people had about the original Torchlight is that the game was too easy overall even in the highest difficulty.

This is still true in the casual and normal levels. In Casual level, unless you are completely new to video games or there are a lot of monsters attacking you at once, you will rarely die if ever. I still play casual because I did to play this game as a sort of white noise while I do other things.

So, the cause is a good distraction for that but if you really want to enjoy the game you need to play at least at veteran level. The elite level is quite tough. There’s a lot of tactical thinking when playing it. You need to use different skills to make sure you’re not dead, and that is a good thing. The game also has Hardcore Mode which of course the first time you die you die and you can’t continue from that.

Overall, it is undoubtedly one of the most fun games I ever played. I can tell without a shadow of a doubt I enjoyed more than Diablo 2, which why it was a very good game I didn’t play a lot of. I think that this is the best example of the modern market of action RPGs. Other games and other companies need to learn from this example for the future.

Thank you very much.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com