Torchlight II - Review @ Gamespy
 

Gamespy has a review 5/5 for this game. Here's a quote about the combat:
More information.

Quick! Someone give me some impressions, because I'm considering hitting the buy button without having read much on the game.

It's likely a buy from me, but I am also interested in impressions.

Total blast so far for me. Level 8, and about to get my grind on bigtime. Lotta killing, lotta loot, get some more and time to scoot!


-Carn

Can you tell bit more about skill tree and itemization in game(weak points of first TL in my opinion).Is game more casual or is it aiming to compete with D2/TQ.I am going to but this in next few days for sure.

"I felt pretty badass right from the start"

Indeed. Feels like i'm playing in God Mode. Disappointed to see i can't play this with a controller, a lot more comfy to play these sort of games laying on the bed and seeing it on the big screen, hardly a game that requires precise movements.. Other than that it seems like a fairly nice game, very nice artwork, the combat is super easy but has a nice feel to it. I can tell already it's not something i will play all the way through, but for 18 euro its worth checking out. Hopefully they will add controller support in a patch.

Played this for a couple of hours and it's great so far :)

But one review pointed out that you can play it on hard mode right from the start, unlike the Diablo's. Is it easy even on the hardest difficulties?

Yeah, I was kind of disappointed about this, too, as I agree that Action RPGs feel great with a gamepad… however, there are lots of hotkeys in Torchlight II that you can use, right? So isn't it more geared towards mouse/keyboard, anyway?

In b4 borcanu who will tell us how the game sux.

Might be so.

Anyways, i started over on the hardest difficulty and while it's still easy in the begining it does get a lot harder ;) Very addicting gameplay i have to say (playing as an Engineer). Wasnt sure i was gonna like this since i didnt care much at all for Torchlight 1 (and hardly any games in the Diablo-like genre). For $20 it was easily worth giving it a shot, glad i like it more than i first expected.

That's good to hear, because the first Torchlight couldn't captivate me for long, either. I appreciated it for what it was and it was done well, but it didn't give me enough incentive to keep playing. I hope the story in Torchlight II is at least enough to keep me moving forward.

Story and lore is as "meh" as one can expect in a game like this, but i was well prepared for it, so i don't really care. It's basicly all about looting, killing and leveling up in a nicely done world.

I've put a couple of hours into T2 and at least to me, it is infinantly more fun than D3. Just the LAN option alone that let's me play with my two boys was worth the $20.