Review 14: Torchlight

Torchlight

This was a title that I bought mainly on account of people saying it was good, without really knowing what to expect. I must admit, I am rather glad I did.

At it's core, Torchlight is a Diablo clone. You use the mouse to control a character, fight monsters (by clicking on them a lot) and level up. Along the way you will find mountains of loot.

What this is, is also a very very polished Diablo clone. There's a wealth of nice features, such as a renown system that works alongside the normal experience awards. Basically, when you defeat a boss monster, you earn renown, and when that bar maxes out, you get a skill point. Maxing out the regular experience bar also earns a skill point, but grants stat increases as well.

The interface is quite easy to use, though the bar at the bottom of the screen get's a bit cluttered with colourful little icons for all your usable items and spells.

From an RPG perspective, you're well served. There's only three character classes, but there's quite a few skills to pick from, spread over 3 "trees". A few of the skills seem to appear in more than one tree, but there's quite a few unique things.

In the big picture, it's not really anything you haven't played before. It IS however, very well done. There's so many little things you could mention: The fact that there's magical muskets, the pet that accompanies you, the fact you can send said pet back to town with loot, side quests, well spoken voice acting, the list goes on and on.

Review 14: Torchlight

I do have to make a few gripes however:
The game drowns you in items that you won't use very much. Maybe this changes significantly later, but on the normal difficulty, I am halfway through and have some 100 health potions stashed. It's not a problem of saving and reloading either, as I am playing with the "permadeath" setting on.

There is also currently a rather infamous bug in the Linux version, causing your characters face to disappear. You barely notice it in play, but it IS rather odd.

Graphics:
I must admit, I LOVE the cartoony look. When I bought the game, I was concerned that it would fall into the "grimdark" trap of graphical design for RPG's and this is quite nice looking. Even on my fairly modest computer, everything runs great too. The characters and monsters are quite distinct, and even the undead have a sort of cute cartoon look, without seeming "anime" in style.

Sound:
Pretty decent. The voice acting is nice and well done, and the background music is background-y. There's quite a few spoken queues to various effects and elements in the game, which makes playing it easier.

Controls:
By and large the game plays very easy. Click on things and you either go there, grab it or try to kill it. My big frustration is the same as with Diablo though. In a confused, busy melee, it's exceedingly easy to click next to a monster, instead of on it, causing your character to run in circles around the bad guys. You can hold down shift to remain in place, but then range becomes an issue. I guess I don't understand why we can't just click once on the critter, and then have attacks repeat until you take another action.
You can hold down the button, but you still have to keep targeting accurately.

Gameplay:
Sheer addiction material. Random loot, lots of things to fight, a pretty busy schedule of side dungeons to check out, and pretty quick levelling up, and you'll be here for a while, if you enjoy this type of game whatsoever.

All in all, Torchlight is an outstanding title for Linux, and I think this is a game I will end up returning to over the coming months. Easily worth 85%