RPGWatch Feature - Torchlight Review

We look at Runic's popular hack'n'slasher, Torchlight. With a team full of industry vets, does the game deliver enough? Txa1265 tackles the main article with additional comments from woges. Here's a sample:

Reading your class choices might seem disappointing to some - "what … only three?" - but that belies the depth of character development available through the skill trees. The mage, for example, can be fully developed as a 'pure mage', a summoner, or as a battle mage. As a pure mage, you will be dishing out damage from a distance, keeping yourself protected, and likely using a staff that also provides ranged elemental damage. The summoner will unleash creatures to go forth and take out enemies while your character uses spells or weapons to mop up the remaining foes. A battle mage is capable of both spells or heavily-enhanced melee damage, and is great for those looking to get a taste for both a warrior and mage class simultaneously … but also somewhat lacking in both of those specialties.

Read it all here.
More information.

Good review, enjoyable game.

Woges used 'then' instead of 'than' in the second paragraph of his comment.

There is not much, if anything to add to that review. Charaters and story are not the point of the game at all, so don't buy it if you want a story driven experience with interesting characters. If enjoy ation RPG gameplay, clicking, phat lewt with coloured names to tell you how awesome it is, clicking, and leveling, you will love Torchlight. It does what it does do really well.

Definitely NOT the game for me!!

"Torchlight is a tough one to pin down for me. The game is solid in all departments but it's not exciting either. It sits at the crossroads being too good for a budget game but not fleshed out enough to compete with bigger ARPG titles"

That seems like a 3 star game to me… just saying.

Doh, never mind, thought that was a closing comment by Txa.

Woah, did he give Torchlight 5 stars? I liked diablo 1, found diablo 2 fun at first, and liked sacred. But this game was such a pure item and grinding treadmill that I couldn't finish it. The game didn't disguise the stimulation well at all, it was pure reward schedule gaming, and it got old well before I got close to finishing it. I don't know how this can be the game's virtue, at least in my book.

Relayer: Sweet looking Tele. I'm a Strat man myself.

Originally Posted by Burress
Woah, did he give Torchlight 5 stars?

Whew … you made me check … no, it was 4 stars. As you can read in the 2nd opinion, others might go lower. I can see both as potential depending on how you loot at things.

Good reveiw.

It's a fun game. Nothing new, but nothing broken either. I imagine it'll be one of my coffee break games for quite awhile.

To give this same as KB:AP is just not right…….

Sure it is. They are both very good at what they do. Torchlight is an excellent ARPG. With some story it would've been a solid 4, now it's just a weak 4.

I played both games, and I have nothing against A-rpgs and I played through the diablos and so on….. but torchlight does close to NOTHING new, which makes it boring and it is just a copy of other ARPG's… story etc is almost none existing and skills developement is average….. a certain 3 in my book. I don't really consider graphics or sounds etc but those are more or less from the stone age.

KB:AP on the other hand… it comes from the series who completely resurrected and saved the entire turn-based genre, and improves on most things from its prequal………..

I think the "save anywhere" aspect of Torchlight bears mentioning. I never played Fate to know how it dealt with saves, but I know the "finish the level or start over" approach of the Diablos annoyed the heck out of me.

Originally Posted by txa1265
Whew … you made me check … no, it was 4 stars. As you can read in the 2nd opinion, others might go lower. I can see both as potential depending on how you loot at things.

Oops, I didn't notice the stars were filled in with the rather subtle gold color.

Nice review, thanks!

It certainly confirms my decision to put it very low on the playlist. I DL'ed the demo, but I have 20 other games that are very much different than a replay of a supercharged Fate.

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
To give this same as KB:AP is just not right…….

Personally I *hate* scores - I love doing the 'Buy It / Try It / Skip It' that I do for VGBlogger … or the no score at all for GearDiary …

I understand TXA, the review is quite good… but a lot of people will just read the score…… I think 5 stars is particularly hard, as if a game has some flaws which most games has… it ends up with a 4… however you might feel a game is too good for a 3 so you give it a four…. this could results in games which have a quite big gap between them getting the same score….

However if you don't give scores it would be hard to for example give game average scores like metacritics etc, and also it is hard to knowhow it compares to other games. Given a 10 score scale I think KB would get a higher rating than torchlight from you… of course I am just guessing

Personally, I think the game was bland and unimaginative.

Simply not enough meat on it, and all the neat value for money in the world can't make up for simply not being good enough.

But that's just my opinion.

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
However if you don't give scores it would be hard to for example give game average scores like metacritics etc, and also it is hard to knowhow it compares to other games. Given a 10 score scale I think KB would get a higher rating than torchlight from you… of course I am just guessing

Personally I think Metacritic sucks in terms of scores. Because it implies a mathematical granularity that makes no sense given that most reviewers are 'liberal arts' types with no grasp of numbers … and since one of my degrees is in statistics … well, it drives me nuts.

As for your second surmisal, you are correct. Perhaps in Metacritic terms Torchlight would get a 75.1 and KB:AP would get a 85.0

Personally I think Metacritic sucks in terms of scores. Because it implies a mathematical granularity that makes no sense given that most reviewers are 'liberal arts' types with no grasp of numbers

Hmm, interesting, but in what way do you suggest we try to summarize what different reviewers think about a game, if not by numbers? I think for most people reading 100 reviews before they decide on a general opinion about a game is not an option….