Torchlight II

Developer: Runic Games
Steam Release: Sep 2012
Usual Price: £14.99
Hours Played: 25.2
Similar To: Asura / Fate / Fight The Dragon / Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing / Titan Quest
Rating:  5/5 Parsnips



GAMEPLAY
Made by developers going by the name of Runic Games, but with a few of their number hailing from the team that gave us Diablo II, Torchlight II may be an indie title but it's a meaty release nevertheless. In fact anyone who has played the Blizzard game, which this offering was clearly inspired by, can jump right in with aplomb. In isometric view and with keyboard + mouse, you control your hero through a series of dungeons and treacherous areas while hacking, slashing and firing your way through the endless waves of enemies who stand in your way. Your main attacks are done with the right and left mouse button while a few other abilities, along with the quaffing of potions, can be activated by a few hotkeys on the keyboard. Loot enemy drops to either use or to sell at a town later and rinse and repeat. You know the drill. 

BALANCE & PACE
Apart from ploughing through areas and killing things, the game has a lot to do with deciding which skills to upgrade, what gear to equip and what to sell and when to sell it. Depending on how obsessive you are, you can spend quite a lot of time mulling over these decisions. However, Torchlight II is really about the hack and the slash and the exploration. Thankfully, this sequel proves to be more engaging than its monotonous prequel. No longer do you groan as you realise the developers have thrown in yet another tiered-level of the same old content (that you've been grinding through for ages already) but you are now presented with more varied, more numerous and more vibrant areas to explore as well as a few tricky challenges thrown in. As a result the game just feels more fun!

PRESENTATION & DESIGN
With graphics reminiscent of Dungeon Defenders and World of Warcraft, Torchlight II is presented with similar cartoon-like art-work. Your title page features an atmospheric image of the area you are currently in with a creature looking on menacingly. The Options option may be a mystery at first as the spanner icon for this is almost greyed-out and tucked out of the way almost imperceptibly in the top right corner. Anyway other paths, shown as distinct red panels along the bottom allow you to: load up a game by bringing up a roster of your characters; resume your game by letting you jump back in; and bring up the character-creation screen to start a new game. With low specifications Torchlight II does not demand a great deal from your system and navigating through the game always feels solid, chunky and stable.
 

PROGRESS SYSTEM
Information regarding progress and stats are to be found in-game through the many menus accessed by clicking on the necessary icons. Needless to say, these are many and varied and include such menus as; your character panel (showing stats); your inventory (showing equipped items); your skills menu and quest log. This is not to say anything of the many other menus to do with various vendors, enchanters and your stash. Obviously, progress can be checked by what level you're on, what area or act you're on and what level of difficulty you've battled to. Additionally, you could create multiple characters and try out each of the four classes to see how they differ. With a widely varied skill-tree though, real nerds could even try two characters of the same class but branch the skills out in widely different directions.
  

CONCLUSION
It is time for action rpgs to move away from the run-of-the-mill Diablo II clone label. To do this, developers need to spice things up a bit by taking the genre in new directions. Repetitive gameplay syndrome has to be eradicated. Thankfully, Torchlight II does keep the variety alive by introducing a lot of rich and different areas to explore and not succumbing to cookie-cutter programming which is becoming the bane of the RPGers lives. Areas are now littered with interesting side quests that keep you guessing and you are no longer forced to go down four or five tediously long levels of monotony and boredom. Torchlight II brings the freshness back to the table and, like the majority of reviewers say, is a worthy competitor to Diablo III. For an indie title, that's quite something.