I have started Torchlight and abandoned after a few weeks. Went back to it after completing and enjoying Titan Quest. Torchlight is such a bland game even comparing to an old TQ. I don't really like this cartoony graphics. Map is really bad. Drops obstruct vision. When there are a lot of action it just looks like a huge mess. Story telling is very weak. Yeah, i have played Diablo many years ago, but i think i have enjoyed it quite more that Torchlight.
Well, not exactly, though it does resemble some things from the Cossacks and American Conquest series. But this has enough unique features as RPG elements, besides the RTS mode you control a hero, who evolves and you shape his abilities, choose whether it should be a wizard or a melee tank, though mainly he will remain a shooting ranger. Story is interesting and the world is teasing you to explore every corner of every map to find that potion or artifact or just pump experience a bit more. Selecting what items to use can be hard and confusing and i personally felt the lack of really good items. Some of them have good stats, but usually they have enough bad stats to not want to wear that helmet, boots or else. Spells are interesting and many of them are useful, but not all. Also it is very cumbersome to change spells in your spellbar, as it uses mana while you swap them in you spellbook and i didn't find any other way. About the story. I thought it will end at mission 10 or like that, but it started to build up further, introducing new interesting races and lands and it is really pity we won't get a sequel for this game. Game has some minor glitches and menu is using 800*600 i think, but it was rather stable and din't crash on me at all (Win7 x64). Good game. I will never forget crashing gazillions of skeletons with one mighty spell blow :) Or that nasty ogres chasing me all over the map :)))
Main campaign map and research tree are just boring, nothing really interesting happens there and i find myself just pressing Next turn quickly. Comparing to say Rome:TW, Knights of Honor or other titles it just doesn't attracts me enough. AI often behaves strange, as declaring war on one turn and then paying me money to stop it on the next turn. AI in battles is not better. Often you can win without any casualties. But what frustrates me more is unrealistic balance in battles. Militia squads are so overpowered, because shooting squads are shooting not so often and do not so much damage (come on, htey shot only ~5 enemies from a very close range). Militia can't and shouldn't be so powerful against regular infantry. Controls are cumbersome. Tutorial shows that infantry should be able to take square formation against cavalry, but i wasn't able to achieve that. Battles becom boring as it is the same thing all over again. Start on the border of the map and then run to the objective point, then battle near that objective point. And there is no game speed control, so every time you have to sit and wait until you can actually start fighting. Can't find anything bright in this game. If i could, i would take my money back.
