Torchlight

As has been said in many reviews, this game is quite similar to Diablo I/II in terms of gameplay, even down to copying the concept of gems which can be inserted into weapons from Diablo. It does have only one feature which Diablo does not have, and that is the concept of a pet that can carry items and which can be sent home to sell these items. The problem with the game is that there is really nothing engaging about it. The story is extremely generic (Wizard went into a bunch of critter-infested dungeons and went crazy - your job is to find him - that is pretty much it). There are practically no meaningful side quests. The quests given by NPCs are repetitive and meaningless. Grinding is done by buying maps from merchants which lead you into dungeons which have no relating to the storyline. Note that the skill tree is very very limited, and once you have reached level 25, all skills are open to you. So level 25 is basically the level where nothing new is added to your game. I had reached level 25 when I was on floor 12 (of 30, I believe). So the game became extremely tedious and repetitive. I stopped collecting items to speed up my game progress, because the items I collected were fairly useless anyway. On floor 21, the game finally became so mind-numbingly boring that I gave up and deinstalled the game.

It's a fun game for the first few hours. You pick one of three classes, and they are pretty different. The talent trees are cool and well designed except for one problem. The game is insanely easy. So even though skill X might provide a nifty slow effect while skill Y does more dps, it doesn't matter which you choose. You can spam either and win, even on hardest difficulties. The game tries to keep you interested by having procedurally generated levels, so every level is new and exciting but it's not really. They all feel the same. The enemies are simply too easy to kill to get to know if they act differently or not, there's no strategy. The game also tries to reel you in with tons and tons of loot. It can get a little obsessive always disenchanting loot trying to upgrade your favorite weapon to the best possible stats. But then you wake up and realize it doesn't matter one bit, because like I said, the game is so easy. And there is no story to speak of either, nothing to keep you going other than loot drops. In the end it just doesn't have enough depth. The gameplay is smooth and fun, the skills are cool, the graphics aren't amazing but I like the style. But there's just not enough meat on these bones to keep me playing after 5 hours or so. There are better dungeon crawlers out there. I would like to have giving this 2.5 stars but such option isn't available so I must go with only 2.

If you've ever played Diablo, or any Diablo-like games, you know what you're going to get. You go through multiple levels of enemies, occasionally fight a boss, and collect loot. The strength of the game doesn't lie in the story, but in the gameplay. If you enjoy these types of games, you'll enjoy Torchlight.

There's a lot of good stuff here. A sparse but interesting story, great environments, a decent tech tree, and lots of equipment and upgrading. I am enjoying it. But I'm not loving it, and there are three downsides to the game. First, the combat. As others have mentioned, it is basically "click the monster". You put the cursor on the monster and, for the most part, click the left button. Occasionally, you'll click the right button instead, or press a number key to perform a different attack, but those are just stronger versions of the left button. This is the primary dynamic of the game and it can leave you feeling a little like you are playing trashy mobile gamified nonsense. pointclickpointclickpontclickpointclick....this is fun. The second is the controls. Not only is it one button combat but the same button is used for movement. If you happen to not click one of those fast moving monsters, you'll start running toward it instead. You can, however, hold the shift key to ensure that you stand in place and attack, but this takes your fingers off of the 1-5 keys where your special attacks reside. Kind of a bummer. The devs realized these clunky controls and adjusted the difficulty down to compensate. This eliminates frustration, thankfully, but also reduces the interest of the game. Finally, the tech tree. There is a nice tech tree, but there are only a few nodes, most with 10 levels to buy, and many of them are variations on the same thing. This means when you level up, you'll often just get more of the same rather than a game-changing skill or trait. If it is game changing, you'll spend 10 levels on the same thing. As I said at the top, though, I AM enjoying it. I'll finish the game to learn the end of the story, to see all the lush environments, and for the simple joy of leveling up and equipping-up a super-beefy monster killer. Got to get that next rare armor drop. Torchlight is great for those things, just not great for everything.

Click-to-move and click-to-fire-ranged-weapon are the same mouseclick and controls are not remappable. So, click at monster who moves out from under your mouse just as you click; all of a sudden you're running towards exactly the thing you want to stay away from. I don't know who thought this was a good idea, but it got old very, very quickly.