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Rising up from the ashes of Flagship Studios (makers of the promising but never released Mythos), Runic Games is a team formed by folks who previously worked on the first two Diablo games and makers of the light-hearted dungeon crawler Fate. With that kind of talent on board, Torchlight certainly feels like an amazingly polished effort despite the absence of any pre-release hype or publicity. It’s surprisingly lightweight (capable of running even on netbooks), looks gorgeous and is simply a blast to play.
The game is a ‘Diablo clone’ in every sense of the term. It plays almost exactly like the Diablo games, but also has a few neat tricks of its own. For starters, the vibrant, colorful and almost cartoony art-style, which wouldn’t look out of place in games like Fable or World of WarCraft, is in stark contrast to the dark gothic visuals of Diablo. The game is set in the small mining town of Torchlight. Things haven’t been going so well since the discovery of a strange new powerful-but-deadly substance called Ember. The town is constantly under siege from dangerous creatures lurking deep beneath the ground and the friendly-neighborhood mage has gone missing. And that’s where you come in.
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The plot is extremely barebones and feels tacked on just to give some sort of purpose to all the clicking and looting that you’ll be doing for the countless hours to come. Much like Diablo, the game offers multiple character classes for you to choose from. There are only three classes – the Destroyer, who is your standard issue Barbarian-like tough melee warrior, the Vanquisher, a sassy ranger type chick who prefers using bows and guns, and rounding things off is the Alchemist, who is some sort of steampunk-ish mage who, among other things, can summon minions to aid him. While the class selection may seem limited at first, the individual skill trees for each class allow you to take multiple skill paths, making it far more diverse than it initially appears.
For example, the Alchemist can either become a pure caster with an arsenal of devastating offensive spells or a summoner, who lets his robotic minions do his dirty work while he hangs back sorting out loot drops and casting the occasional buff. The skill trees and character progression are surprisingly deep and a lot of fun to explore. While the leveling up works exactly like in Diablo, the game also throws in a ‘fame’ mechanic. Basically, your character earns fame every time you kill a boss, mini-boss or complete a quest. Each level of fame grants you a title and an extra skill point.
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Another addition to the standard formula is the presence of your character’s ‘pet’, a mechanic that was originally featured in the game Fate. Your pet can either be a dog or a cat and will follow you around wherever you go. The pet itself is quite capable during combat and can also learn spells and equip rings and necklaces for bonuses. You can also send the pet back to town to sell unwanted items, thus eliminating the need of constantly taking a portal back to town every time your inventory gets full. You can also temporarily or permanently transform your pet into a new creature by feeding it different types of fish that you catch during a fishing mini-game. The transformations grant your pet new strengths and bonuses. But if you ever want the dog or cat back, you can always do so by buying a special type of fish at a vendor. The pet itself cannot die and will simply avoid combat and retreat if its health goes down, something which you can always treat by helping it with a healing potion.
The gameplay itself is your standard dungeon crawling fare. You explore several large randomly generated multi-level dungeons, kill hundreds upon hundreds of monsters, open crates and smash a bunch of barrels and urns. Enemies grant you experience as well as drop loot. Speaking of which, the game is very heavy on loot drops, perhaps even more than Diablo was. It even feels overdone at times. There are standard items, rare items, unique items, epic items and various item sets to be found. The colour coding makes it a little easy to figure out which items you may want to pick up. Still, the amount of loot you’ll find is staggering, leaving you to constantly shuffle your inventory and make sure you’re always stocked up on identity scrolls. Thankfully, you can pick up gold by simply walking near it and also send items directly to your pet’s inventory, rather than yours, by shift-clicking on them.
Next page: IVG verdict
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The game also features an enchantment system, socketed items and a transmutation system – all lifted straight from Diablo II. It’s worth noting that the enchantment system feels a little unbalanced at times as it allows you to enchant a single item over and over again at a relatively small cost. There is no weapon degradation and hence no regular visits to the blacksmith for repairs.
