Developer: Runic Games
Publisher: Runic Games
Rrp: £14.99 (Steam) $19.99 (Runicgames.com)
Released: 20th September 2012
Available on Steam and their own site
Played using: Mouse and Keyboard
Once long ago three adventurers journeyed deep into the cave below the village of Torchlight. Together they defeated a great evil and, for a short time, the land knew peace once more. Years later a battle ensues in the streets of Torchlight, it was quick, decisive and a brutal defeat for the forces of good. Join us in a new adventure to defeat a new evil born from one mans desperation.
Torchlight 2 picks up a few years after where the original game left off, and in an attempt to cure himself of a horrible sickness the Alchemist (from the last game) has gone mad destroying all of Torchlight. You play as a hero chasing after him and the terror that lies in his wake.
If I were to sum up what makes this game an improvement on its predecessor it would be this; More. More enemy variety, more places to explore, more quests, more flexibility with the characters. Just more everything! A prime example of this is the maps, most of the maps you play through are almost double the size of the predecessors largest maps and are packed with details.
This time the games character selection has been upped from three to four classes. You have the Embermage (Wizard), Beserker (Barbarian), Engineer (Swordsman) and the Outlander (Archer).
You also now get to choose between being male and female as well as change your face, hair style and hair colour. While I appreciate the more diverse options on offer it seems strange to me that what face you choose also dictates the skin colour of the whole body.
The pet selection has increased massively as well with fourteen different pets to choose from including, I kid you not, a headcrab. Just as with the previous game the actual pet you choose is a purely aesthetic choice as they all have the same abilities and stats.
While on the subject of the pets they’ve made several changes to the way the pets themselves operate. You can still send your pet to town to sell excess equipment but now you can add a limited shopping list that will allow your pets to use the money they earn to return with consumables like health potions and town portal scrolls.
They also can now learn up to four spells to cast making them very useful in a fight, for example Falcor, my pet alpaca, (my girlfriend decided on the name) could summon skeleton allies and shoot bolts of ice.
Some improvements have also been made to the way the controls work as well, movement being a perfect example. In the first game you moved your character by clicking at a location on screen and they would move to it. In Torchlight 2 you can still do this, or if you hold the left mouse button down the character will run continuously to where you are hovering it.
To those that played the first Torchlight (or Diablo) the combat will feel very familiar as the controls are exactly the same. The combat is mostly controlled with the mouse, left clicking performs a standard attack and right clicking uses your characters magic or special skill. You may note I said ‘mostly’, this is because there is a what’s known as a ‘hotbar’. This hotbar allows you to use items in your inventory, such as health or mana potions, quickly using the keyboard.
There is one difference to the combat from the last game which is the ‘charge bar’. As you kill enemies a bar appears above the hotbar. The more kills you get the higher the charge, the higher the charge the more passive benefits your character (or others playing with you in multiplayer co-op).
While it may look very similar to the previous game the way the way the stats function on the character screen has changed as well. Yes, it still shows strength, dexterity, focus and vitality as it did before. BUT if you hover the cursor over the stat and read the box that pops up you’ll see some slight but important differences. For example the stat that almost exclusively dealt with magic and mana in the previous game (Focus) now also adds a chance for a character to strike an opponent with both hands (as long as the weapons equipped are similar) which the game calls an Execution. Every stat has had this kind of revamp making points allocation are more thoughtful affair.
Torchlight 2 features more quests than the original by quite a large margin, with quest giving NPC’s appearing outside of the main hub areas. Because of this though the mini-map can end up looking cluttered, in order to combat this Runic Games have made a small but significant change to the quest screen from the first game. Now you can select and deselect the amount of quests you can see on screen at once.
When you complete the game you’ll gain access to the new game plus mode for when you’ve completed the game and want to carry on playing. As with most new game plus modes, you keep the levels and what gear your character was wearing and the enemies you face will match, or be above, your level. If that gets boring you can also import mods from the Steam workshop (or other sites) and use those. The game comes with a mod launcher on startup so firing up those mods is pretty easy.
To be honest I’d have a hard time not recommending this game, especially to those that like RPG’s of this sort. In my opinion (I’m certain I’ll get told off for saying this) I think Torchlight 2 is the best ‘Diablo Clone’ on the market, and I’m including all of the Diablo’s on that list.
If you liked that then perhaps try;
Torchlight
Deathspank
Diablo 2
