Torchlight 3's proper review will be a bit further off (haven't beaten it yet, though I have put a few hours in both when it was in alpha, as well as more recently - and have a few "on release" reviews I have to get done before I go back into it) - and I would say it's "good enough", about on par with this one, though for different reasons (it's balanced a bit better, but feels a little floatier in combat - and has some unfortunate "grind for components" features - it does have more content though, even just as far as I've gotten) I would say Torchlight 2 is still the strongest of the franchise overall though - while I'd put Torchlight 3 just a smidge behind Diablo 3 (both in their modern versions)
yea, the second one is great, not quite diablo 2 levels, but definitely up there and very competitive to this day (still sad Runic went under after Hob - Perfect World has does some damage to the Torchlight franchise)
lol, well, the vanquisher I was playing for the footage was sort of like a Cowgirl Necromancer lol (She summoned zombies and skeletons, but shot stuff with some hand cannons lol)
Played this for the first time in the past week. Note that I am a huge Diablo 1 fan, so take my opinion with a grain of salt since I'm in a minority of people who prefer Diablo 1 over 2. Torchlight has some good things going for it, but ultimately falls short for me as it suffers from the same bloat of Diablo 2. First off, the good things - The spell system is great, and a callback to Diablo 1 in a way. Part of what makes Diablo 1 have such high replay value is the utter randomness of the spell books. No matter the class you choose, you can learn just about every spell in the game, and if you're doing a single segment run, it's quite challenging trying to finish the game with just a handful of spells. Torchlight brings this back and does it well. The skill tree is also a big step forward by simplifying it and not overcomplicating it like so many Diablo 2 clones do. The bad things - Game suffers the same thing Diablo 2 does, where it's an endless grind of just killing hundreds of monsters per floor. You could say this is the fatal flaw of all ARPGs, but I disagree. Diablo 1 at it's heart was a dungeon crawler, and I've long believed the slower pace worked better. In D1, if you encountered a mob, a lot of times it ended in death unless you knew how to handle those enemies. You had to learn the enemies in D1, and couldn't just plow through them mercilessly. I'd rather play D1 and feel like my character is weak and every fight is going to count, compared to this game where I instantly felt overpowered within a few hours. By the time I got to floor 19, I was bored. Each class has one skill early in the game that you can spam and kill mobs of enemies. I played as a Rogue, so my spam skill was Ricochet, and later at level 24 you get Arrow Hail. Despite having pretty sceneries and atmosphere, you don't stay in these areas long, and the character levels up and finds better gear so quickly that you rarely are in a situation where you have to adjust to enemy attack patterns and learn their behavior. I breezed through this game in just 10 hours on normal mode and had little difficulty in the process. My character was seemingly overpowered from beginning to end. The bosses are a joke and the fights are grindy themselves. The only way it ups difficulty is the random portals that just take you to a different dungeon floor with the same enemies just with higher levels, so they require more hits and spammed attacks. The game fixates on socketed weapons and items to put runes in. This was something I strongly disliked in Diablo 2, since in single player, by the time you reach Act 3, everything comes down to socketed weapons and armor. Torchlight is more forgiving on this, though it is annoying when you get dozens of item drops and they're the same useless crap over and over. I got better stuff from gambling than my drops. All in all, an OK game. I loved the music composed by Matt Uelman. The game is lacking of personality though and just feels generic, so IMO a waste of a fantastic music score. This entire game was built on the gameplay of Diablo 2 and nothing more. The story about going underground of a small town is a copy/paste straight out of D1. I didn't care about any characters in the game or the setting. It's just missing that charm that Diablo had, where you wanted to talk to the townsfolk, and wanted to go around visiting while you were in town. TLDR; if you like Diablo 2, you'll probably love this game. Diablo 1 fans won't. Sorry for big wall of text!
I have this on CD, haha. It's the only game I still have (for PC) a physical copy of. It's fun and quint, but still very playable, IMO. The pet system alone is great, and still a rare QoL in the genre. I don't think it's much like D1, though, despite the obvious. D1 has a horror game feel that really no other top down ARPG has done since (which is a shame, and another topic).
I think a lot of D1's stuff weirdly comes from the fact that it was originally meant to be a high fidelity take on the Rogue formula (turn based, perma death, etc.) - that's why we really haven't seen it reproduced in aRPGs to quite that level (since most aRPGs go into it, planning to be diablo-likes, not rogue-like) - oddly enough, I think something like Darkest Dungeon captures the atmosphere much better for this weird reason.
