Graev let me play his copy of Torchlight the past few days since he’s been enthralled by Dragon Age: Origins almost every waking moment of the day. I decided to go with the Warrior looking guy (Is that even what he is… a Warrior? I don’t even know). I’m actually really sucked into the game now! I’m level 19 and blazing through the content. Like Graev said, and like most of you probably know, the game really is like a Diablo clone. It’s Diable Lite, really.
I have a few points of criticism:
1. Only one town with a single NPC providing the story. The rest of the NPC’s seem more interested in just giving you a reason to get a reward than to provide you with much in the way of meaningful story.
2. One dungeon feels weird even though it’s only an illusion. I’m just going deeper and deeper in the same mine! Although I’m experiencing several different ecosystems and entirely different looking tile-sets, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m just descending down one big hole. Can’t deny that the game is gorgeous though.
3. The drop rate is a little high. Every mob that I kill explodes with loot. I like loot. In fact, I love loot. However, it’s just a tad too high. I spend more time opening my inventory, which fills up every 30 seconds, to identify and fill up my dog’s inventory to send him back to sell than I do killing. I already avoid all white loot and focus on magic items and I’m about to start focusing only on the rare stuff.
Great game that’s lots of fun, despite my criticism. I love the music, graphics, mobs, atmospheres, diversity of itemization appearance, maps you can buy to different locations (Which give the illusion of different dungeons), pet and pet mechanics, and just how much fun I have logging in and clearing several levels of a dungeon when I have an hour to spend gaming.
Today’s patch was really encouraging since it allows players to change the difficulty after they’ve already started. There were also several improvements to the performance of the game as well as additional graphics customization. Significant update.
Multiplayer would be a real blast and I hope that they take the opportunity to expand the scope of the game to include multiple towns and a deeper story. I can see this being a game that releases episodic content and charges $5 for it.
Definitely worth $20!
Too many games, too little time, it si on my list and looks fun. Forget where I saw it but I thought I heard the devs already have plans of Torchlight MMO? Not sure if that means turning this into multiplayer or a whole seperate game.
2. One dungeon feels weird even though it’s only an illusion. I’m just going deeper and deeper in the same mine! Although I’m experiencing several different ecosystems and entirely different looking tile-sets, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m just descending down one big hole. Can’t deny that the game is gorgeous though.
Never played Diablo 1 huh?
The loading times are a bit too high IMO, that’s my major gripe.
Plus, I am not a fan of the Diablo style gameplay. It does not grab my attention for too long. This does not mean I do not like Torchlight, it is very cuuute, but I cannot get as excited about it as, say, Dragon Age or LOTRO atm.
The difficulty of “normal” is too low, and will bore people. I created a handy Torchlight skill conversion chart:
http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/8841/torchlightdifficultycon.jpg
Yeah, I found the single dungeon thing to be a bit weird too. I liked Diablo’s approach of different areas more.
@Longasc – Have you gotten the new patch? It drastically reduced load times by optimizing something or other.
The patch definitely decreased load times.
Thats great to hear! As a game you can just pick up and clear a few levels in an hour with, the 10 second loads just didnt fit the bill. I’ll have to update this then!
get off easy mode and the drop rates change noob
I’m on hard mode, smart guy.
Torchligt is the perfect game to play when youre too drunk to play lotro.
login in, now…
long live Atrell the hardcore single playa
lache pas
@Atrell and Keen
Loot drops do not change based on your difficulty, unless they changed that with the new patch too and I missed that note.
h4rdcor3 4 life yo!1!!1
I’ve been meaning to give Torchlight a try but I just cannot pull myself away from Dragon Age. I mean, it has so many flaws, bugs and server problems and yet it is captivating in a way few games ever are.
The npc commentary is hilarious. There are endless critical decisions to make, often with heavy moral consequences. Combat is fast and furious with some encounters requiring quite a bit of strategy.
Then there are the sublime moments. Like when a character you’ve killed reappears in the story line. Where the hell did he come from? Oh well, he just got sentenced to death anyway.
Of course I’ve played quite the cutthroat. Literally. I now giggle at cut scenes where my mage pulls out a dagger to dispatch some key character. It happens so often it has become a dark cliche.
Having used the DA conversation system gives me so hope for SW:TOR which seems to use a very similar model.