If you don't know it yet, its a little Hack N Slash RPG game similar to Diablo 2 & Diablo 3 (probably more like D3) http://www.torchlightgame.com/
I think you can buy it from steam for 20$ (I wouldn't though)
First impressions of torchlight playing as the archer: Game to me is like a combo of D2/D3 and WoW, except worse.
-The music is decent, lots of spanish guitar and ambience like diablo 2 (I kinda hate it though because it puts me to sleep if I hear it too long)
-Graphics are childish/bubbly looking 3d , reminds me of LoL (league of legends), I prefer the grittier realistic look for these kinds of games.
-Your pet and helpers get stuck around terrain very often. which is a hassle to go
back and straighten them out. they also die very easily (but they don't actually die so it's no biggy).
-The 3d graphics get so cluttery on even the smallest couple of monsters, you can't tell what is going on. (yourself, pet, ally, Summons, monsters, all doing attacks or spells) you can't see shit. Some little pygmy guys jump around and get on different sides of you as well. Also since your pet can eat fishes that make him look like a monster, it's even more confusing. Especially if you are playing on very hard mode, you'll die thinking you were safe.
-When monsters die, it is not clear. they just kinda roll over, or crumple forward/backward. There needs to be better sound effects clearly denoting deaths, as well as better death animations. (ASSPLODE INTO BLOOD PLZ. This is huge fail imo, Blizzard realized this clutter factor with 3d games in the mistake that is Wc3, Notice how they went through a lot of trouble in sc2 to make sure you can cleary tell when shit dies or even wtf is going on)
-When you get hit, same thing, you don't have clear damage/hp loss sound effects so you don't know you are getting hit unless you keep your eye on the HP bar, which is extremely hard since the screen is chaos. Sometimes even when it's just 1 monster you can't even see the monster attack animation or even a sound effect when a monster is near you and you get hit. -When a monster shoots a projectile, same deal, you can't really tell if it hit you because there is so many objects around you. Or an angle/hill (line of sight) advantage at all times that it could have just as easily hit something or missed you.
There needs to be some kind of indicator,outline of which monster is being attacked or what IS a monster imo. Diablo and Diablo 2 did this by outlining each monster with a Green line, which slowy changed from yellow,orange,red and dead.
-The controls are fine (very much like D2) but the execution of them is worse. What I mean is, say you wanna shoot, step, shoot, step; the character is much slower and must finish the animation completely before you can issue another command. even though most of the monsters are extremely slow it still seems like you are greatly hindered by this. -You can't easily see where you are clicking when you are trying to shoot a monster from far, often you will barely miss and start running forward which annoys this move/step strategy that I masted in D2. You end up doing worse than just standing there shooting while holding shift. Especially because shots can miss (not from dice roll, but from movement). -Even though the screen is zoomed out wide, everything is still very small and close proximity.
-Story is cheap and unoriginal. Characters are uninteresting. Story elements and plot are really basic. I feel like I'm playing a game designed for 10-13 year olds.
-Lot of people saying the game is nearly identical to a game called Fate, so much so that they think they should sue for copyrights lol.
There is a couple other minor gripes that I have but overall i'm enjoying it after a couple hours. I think the gameplay is going to get real repetitive real fast though, because there is 1 city (from what I've read and just endless stairs that lead down down down to more random dungeons over and over with occasional side dungeons). But really there is no exploration or anything.
The main thing I like about the game is how much stash space you have, (1 chest per character + self + pet + shared stash between characters). And the fact that you don't have to keep running/portaling back to town to unload the trash items and items to save for later. You can have your pet run the task for a short time penalty.
I'm still playing it though, because hack n slash RPG games are pretty fun and I haven't played one in a long time. Really only played WoW, Diablo2 , and some old ass game called The Summoning.
This game WAS $2 on steam for like 2 weeks between Christmas and New Year. I like to play it when I just have only 10min. or so to kill. It's taking me a long time to progress but I enjoy it.
