I've got both of these games. Is it worth playing through the first one before starting the second, or, as the topic suggests, should I just go straight into the second one?

I played Torchlight 1 first, but didn't reach the final levels. When I played the second game, I don't remember feeling like I was missing important parts of the story. However it was nice playing them in the right order (even if I left the first game unfinished), because you get to see in T2 what happened with the playable characters from T1.