Torchlight - Awesome Diablo Clone Now Out!


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It will be interesting to see if any mods take the game.

I've probably put 25 hours into it and I'm feeling pretty satisfied with the game.

I would probably put more time into it, but wait a second....I've already played this game to death (and it took out a decent chunk of my life between 18-20). It was called Diablo 2.

  • 2 weeks later...

I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this kind of issue.

I'm playing the game with Microsoft's Entertainment 7000 keyboard (bluetooth) and I find that the keyboard commands aren't very responsive. Sometimes I have to mash a key a few times in order for the game to recognize the key press.

This only happens with this game so I know there is nothing wrong with my keyboard, bluetooth, etc.

Anyone else notice this?

  • 3 weeks later...
http://store.steampowered.com/app/41500/

Price: $20 $9.99

--

Sorry if it has been posted elsewhere. Thought I'd post in here.

bought! short game but worth the money. don't know about the replayability but i'm gonna try the game on hardcore also during the holiday

The one thing I dont like is the entire game takes place in one setting (under torchlight) with a weird dungeon system using Floors.

That's what the original Diablo was like, one town 'Tiristram' and an entrance to floor after floor of dungeons.

  • 2 weeks later...

Been watching this one. I keep hearing great things, but I have resisted the urge to buy it, until yesterday. Was on Steam for $4.99! I grabbed it, played it a few minutes before I went to bed.. Very fun. Can't wait to play it a bit more when I get off work.

The one thing I dont like is the entire game takes place in one setting (under torchlight) with a weird dungeon system using Floors.

I agree. The way the tilesets change as you go down floors is very inconsistent and lowers the immersion factor. Sure, that is how the original Diablo did things but this should be a little more than the original Diablo. They could have done something simple like added a few different tile sets for the town and changed to that setting every couple of levels.

Really, they could have done a LOT more things with this game. It is pretty clear that they were pressed for time and wanted to get it out there so they could focus on the MMO.

The most important thing about this game is; That it feels right. The combat is very good, and that's the heart of a game like this. And the other thing is the loot and leveling which is also very well done. Sure there are some problems, and no multiplayer but personally I really don't mind it being singleplayer only for now.

If they do the upcoming MMO right, we could have a very cool action-based MMO, i.e. same gameplay like this game, but in a large world with lots of other players. I don't know where Diablo 3 is going, but I've got the feeling it will be smallscale multiplayer, like Diablo 2 or so. That means Torchlight MMO can very well fit a niche, because its not like other MMO's in gameplay (WoW, Conan, etc) and most certainly differ from Diablo 3 if it has a large persistent world with lots of concurrent players but still with the same gameplay. Also the MMO is free to play, with microtransactions paying the bills (as far as said recently, this could of course change before release).

So I'm really looking forward to the Torchlight MMO. If they do it right it could bring the action-rpg game into a new phase.

I really want to jump on the love bandwagon for this game, but I can't. It has a lot of gaping flaws that prevent one from calling it a good game. There were some things I really liked:

  • Both the character and pet possessing huge inventories, you could clear a level, pick up every single dropped item and still not have to return to vendor it.
  • Being able to send the pet to town to sell stuff.
  • The abundance of portals allowing you to take a break from a dungeon at hand, return to town or open another dungeon to plow through.
  • Random map generator producing neat looking maps with vastly different layouts.

But the flaws are too severe to enjoy the game proper:

  • No way to respec skills and talents. No buyback function.
  • The game is too easy even on Very Hard difficulty, most monsters die in 2-3 hits. There are too many overpowered "room cleaner" spells and abilities on each character.
  • No plot, no characters, no quest variety. You have three randomly-generated quests that are just the same thing over and over. Yes, an action RPG doesn't need to have a compelling story or anything remotely close, but something besides generic vendors and tilesets that make no sense would be very welcome.
  • Each tileset is a pack of 5 levels with exactly the same enemies. Nothing changes as you go from tileset to tileset, besides monsters, and the tileset bosses are easy and unmemorable.
  • 99% of the loot is absolutely useless - mostly because the monsters are underlevelled compared to the player, and drop outdated loot you can't use. I've also looked into the game files, and there is a distinct lack of orange and purple items in the 30-60 range, and a huge hole in the loot table past level 60. Literally, no Unique or Set items at all.
  • Due to lack of good loot, you come to rely on enchants. Without a disenchant chance, enchanting produces overpowered gear and eliminates need for random loot. With the disenchant chance being an exponential function, enchanting is useless.
  • Annoying and pointless money sink in the form of Identify scrolls that disappears at level 30 or so, when you get the Identify spell. What's the point of having it in the first place, if you remove it 30 levels in?

Mind you, the game Torchlight copies(Diablo) either didn't have most of these flaws, or tried to conceal/work around them.

Titan Quest is still the best Diablo 2 clone. Doesn't suffer from any of the flaws I described.

Overall it's an enjoyable game when you just want to sit down and pointlessly kill an hour or two, but I didn't find it very fun. It's certainly a huge leap forward from their previous game, Fate, but it's still pretty meh if you ask me.

Titan Quest is still the best Diablo 2 clone. Doesn't suffer from any of the flaws I described.

Also I enjoyed Titan Quest too, played it a lot. But although it has some other cool features, the most important part is worse in TQ. The combat feels stiff. Next to Diablo 2 there has been no game coming close to the right feel of the combat, and TQ isn't close. Sacred 2 is really far away.

Funny that you mention Torchlight very hard as being to easy. I thought TQ was way to easy, much more so than TL.

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