+ Runs great even on my old potato of a laptop on decent settings. (I turned off a few things like bloom since I neither like it nor does it feel worth the extra resource)
+ Your AI companion is not just functional but actually really useful (I called my hawk Pancakes)
+ Modding tools inclusive and decently easy to comprehend.
+ Way more stuff to work with. (Life steal shotguns are the best thing since health potions)
+ You can HIDE THE HELM!
- Movement controls in combat can be a bit clunky as a ranged fighter. (if you don't quite hold shift you might run face first into pain...)
- I do miss the combining gems feature.
- There is never enough inventory and general storage space for all your cool stuff.
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!
Just love the look and feel of this. Unusually straightforward for an RPG. Definitely not the most challenging I've played (neither was the prequel but I bought this on the basis I enjoyed that and I enjoyed this as well). If I knew someone who never played RPGs this is probably the one I'd try to introduce them to. A game which I really can describe as fun to play.
Played: 20 - 30 Hrs
Class: Berserker (Other classes are: Mage, Engineer (Fighter), Outlander (Rouge)
Mods: Torchfinal and Torchfinal addon. ( Note on mods... most of the popular ones on nexus don't seem to work with the newest version of this game for some reason, which some mod creators note on their pages. I'm guessing synergies still does but I did not use that one.)
Story: Not much depth to it. One of the hero's from the first game went bad and now you gotta carve your way to where he is and put a stop to his plans to "Save The World".
Gameplay: Standard diablo clone. Wack monsters, get loot, level up, rinse and repeat. The best part of this game is that process. The combat is very satisfying once your character gets some levels and decent equipment. Once the abilities get strong enough most monster don't fall over, they evaporate. The developers did a great job showing how much of power house your character turns into.
Sound: Good. The sound effects deliver the sizzle, pow, zap of combat well enough.
Control: You click, it evaporates. What else is needed? Standard Diablo Clone controls.
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Graphics: Very detailed and has held up well due to the "cartoonish" type of graphics used. This is a 10 year old game at this point though so it is not super high res, still looks good though. Some of the armor and weapons can look "samey"
Overall:
I've had this game for a while and just never got around to it. I beat grim dawn and I see where some of the people that worked on that also worked on this and on diablo. They have a similar feel in some areas. What they really nailed in this title though is the combat flow. Once you get in to battle it just works. The enemies go flying and the whole area is painted a pretty new shade of yellow, green, red, black, etc and once the dust settles and the fires go out there is usually some new shiny stuff to equip and skill points to assign. I would recommend this to anyone looking for a fun ARPG.