![Why Dream Cycle Failed [ Dream Cycle Review ]](/img/n.gif)
Really been loving these videos as someone relatively new to arpgs. Would def love to hear more about torchlight 3
Torchlight 3's proper review will be a bit further off (haven't beaten it yet, though I have put a few hours in both when it was in alpha, as well as more recently - and have a few "on release" reviews I have to get done before I go back into it) - and I would say it's "good enough", about on par with this one, though for different reasons (it's balanced a bit better, but feels a little floatier in combat - and has some unfortunate "grind for components" features - it does have more content though, even just as far as I've gotten)
I would say Torchlight 2 is still the strongest of the franchise overall though - while I'd put Torchlight 3 just a smidge behind Diablo 3 (both in their modern versions)
You are absolutely right about the final boss!
he is so spongy lol - still don't know what they were thinking with him.
I bought the second one and im loving it so far !
yea, the second one is great, not quite diablo 2 levels, but definitely up there and very competitive to this day (still sad Runic went under after Hob - Perfect World has does some damage to the Torchlight franchise)
🐷 Alzo not play as Necro mancer in this game !!! He Different now !!!
lol, well, the vanquisher I was playing for the footage was sort of like a Cowgirl Necromancer lol (She summoned zombies and skeletons, but shot stuff with some hand cannons lol)
No! ❤
Played this for the first time in the past week. Note that I am a huge Diablo 1 fan, so take my opinion with a grain of salt since I'm in a minority of people who prefer Diablo 1 over 2. Torchlight has some good things going for it, but ultimately falls short for me as it suffers from the same bloat of Diablo 2.
First off, the good things - The spell system is great, and a callback to Diablo 1 in a way. Part of what makes Diablo 1 have such high replay value is the utter randomness of the spell books. No matter the class you choose, you can learn just about every spell in the game, and if you're doing a single segment run, it's quite challenging trying to finish the game with just a handful of spells. Torchlight brings this back and does it well. The skill tree is also a big step forward by simplifying it and not overcomplicating it like so many Diablo 2 clones do.
The bad things - Game suffers the same thing Diablo 2 does, where it's an endless grind of just killing hundreds of monsters per floor. You could say this is the fatal flaw of all ARPGs, but I disagree. Diablo 1 at it's heart was a dungeon crawler, and I've long believed the slower pace worked better. In D1, if you encountered a mob, a lot of times it ended in death unless you knew how to handle those enemies. You had to learn the enemies in D1, and couldn't just plow through them mercilessly. I'd rather play D1 and feel like my character is weak and every fight is going to count, compared to this game where I instantly felt overpowered within a few hours.
By the time I got to floor 19, I was bored. Each class has one skill early in the game that you can spam and kill mobs of enemies. I played as a Rogue, so my spam skill was Ricochet, and later at level 24 you get Arrow Hail. Despite having pretty sceneries and atmosphere, you don't stay in these areas long, and the character levels up and finds better gear so quickly that you rarely are in a situation where you have to adjust to enemy attack patterns and learn their behavior. I breezed through this game in just 10 hours on normal mode and had little difficulty in the process. My character was seemingly overpowered from beginning to end. The bosses are a joke and the fights are grindy themselves. The only way it ups difficulty is the random portals that just take you to a different dungeon floor with the same enemies just with higher levels, so they require more hits and spammed attacks.
The game fixates on socketed weapons and items to put runes in. This was something I strongly disliked in Diablo 2, since in single player, by the time you reach Act 3, everything comes down to socketed weapons and armor. Torchlight is more forgiving on this, though it is annoying when you get dozens of item drops and they're the same useless crap over and over. I got better stuff from gambling than my drops.
All in all, an OK game. I loved the music composed by Matt Uelman. The game is lacking of personality though and just feels generic, so IMO a waste of a fantastic music score. This entire game was built on the gameplay of Diablo 2 and nothing more. The story about going underground of a small town is a copy/paste straight out of D1. I didn't care about any characters in the game or the setting. It's just missing that charm that Diablo had, where you wanted to talk to the townsfolk, and wanted to go around visiting while you were in town.
TLDR; if you like Diablo 2, you'll probably love this game. Diablo 1 fans won't. Sorry for big wall of text!
I have this on CD, haha. It's the only game I still have (for PC) a physical copy of. It's fun and quint, but still very playable, IMO. The pet system alone is great, and still a rare QoL in the genre. I don't think it's much like D1, though, despite the obvious. D1 has a horror game feel that really no other top down ARPG has done since (which is a shame, and another topic).
I think a lot of D1's stuff weirdly comes from the fact that it was originally meant to be a high fidelity take on the Rogue formula (turn based, perma death, etc.) - that's why we really haven't seen it reproduced in aRPGs to quite that level (since most aRPGs go into it, planning to be diablo-likes, not rogue-like) - oddly enough, I think something like Darkest Dungeon captures the atmosphere much better for this weird reason.