I'm a huge fan of Torchlight 1! I've been re-playing it for years and years. I try new dungeon crawlers, but I keep coming back to Torchlight. I'm glad that I found Torchlight 2 here on GOG. I wish that I could find it on DVD or CD ROM, but this is the next best thing. Torchlight 2 is faithful to the first game (always a plus with me when a sequel is still recognizable as being part of the series). It has the same sort of art style, sound effects, music etc. as I enjoy in the first one. It takes place in the same world, but vastly expands it. I love dungeon-only games as much as the next grognard, but it is nice now and then to be able to come to the surface and do more than just shop in the nearby village. That's the biggest difference here: the game feels much more non-linear and open, but not in a 'lost in the sandbox' sort of way. You can still find your way back home easily enough, or even use a portal scroll to take a magical shortcut. There are also quite a few refinements. It's as if Runic Games read the feedback about the first game and took it to heart. Your pet can now buy essential items in town as well as sell your unwanted stuff (which improves upon the best idea ever in a loot-centric game like these are). You can choose from more character classes (the strenghts and weaknesses of the classes seem to be a bit more different now making your choice mean more) and can have more kinds of pets too. I'm trying the engineer and finding him to be an interesting variant on a fighter. He can do stuff that you've never been able to do in the game before. I almost always had the weasle before, but I'm liking my badger in this game now. I will definately play it again to try having a hawk as a pet next time. You can even tell your pet whether to be agressive, defensive or passive now rather than having it constantly surging ahead to attack all the time. The enemies are vaired and numerous, even around the village. It's certainly a good old game!