Basically it's just a worst version of Diablo II. The combat just isn't as intense as Diablo, and it doesnt "grip" you.
But nevertheless, it was fun and i played sixteen hours before i got bored and stopped. The graphics aren't that childish in the dungeons, it looks nice actually.
Overall if you're looking for a quick fun cheap game, then this is it.
OH shit yea, I forgot to mention that it wasn't multiplayer. Yea that sucks, these games are always the most fun with a few IRL friends on lan or whatever.
Also, the dungeons are very linear. You will never get lost or confused in them, you can pretty much only go forwards or backwards.
Yea, I'd give it about a 5 or 6 out of 10. If they fixed the main issues with clarity then I'd probably rate the fun factor to an 8 or 9.
Torchlight is a great game. For those who dont know. They take multiplayer out of this because they are now developing some form of a online game base on it. Coming this year I think.
played this game through a couple weeks ago, fun the first time around
my second character was on hardcore very hard mode and died at level 13 in the endless dungeon, thats when i quit.. gonna wait for d3 till i pick up another game like this :D
I don't understand why people are complaining about it having no multi. It was intended and released as a budget game. It initially cost twenty dollars or something. Comparing it to Diablo 2 in terms of content and versatility is just plain silly. It's a great game to occupy your time with when you're bored or in transition between platinum titles.
edit: Not to say that it doesn't stand on it's own two feet. You just have to understand that it was created by a small development team.
It's fun for what it is: a simple hack n' slash rpg. I like some of the features they introduced like retirement and your pet. If you're in the mood for some mindless fun then Torchlight is perfectly fine. Especially if you get it for sale since the original price ($20) is already quite cheap.
Here is my Vanquisher build, not sure on all of it yet. Marksman For stats I've been dumping 99% into dex , with only a few points into STR/DEF for items. I think I already put too many points into them though, because I'm pretty sure you can get away with using items to boost them and if you need to, leapfrog the items as well.
I'm obviously a bit of a glass cannon, but that is why I gave my pet; Zombies & flame sword spells, while I myself have skel archer, flame sword, heal self, heal all.
The items that I'm wearing are a bit of a mix right now, mostly going for +crit, +damage /%damage modifiers, then +MF/+Exp, +HP. (trying to get ice and life steal also)
Kinda mad that life/mana steal suck in this game. They don't work for spell shots like in d2.
I'm only level 15 and I hit nearly 200 damage and crit for over 500. Just now finding + speed boots, hoping there is +speed attack modifiers as well. Also hope that I can respec stats and skills later too.
torchlight a good single-player game for its price. but once you've "finished" it, there is no point in coming back... i mean there is no big variety. to anyone who is looking for the best diablo2-alternative i would recommend titan quest: immortal throne. lots of scenery, tons of items, good gameplay, beautiful graphics, interesting classes, captivating skill-trees and an active modding-comunity. the only downside to it - its quite easy. this where a tiny mod named "xmax" comes in. this mod increases the number of mosters by 3,4,5 or max times. when its on max, it can literally fill your screen. the question is, can your old lady provide the juice to run it
I played as a summoner alchemist, and the game got ridiculously hard after about level 40, so much that I quit playing. It's no fun going into the other dungeon and getting your ass handed to you by monsters who die after one full minute of bashing. Multiply that by 10 (minimum amount of monsters onscreen at any given time) and you have a game that gets less and less fun as it progresses. I sort of regret my 20 bucks.
lol I do SOoooo much damage, my normal attack is like 3 times as fast as my flame explosion shot + I have life steal and all this crit, so normal shot is like the best to use right now lol. crit bonus % is about 200 , so I can hit upwards of 1600~ in a crit shot which is 1/5 shots.
On January 21 2010 14:15 CosmicAC wrote: Yep, played this game.
Basically it's just a worst version of Diablo II. The combat just isn't as intense as Diablo, and it doesnt "grip" you.
