Torchlight

My problem with these games is that I've been far too spoiled with Diablo II. I played the single player to Diablo II tons. Then I started playing online and the online experiences have mostly destroyed the offline experiences for me. Every time I play these games like Fate, Torchlight, so on and so fourth I find something I don't want because of the way I play, and I want to give it to my wife or a friend that plays. When I realize I can't give them that item I'd much rather just buy them a copy of Diablo II to get that fix of community gaming. I have no desire to play games that just make me want to play Diablo II the further I go in. At this point I'd rather play Diablo III where at least there is a sense of people other than yourself engulfed in the war to save the world.

I never got why people like Torchlight. There are a bunch of different Diablo-clones and this is the very worst one. Diablo II was great because it had fairly open maps, a wide variety of classes and character builds that allowed you to cleverly combine skills and items to great effect. Torchlight has none of that. Instead it has only 3 classes that are rather samey. Maps are small and mostly linear. Half the skills are just awfully boring upgrades like "+2% magic find". Its cartoony style is awful and off-putting. The music sounds like a cheap imitation of Matt Uelmen. And it's so boring. In Diablo there's some sense of danger even early on. It's completely absent here. Path of Exile, Grim Dawn, Victor Vran - they all have their own problems but they aren't boring. Torchlight is just damn boring.

The only good thing about this game is its music (by the excellent Matt Uelman), and even that they manage to amateurly screw up by abruptly cutting it off whenever you go to a new area, instead of fading out. The voice acting is really bad, but even with the low caliber of actors they used, there isn't very much of it— many characters only have "hello" and "goodbye" clips, leaving quests to be given only by painfully slowly scrolling text, which you can't speed up, only skip. The graphics are pretty mediocre, even for 2009, the gameplay is boring, the AI is bad (enemies just try to walk toward you in a direct path, getting hung up if their path is blocked and never going around). Even for free, there's absolutely no reason to play this instead of something like Path of Exile.

Torchlight is the unholy fusion of Diablo (one) and Fate, without Fate's spyware WildTangent. Note that I say Diablo one because Torchlight's three initial classes map directly on to the Warrior, Rogue, and Wizard from Diablo one, however it's skill system has more in common with Diablo 2. Torchlight has a cartoony, vaguely steampunk aesthetic and merits at least three stars for the fact that one of the quest-givers is a clockwork steam-powered robot composer alone. If you're expecting either Diablo's grimdark aesthetic or Fate's... well Fate barely had an aesthetic beyond 'bland generic fantasy' really, you're in for a bit of a shock. Many of Torchlight's features, are lifted directly from Fate, such as fishing, enchantment, fame, your pet/pack mule, retirement/heirlooms, and removing socketed gems (sorta). Also Torchlight has mod support, and that counts for a lot. Torchlight's major drawback is it's total lack of multiplayer, either network or internet based. As of this wriging, there is no working multiplayer mod for the GoG version of Torchlight. But really, who needs friends? You have a dog/cat/ferret, and that's more than you need to save the world, or at least have major fun with this game.

What can i say dont play on normal - its too easy beaten the game wit the big boy without dying once or even better yet dont play torchlight at all its story is crap even for a hack N slash and hack N slash is all you will do actually with some "quests" given by a bard which is nearly as bad as the game itself where you will be asked to go deeper in the levels and kill a lil thoughter mob which might drop "unique" item just dont be surprised if you find another "unique" item if it was released in lets say year 2000 it would deserve a 4/10 or a charity 5/10 now it ranks second most overrated game that i played so far in GoG and i give it a 3/10 but since GoG only supports 5 star its a charity 2/5