Torchlight improves on many things over Diablo II, but lacks any sort of multiplayer.
Torchlight is a relatively recent Diablo-style action RPG game that was released on the PC last October. Being a single player only game, it retailed for $20, but with it also being on Steam, it’s gone on sale several times for the measly price of $5. At $5, it’s a recommended purchase for anyone, but at $20, I believe you may need to be more of a serious solo Diablo player to get your money’s worth. I’ve sank about 7-8 hours into the game so far, and am ready to share my thoughts.
The Relationship Between Torchlight and Blizzard
As a Blizzard fan, I’ve played and enjoyed all of Blizzard’s major franchises: Starcraft, Warcraft, and Diablo. I think it’s been a little more than 10 years since Diablo II was released! Since then, the studio behind the Diablo games (Blizzard North) folded after several employees left to form new development studios such as Flagship Studios and Castaway Entertainment. Flagship Studios released one terrible game, Hellgate: London (which I bought!) and one good game, Mythos, before that company went under. Mythos was more akin to the Diablo games that the designers were famous for, and because it was such a hit, several of Flagship Studios’ employees formed a new company called Runic Games. Runic Games then went on to release Torchlight in October 2009 of last year. With the game being developed by the designer of Fate (a Diablo II clone), and the co-designers of Diablo and Diablo II, Torchlight is basically a spiritual successor to Diablo II.
What is Diablo?
For those that missed out on this pillar of Blizzard’s tri-universe, Diablo is a dark and arguably gothic action-RPG game that is a major clickfest. The game is played in isotromic view and the original allowed you to choose from three different classes as you made your way through randomly generated dungeons to take on bosses and eventually Diablo himself. What made the game so addictive wash the leveling up, stat & skill allocation, and the loot you could find. I believe that when Diablo 1 was released, there wasn’t an online battle.net interface so you could only play through the old-school network settings.
With the release of Diablo II, it had full battle.net support and allowed players to create online rooms for others to join. When more players played in a room, the rate for rare item drops would increase. Online play in Diablo II brought about marketplaces and trading as well as the ability for players to duel, and at that point, people were addicted. I remember doing so many boss runs looking for unique and set items for my different classes while my little brother would just duel all day and collect ears from defeated opponents like trophies. I feel that many of the addictive and enjoyable qualities of the Diablo games have made their way into World of Warcraft in some form or another, and I would still strongly recommend Diablo II today for those of you that love loot-based games but don’t want to play an MMORPG.
Torchlight’s “Evolution”
Diablo II increased the number of character classes you could select over the first one to something like 7 classes, there hasn’t been a sequel to the beloved game in the last 10 years. Since then, several other companies have released clones, such as Sacred, Titan Quest, and now, Torchlight. However, it’s not necessarily fair for us to think of Torchlight as a Diablo clone since it was designed by the same people that designed Diablo – and it looks like they’ve learned a thing or two from then. New to Torchlight over Diablo is the reduction to only three character classes, making things more streamlined and easier to get into. It reminded me of the success of Battlefield 1943 and how the classes were more simplified, allowing players to focus more on the gameplay itself. Torchlight also introduces a pet, allowing you to load the pet like a mule and ability to send the pet back to town to sell items when your bags are full. There are also various other improvements as well that make the game very easy to get into. In a sense, it may be better to start with Torchlight if you’re new to this genre, and then move over to Diablo II for multiplayer if you can’t wait for Diablo III (still no release date).
Hours 1-5
I’m going to try something different today and share my impressions just based on my hours of play. When I first started playing Torchlight, I was amazed at how charming and addictive it was. As a past Diablo player, I found Torchlight to be very intuitive and while many things were simplified, the core gameplay that made the Diablo games so fun was still in tact. There were still unique boss monsters that dropped rare items. You still had scrolls of town portals and scrolls of identify to find out what your mysterious items would be. But then there were things that made the game even more enjoyable as well – no durability on items, vendors that would sell scrolls to randomly generated dungeons, a chest that you could drop items into that all the characters you create could access, etc. I was having a lot of fun and the first 5 hours I played I didn’t even notice before I had to go to sleep.
Hours 6-7
It was not until the 6th & 7th hours that I started to run out of steam. I don’t know if it’s because the lack of multiplayer (and the ability to trade, party up, and find rarer items) or because I simply am not as hardcore as I used to be, but I started to find the game repetitive. In a way, the Diablo games were repetitive as well, but being able to play with friends may have made the ultimate difference. As I descended floor after floor deeper into Torchlight’s dungeons, I actually grew lonely. Here was a game that pretty much did everything right from a Diablo-style gameplay point of view, but the painful lack of multiplayer became more and more evident.
Hour 8
This final hour of my gameplay with Torchlight may end up being its last. I started telling my brother about the game and how much fun I was having in the earlier hours, but now I am realizing that even if I persuaded him to buy it, it’s not like either of us could play together so what was the point. What was the whole point of this game and lootwhoring if there was no public to parade my loot around to?! Of course, we all play games for different reasons. I still believe that if you’re one of those guys that played the Diablo games or its clones and was perfectly happy playing it solo for dozens of hours, you’re in for a treat with Torchlight. It’s the best single-player Diablo-style game today. Unfortunately for me, I’ve discovered that I need the multiplayer and am curious to see how Runic Games handles its new “free to play” Torchlight MMORPG that’s being worked on now. Maybe it will end up competing with Diablo III?
It’s hard to tell from one screenshot, but did they improve the graphics at all? I played Diablo 2 in college so I would hope so. And what other ways did they improve the single player experience? Is it still a mouse buster, or did they come up with any creative way to attack rather than point and click?
graphics are definitely better than diablo 2 at this age mainly because d2 still runs in what – 800×600 at most? of course, the entire game has a more cartoony “world of warcraft” like graphics engine and it works. it almost feels like you’re playing a high resolution cartoon version of diablo, and it works fine.
the gameplay is still very much point and click so if you’ve played diablo 2, there’s really not much difference in how the game plays with the clicking and the assigning of items and abilities to the numerical hotkeys.
the primary improvements on the single player experience is a chest that allows you to transfer items to all of your different characters (instead of muling across characters in d2), a pet that can not only pick up and hold inventory items, but can be sent to town to sell everything they’re carrying while allowing you to continue staying in the dungeon. there’s also a simple fishing game that allows you to catch fish which will either temporarily or permanently turn your pet into different creatures in the game, making use of their special abilities.
the game also has “randomoly generated” minidungeons that you can buy from vendors. each dungeon has its own level range you can buy, and by accessing it it’s a 1 time portal open to a 2-level dungeon that contains a named boss monster or two. in a way, it’s good to item farm off these random dungeons but i got a little bit bored after going through 5-6 of them back to back heh
i think the demo is a free download on steam, so if you have a decent PC – you might want to check it out for yourself if you’re interested.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/41500/
i don’t have a decent PC. I have the same MacBook that cmfl3x has! That probably qualifies us as leveling down as a PC gamer. At least it barely plays Starcraft 2…barely!