Review – Torchlight (PC)

There have been quite a few Diablo clones over the years, including noteworthy titles such as Titan Quest and Dungeon Siege. However, the closest comparison to Torchlight is a little known game called Fate. Now, Fate is also very clearly a Diablo descendant, and none of the apples fall very far from the tree, but Torchlight is enjoyable nonetheless and brings its own charm to the tried and true formula of click buttons, kill stuff, level up, and buy stuff.

There are three classes, Alchemist, Vanquisher, and Berserker to choose from, but each class seems to have a ranged, melee, and magic skill tree, with some differences to each. For example, the Alchemist has a minion-focused skill tree that is similar to the Necromancer in Diablo II. There are certain skills that every class seems to have, such as a skill to boost magic and gold find, a skill to boost experience points and fame points gained, and a skill to get cheaper vendor prices. Much like Diablo, whenever a character gains an experience level, they will gain 5 attribute points to divide among strength, dexterity, magic and defense, in addition to a skill point. Fame levels are just like experience levels, except they reward you with just a skill point instead of a skill point and attribute points. The skill trees do not have dependencies, so theoretically you could take the top level skills in all three specialization trees once you meet the required level.

Instead of traveling to different towns and locales, Torchlight puts you in one town. All the action takes place in 35 levels of the mine, which is also where the story unfolds. Each level gets harder, of course, and there are special levels where there’s a plot point. With the exception of these special levels, each level is a randomized Diablo-esque clickfest. There are better hotkeys for use, even though they’re not customizable, and I would have really appreciated the ability to use more than two mouse buttons. There are also quests in the game, but they’re not very exciting and are generally just an avenue to get more fame, experience, and gold. In addition to the story quests which have no rewards, there are generic, streamlined quests for every non-plot level: kill something, and find something. There is a fishing minigame that has rewards that are not great and is generally not that useful. The fish you get can turn your pet into different things temporarily with matching strengths and vulnerabilities, which is cool, but entirely unnecessary to play the game.

Inventory management is exactly the same as Diablo II, with the exception of your pet, which is a feature borrowed from Fate. Each character starts with a cat or dog, and the pet will fight for you as well as carry stuff for you. In addition, you can send the pet back to town to sell stuff. This could take up to two minutes, but each class has some kind of pet-boosting skill that will reduce this time. This feature was actually very useful for me and saved me quite a few time consuming trips back to town. Less selling and more killing is a win in my book. There’s a shared stash between all your characters as well as a personal chest for the character itself. As is typical for these type of games, none of the inventories seem like they hold quite enough, but it’s only a minor distraction. The game makes up for the meager bag space by making every item take only one slot, thus eliminating the need to play Tetris with the items in your bag or to calculate gold-per-bag-slot for every item you want to pick up.

A feature that is new to the formula is the ability to enchant your items. Starting at a base cost depending on the type of item, the quality (common, enchanted, rare, or unique) of the item, and how many abilities it has already, you can pay for the chance to add a new ability to the item. The ability is completely random, and the cost to add a new enchantment increases each time. Also, there seems to be a higher chance of failure the more you enchant one item, until the process fails every time. It would have been great if there was some on screen display of the percentage chance of failure, or if it actually told you what enchantment it added instead of having to check yourself, but it’s still a addictive mechanic that is similar to gambling. It is also fairly useful in keeping some items either up to date or to augment a weapon that will be used for many levels. A feature the game borrows from Titan Quest is the ability to recover your socketed gems from your items by destroying the item, or recovering your item by destroying the gems in it. This makes collecting gems quite a bit easier at the cost of the vendor price of the item or allows you to keep upgrading the gems in your favourite item.

The graphics are charming. They’re not the best you’ll find even at max settings, but it’s clear that Runic was going for accessibility over flash, as the game even includes a Netbook Mode for gaming on the go. Your character’s equipment visually looks different with different types of armour, though, and that is really cool and keeps things fresh. However, the game does experience a tiny bit of slowdown when lots of things are exploding on the screen, but this was very, very rarely an issue. Playing in a maximized window in window mode also seemed to skew certain overlays such as item slots which makes it weird to play in that mode and I would not recommend it.

The sound is generic, and the town music and sounds are heavily inspired by – if not outright stolen – from Diablo II. The dungeon music is varied enough though. The voice acting is adequate since the story isn’t all that involved, and everything else sounds like it should. Again, it was clear that Runic was going for accessibility and trying to make the game sound okay on the lowest common machine rather than trying to win any technical achievements, which is fine.

Where Torchlight really shines is the value of the game. Even though there is no online play, it still packs in a lot of replayability and content. Other than trying the different combinations of all three classes and skill trees, the game is not over for the character when the 35 levels end. That only opens entry to the Shadow Vault, which are randomly generated dungeon with enemies that match the level of the character. Once you open up the Shadow Vault, all new characters will be also able to access it. Only the streamlined quests continue in the Shadow Vault, albeit from new NPCs, and there is no new plot to really keep things interesting from a story perspective. Still, the Shadow Vault provides unlimited play for a favourite character and will generally yield better loot and experience. Also, to inspire even more replay, players can now Retire their characters once they reach a certain level, which grants some heirloom bonuses to new characters. This is a really neat feature although it’s painful to depart with a character you’ve spent so much time on. In addition to all this content, Torchlight brings back the beloved Hardcore Mode, which means when your character dies, it is permanently deceased. With no leaderboards or anything though, it’ll be tough to prove you hit level 99 without ever dying. On top of all these reasons to keep playing, there are also four difficulty levels to challenge, though unfortunately you cannot switch difficulties for a character.

If you liked Diablo, Torchlight is pretty much a necessity at the extremely attractive price point. If you’ve never played Diablo and are looking to check out what the fuss is about, it’s a pretty low risk venture. It’s pretty much guaranteed to work on your computer and it offers a lot of content for the money. I would not call Torchlight an inspired game, but it was incredibly fun and I’ll go back to play it again a few times until Diablo III comes out and consumes my life.