But nevertheless, it was fun and i played sixteen hours before i got bored and stopped. The graphics aren't that childish in the dungeons, it looks nice actually.
Overall if you're looking for a quick fun cheap game, then this is it.
Diablo II? I would compare it against Diablo I and unfavorably at that!
I played through this game a while back, and it got very repetitive, very fast. I am aware that it is significantly cheaper than a regular game and thus am willing to excuse most of its badness because of it.
But my real point in coming over here is to mention there there are a lot of mods available for Torchlight, with new classes and dungeons and playing styles, which helps extend the game's playing time and lets you play however you want. It helps make up for the lack up multiplayer, although multiplayer is coming in the form of an MMO, if you really missing killing things with friends. It'll be free to play, and likely will be out before D3, so it's something to look into when the time comes.
Sorry to bump this, but I just recently learned about this game and started playing it. Didn't progress far or play a lot of it but I have to say it's quite ok. My destroyer seems kinda strong though (one- or two-shotting bosses seems a bit lame) and the lack of multiplayer (even LAN, so I could enjoy some quality bashing evenings with my friend would be nice) and complete rip-off from Fate (mentioned earlier but without specifics. In Fate you also had your pet and fed it fishes to turn it into something else, sounds familiar?) are definite downsides. On the positive sides, well, the game brings back a lot of good memories (anyone played DarkStone? ) and is a fine thing if you're bored and just want to cause some havoc and feel invincible for a while.
To be fair, in an interview about Torchlight one of the lead developers was asked about the frequent accusations that the game was basically a rip off of Fate and he responded to the effect that he had been the developer on Fate and that he had enjoyed working on it but felt that Fate had had some far more fundamental flaws than Torchlight.
He went on to say that he was probably the single person best placed to say that Torchlight exemplified the things he had once wanted Fate to be.
I think the gameplay of Torchlight is fun enough. My only real problem with the game is that the talent trees between the three classes have too much in common.... I prefer very distinct classes over ones that come across so versatile that you can do "anything" with them. I think Diablo 2 and Immortal Throne do a great job with distinctive classes by comparison.
As far as actual game play goes, Torchlight is really fun, though. If you really just feel like killing stuff in a hack n slash game, it's a great way to blow off steam.
There were some good points in that "review" but to me it read more like "this game is mediocre because of this and this and this too; and fails as D2."
No one really expects this to be solid competition to D3, it's obviously marketed as a budget game to tide people over till D3 comes out (though they probably would rather people play their planned MMO version of Torchlight they must undoubtedly know that most will play D3 instead).
BTW, of course the game seems similar to Fate, because I believe they're made by the same devs (some of which also came from Blizzard North, which produced D2).
"Notice how they went through a lot of trouble in sc2 to make sure you can clearly tell when shit dies or even wtf is going on"
No way >_>
And this game is fun for burning away time, but that's it. Just casual fun. Not that exciting as D2:LoD. Probably it's the graphics that take away the feeling of excitement.
What gives me the excitement right now is trying to play with my hybrid vanquisher (marksman/rogue) on very hard. A lot of fun. And you guys don't know shit, explosive shot sucks, ricochet is teh shiznit
Even if it is not the greatest I wont hate on torchlight because this is like fucking free. I mean it was developed by the orignal people who made D1 and D2.
I think there is multiplay and LAN but player base is close to nothing. This is like a game that you play single player just to kill time. I played this when I got bored of D3 and when my internet connection went down or just wanted to get some sleep as this is a good I want to get some sleep "make you sleepy game". It is also a nice feel good, I wanna kill shit and stuff, wanna diffuse my "SC2" pressure/anxiety game.
Anyway, the engineer guy is really imba and the berserker can turn into a unli casting shadow wolf mage - so much for my melee skills.
This game is a almost freeware / mod encouraged game and if you remember TL1 they had all kinds of mods and it was fun.
EPT![[image loading]](http://diablo.incgamers.com/gallery/data/500/torchlight2.jpg)
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