Review Score:

When people compare Torchlight to the Diablo series, it’s going to be hard to argue with them. This is Diablo — only with steampunk, guns, and a little more cartoon than you may be used to.

If you’re like me, and somewhere in the recent past, you reinstalled Diablo 2 after hearing about the high resolution home-brew patch that was out there, than this is the game for you. I spent a few good hours with the old Diablo 2 code, trying and failing to find enthusiasm in an atmosphere that was simply tiring to revisit. My reaction was solely based on the age of the engine.

Torchlight has modern graphics spiking at around 1920×1200 coupled with a lightweight footprint on both CPU and hard drive makes it an excellent title for both hardcore gaming rig fans as well as folks playing for a few moments in the coffee shop on their 4 year old laptop.

If that doesn’t sell you, then consider this: The game incorporates sound and music with which you’ll be instantly familiar, as the same team that brought you the Diablo titles in the first place has moved on to Torchlight. The details of sounds all the way down to the “whip-whip-whip” when you can’t pick up an object and it flips through the air — it’s all there.

Gameplay

Here you can find all the standard elements of Action RPG gameplay:  Frenetic fighting, clicking, and last-minute reconsidering your health potions.  You start out the game making 2 choices:  class and difficulty level.  Class is a bit of a misnomer here, as you’re starting out with more of an archetype:  Spellcaster, Warrior or Archer.  Once you’ve made that choice, and later are deep into the game, you can find your way through the skill lists and specialize to your play style.

Difficulty is a little bit unsettling, as you’re given options for Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard and Hardcore.  Without too much explanation, I’m sure you can guess what Hardcore is.  However, it’s important to note that Easy is basically a mode for people who’ve never played an Action RPG before.  For an enriching experience, if you’ve have the background of more than a casual association with these sorts of games, I suggest at least hitting up Hard difficulty to start.

On your character selection screen, you’re also given the option of selecting what type of pet you’d like:  Cat or Dog.  There are no differences other than cosmetic that I can tell, and there are items later in the game that allow you to make a permanent change to the other species if you change your mind.  I like the dog, myself, as I have a big dog in real life, and she shakes her collar just like the dog does when he idles about.

Your pet has an inventory of his own.  When you’re in the dungeon, you can tell your pet to pick up things, or you can swap inventory items at any time.  When the pet’s inventory is filled with sell-able trash, you can then click a special button and send him back to town.  He’ll take some time to get back (said time can be shortened through certain skills), but when he comes back, he’ll happily add the profits of his sale to your overall gold total.

Your pet can also wear two rings and a necklace, and has spots to cast 2 spells.  Those equipment slots make for a great way to use items you’re replacing on your character.   The AI in the game is pretty good when it chooses to cast the pet spells.  I prefer that my pet use summoning spells rather than offensive spells, as I always like more critters on the screen.

Finally, your pet can eat special food during the run of the game that can transform him into a much more powerful creature, or just bestow on him some special abilities for a short time.  You get this food by fishing — yea, fishing.  Occasionally, you’ll find pools of fish-able water throughout the dungeons.  You can spend some time running a simple fishing interface that requires little skill to acquire any number of different types of fish:  Some fish are just good for selling, some have swallowed treasure or items that you can use, but most are for feeding to your pet.

Interface

The game’s interface is pretty stock action RPG:  Shortcuts for spells, items, and skills coupled with an indicator of your current health and mana.  Left clicking on an empty slot in your task bar gives you a pop up window of options for what you can put into it, or you can (in the case of items or spells) simply drag and drop the icon over to the empty location.

Inventory management is a little different from Diablo in that all items, irrespective of size, only take up one slot in your inventory.  You can move items out of your inventory by shift-clicking them.  If you have no other target window open, shift-clicking the item drops it onto the ground.  Otherwise, if you have your stash open, a merchant window or your pet’s inventory, it’ll get shoved over there.  Of course, you can still drag and drop anything you want rather than using this method.

As with other games in this genre, you click to move, and left-clicking interacts with a target.  If it’s a friendly NPC, you engage them in dialog or start up a transaction.  If it’s a monster, you attack them.  Right clicking on a target uses the skill or spell you have set up for that action.  You can actually have a secondary skill set up for your Right Click action as well, and you toggle between the two with the Tab key.

Issues

As you can tell by the score, I had very few problems with this game.  Those problems I do have may be fixed in what appears to be an imminent update to the game.

My favorite play style in these games is that of a summoner, and that choice closely followed by an Archer.  This leads me to have a great deal of pets and summoned creatures following me about at all times.  Unlike the Diablo games, this game’s environment includes a number of multi-level areas, where my critters muck about on the wrong level, thinking that they’re right next to me.  They can end up getting stuck, and I’m left to either corral them up a slim flight of steps or down a tight hallway, or just give up and re-summon the lot of them when I get out the other end.  This wouldn’t be too much of an issue except that the developers like to spring boss monsters on you just when you’re having this sort of difficulty.

The environment of the dungeons is varied and gorgeous, but after only about 4 or 5 hours of play, I could recognize the area that I was in, and I knew not only where the secrets were, but I could guess where the boss monsters and big fights were going to happen.  Now, this is going to be fixed, I suspect, with the newest patch coming out soon, which will include an editor.  With player-made content fitting in, I’m sure I’ll stop having this issue pretty soon.

Conclusion

Not only is this game a technical masterpiece, but it comes in a small package (both in memory and hard drive footprint), is reminiscent of the best that its genre has to offer, and retails for less than 20.00.

Now, you’ll have to excuse me.  I’m about 80% of the way to level 19.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]