Feel's a cut copy and paste of the other Torchlight game, but with boring above ground levels added on. Maybe I just like crawling in deep dark dungeons and caverns of the first Torchlight.
If you have played any of the Diablo games or their many imitators, then Torchlight 2 will be instantly familiar. It has the same familiar gameplay loop: click-kill monsters, grab loot, upgrade skills and equipment, wash-rinse-repeat. The main problem with the game is that it is too faithful to this formula and offers nothing new. The quests and plot line are the typical kill-it, fetch-it, and so forth, and the character classes are the standard fighter, mage, archer, etc. Again, nothing new or innovative.
If you have never played games such as Diablo 2, Titan Quest, or Grim Dawn, then this might be worth a try on deep discount. Otherwise, give this a hard pass. I got bored inside of 2 hours and uninstalled.
The story is just as primitive as the rest of them. Back in the day, when Diablo and D-2 were.. fresh, kind of, in a video game it worked. I suppose the designers of Torchlight figured there's "fresh meat" out there, so they copied Diablo games to the letter for the uninitiated into the genre (except Warcraft-threeish art does not work - they missed the mark there).
You can never see what you are fighting. All you see is bright explosions, regardless of what you do or the weapon you use.
Inventory management is horrible, and, I imagine, you should just sell nearly everything you ever find.
And yes, Torchlight encourages you to portal "to town" every 5 minutes, because your inventory is full of garbage… and in the end "gold" does not mean much.
Socketing-shmocketing, growing weapons which develop new bonuses/abilities once you've killed a certain number of enemies. It is all just flare. Be my guest: Analyze your new find, waist brain power deciding how to socket it. Throw it away 3 minutes later.
The game has no substance, no story to care about (some dude turned bad, now he is destroying everything on a quest of his own and you, the hero, must stop him – makes me want to throw up).
It does not look particularly good (unless you have a fetish for anime/Warcraft hybrid kind of art).
It is annoying in just about every way I can imagine… and I've seen games. I've played thousands of games since 1990.
Had this game come out, say, in the late 1990 – early 2000s, I might have considered it a marvel.
Unless you have nostalgic urges and happen to have misplaced your old discs, stay away from this time-wasting, boring, opportunistic (in terms of game design) crap.
Really crave an action pseudo-RPG? Get Diablo 2 directly from Blizzard for like 9 bucks (likely less on sale). A far better game in every way (and if you do get it, play in Hardcore mode from the start *wink* -- that will give you a rush of adrenaline. Guaranteed.)
It is a rather boring arpg game, it lacks the depth and customization of free to play games such as Path of exile. Basically I measure every arpg against Path of exile and every other arpg is really shallow compared to it. I played both torchlight 1 and 2 and both of them were very easy to put down once new challenge league starts in Path of exile. Uninstalled both torchlight games and never looked back.