Although you’ll be following the main storyline quest for the most part, you can also take up additional side quests and explore optional dungeons by buying map portals at vendors. The quests are generally involve nothing more than exploring a dungeon to find an item or kill a boss. There’s nothing new or innovative here. Still, the dungeon crawling is as fun as you’d expect and the levels themselves (despite being randomly generated) are actually a lot of fun to explore. With varying architecture and loads of nicely rendered enemies both large and small, not a single dungeon ever gets boring. The combat itself is fast paced and works exactly like Diablo, only a lot smoother. Your primary and secondary attacks are mapped to the two mouse buttons while other items and skills can be accessed from the hotkey bar which is mapped to the numeric keys. If you’re familiar with action RPGs, you’ll feel right at home with it.
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The main storyline should take you around 10 hours to finish but there’s always the side quests and optional dungeons to play through. Also once you finish the game, a ‘never-ending’ dungeon gets unlocked. The level cap is 100 and there is also an option to ‘retire’ your hero in order to pass on their valuable experience to your newer characters. The character classes are varied enough to make each playthrough feel different and there are also multiple difficulties to try out, including a Hardcore mode, where your character dies permanently if he or she falls in battle. I must also point out that the game is quite easy on the Normal difficulty setting, and if you’ve played similar games before, I’d suggest starting on harder difficulties if you’re looking for a decent challenge.
Despite its extremely low system requirements, Torchlight is a gorgeous looking game. The stylised, exaggerated art style is a treat to look at and the game looks amazing in motion, especially since framerates typically go up to 60+ on a well-equipped PC. The environments are full of color and detail and the dungeons themselves are quite varied. From underground mines to moss-covered jungle temples to volcanic prisons, there’s a nice variety in the locations. Little details such as harmless critters scampering about give a nice touch to the already pretty looking environments. All armour and weapons are rendered in full detail and look very cool once equipped. The font selection could have been better though as the default font is quite large and at times feels a bit obtrusive.
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The music is composed by the same folks who worked on the first two Diablo games and is another standout element of the game. It sounds very much like the music from Diablo but also different at the same time. It’s easily one of the better soundtracks you’ll hear in a game this year. The voice acting although quite limited is fairly decent.
There are a few things that keep Torchlight from becoming an instant classic though. For starters, it’s all too similar to Diablo – which is subjective. You can either look at it as a good thing or a bad thing considering there is very little that the game does to set itself apart. The story is nothing to write home about and the quests are all of the fetch/kill variety. And then there is the whole ‘no multiplayer’ issue. A large part of Diablo II’s success is a result of its addictive and time-tested co-operative multiplayer component. However at the moment there isn’t any sort of multiplayer in Torchlight, which is a real shame since there was clearly a huge potential here. Runic Games apparently has no plans of adding a multiplayer feature at the moment, but we can hope for it to get added sometime in the future along with downloadable content, especially since the fan feedback on this game has been extremely positive.
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At $20, Torchlight’s price point may hit a sweet spot for overseas gamers, but it’s still higher than a regular retail copy of a new PC game in India. Despite that, if you’re a fan of action RPGs and want a similar game to keep you busy until Diablo III, you really can’t do much better than this. This is as close a game can get to the perfecting the Diablo formula. In fact, it does some things better than Diablo. For example, the inventory and map system are actually better but some balance issues and the lack of multiplayer hold it back. But it still has the ‘one more level before I sleep’ quality which is more than enough to warrant a purchase.
Conclusion
Torchlight is a surprisingly lightweight and highly addictive action RPG that no fan of Diablo should miss. It looks fantastic, plays great and offers enough content to keep you busy for weeks. The low system requirements are a huge plus. As a single player experience, it does almost everything right. Be prepared to lose a significant amount of sleep though.
(+) Hands down the best Diablo-clone till date
(+) Gorgeous vibrant visuals with an endearing art-style
(+) Very low system requirements
(+) Highly addictive
(-) No multiplayer
(-) Some minor balance issues
(-) Highly addictive
Title: Torchlight
Developer/Publisher: Runic Games
Genre: RPG
Rating: NA
Platforms: PC ($20 via Steam)
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