By John Walker on October 30th, 2009 at 10:00 am.
Runic’s new action role-player Torchlight has occupied my week. Does their ultra-sleek and approachable dungeon crawler manage to find that sweet Diablo-shaped spot? Read on to find out wot I think.
My fingers hurt. I have done more clicking in the last week than in the rest of the year combined. I’ve been exploring the dungeons below the town of Torchlight for so long that I no longer know how to do anything else other than just click.
Torchlight’s biggest strength and weakness is its simplicity. The dungeon crawling follows the familiar themes of Diablo’s many children, built by the team behind Fate and Mythos. These people have pedigree (project lead Travis Baldree was in charge of both previous games, and the team includes ex-Blizzard types who worked on Diablo II). What they don’t have is an abundance of original ideas. The question is, does that matter?
Probably not. You pick one of three classes: Destroyer (Fighter), Vanquisher (Ranger), or Alchemist (Wizard), then choose whether your pet is a dog or a cat. There’s then an introduction to a story thinner than prosciutto ham, and the clicking begins. Each class has a unique set of three skill trees to select from, and each skill, along with magic spells learned (all classes can use magic proficiently) can be assigned to the hotkeys in the bar along the bottom of the screen. Left mouse is always your basic attack, and the right mouse is assigned by you as your secondary. (There’s some smart techniques to quickly reassign this right mouse attack mid-battle too.) If you can see it, attack it, then pick up its loot. And repeat. For the rest of time.
Torchlight follows the formula very faithfully. Almost minimally. Any twists to tradition are very subtle. What it instead focuses on is getting the core, idiotically engaging concept behind the dungeon crawler exactly right, and then makes it louder. It’s a ballistic game, exploding and erupting in frenzies of colour without pause, throwing wave after wave of raging enemies toward you.
The same attention to volume appears with its loot. It roars out of the screen like a geyser, bombarding you with weapons, armour, gold, potions and scrolls. You’ll be used to filling up your limited inventory quickly in such games, but not this quickly. Fortunately Torchlight has the rather spiffy idea (as shared with Fate) of giving your pet an inventory of the same size, letting him carry your spare content. Then when in the middle of a large dungeon, and too busy to use a portal scroll to head back to the above-ground shops, you can send your pet off with whatever he’s carrying to go sell it for you. It’s such a neat device that makes a welcome return. The deeper you go, the longer your pet will take to make the trip, and of course without him you’ll be slightly weaker in the fight.
There’s more to the pet. As well as being your constant buddy in battle, he can also perform his own magic. A pet has two ring slots and a pendant slot for the accompanying bonuses such jewellery bestows, but also two spell slots. Any magic you can use, he can use. This means you can set him up with buffs or attack extras which he’ll fire off independently, but far more interesting is to take advantage of the “pet” spells. With the right spell bought or found you can conjure up an extra helper, say a skellington, who will join your gang for a limited time. But rather than worry about that for yourself, assign this to your pet. As soon as my Destroyer got into a fight my faithful cat, Dexter, would generate a skeleton to join in. In fact, play an Alchemist and you can create yourself your own army of followers, created by both you and your pet.
I mentioned before about going deeper. Torchlight isn’t big on destination choice. The core game is set in one enormously deep set of levels, with faint scraps of side quests to explore. The tissue-thin story is something about chasing down a Master Alric, who has been corrupted by a substance known as Ember, found in the minds beneath the town of Torchlight. As you descend through the levels the environments change, as do the enemies, creating some sense of variety. And as you go you’re told by the story that the ‘blight’ caused by Ember has affected you too. But 33 levels down I’m still not what that has to do with anything.
There’s a few side-quests you can take on. Elsewhere in Torchlight is a man who’ll open portals to various areas in another storyline about helping him realise the mysteries of a book he owns. You can also buy mini-quests from merchants in the form of maps. However, both of these repurpose environments from the main quest, and a couple of levels into any of them I honestly couldn’t remember which I was doing. Because, after all, it really doesn’t matter. It’s all about the clicking.
However, I do wish they’d at least pretended there was a greater sense of going somewhere. Every few floors down this vast shaft sees the environments completely changed – perhaps it’s ruins overgrown with vegetation switching over to Dwarven chambers. If they’d only had you return to Torchlight and then use a different portal or passageway to reach this new location, it would have felt more substantial, and less claustrophobic. It doesn’t matter how much variety there is – I’m still on floor 33 of the same level after 12 hours, and it makes the game seem oddly small. Compare it to, say, Titan Quest, and that horizontal spread let a game with no more detail feel so much more expansive.
The other completely unnecessary failing is the setup of the quests. I don’t need to actually be doing anything different – I just need to be told I am. But Torchlight makes no effort to offer this variety either. Throughout you’re only ever looking for specific chunks of Ember for one wizard dude, killing certain bosses for a strange robot chap, and battling ever deeper for the girl who keeps blurting the story at you. And that’s it. No, “Go to randomly generated dungeon X to recover my mum’s lost reading glasses,” then, “Go to randomly generated dungeon Y to replace this book in the magic library.” Which I rather missed.
The looterfall begins to make more sense the farther you get. At first new equipment comes so thick and fast that you’re never given a chance to grow attached to anything, constantly upgrading weapons and armour after every fight. However, later on it finds that sweet spot where you find yourself weighing up the advantages of varying bonuses against upgrades you may have made to a faithful axe. Both weapons and armour can carry enchantments and gems, each augmenting them usefully. Rarer loot will come with enchantments, but you can add some or more via the enchanter in the town. (There’s a hefty charge, and the gamble that it might not work, or even undo previous enchantments.) Again items may come with one or two sockets in which gems can be placed – if not an enchantment might add slots. You find gems as you explore the dungeons, and lower grade jewels can be combined with identical types to upgrade them. Eventually you’ll have a weapon or two, and perhaps some boots or a helmet that you’ve enchanted to the eyeballs and loaded with your finest gems. Parting with them can be a sad moment, which is precisely how I want games like these to make me feel.
Torchlight’s gorgeous design (a more fun, more sleek WoW-style, emphasising on colour) and constant explosive detail ensures it’s always interesting to look at, even if it’s not always interesting to play. Three or four levels into a sequence of dragons and demons I’m finding myself a little fed up of fighting the same enemies still, and looking forward to the next shift in environment. The only problem is, I do at this point, 12 hours in, start to wonder if there’s enough incentive to keep going. I think it’s here that the dismissive narrative reveals its failing – I’ve been teased with fighting Alric so many times now than I’ve given up on it happening, and it’s been a while since any drops have competed with my own augmented equipment. Without a sense of purpose the otherwise very entertaining, if somewhat mindless, game might be running out of steam.
The game nails that hoary old cliché of, “I’ll just play it for thirteen picoseconds,” and then emerging four thousand years later to discover the world has been destroyed in a brutal nuclear war and all the food in your house has become sentient and set up a colony in your kitchen. And the focus on the process of battling and loot-sorting I found it one of those ideal games that lets you be completely engaged in all it offers and also listen to podcasts. My choice for Torchlight: RadioLab. I couldn’t recommend it highly enough, letting Torchlight occupy one section of your brain while witty and informative education goes into another. In fact, as much as I may now have found myself growing a little weary of it, for the last two or three days I’ve felt delighted that I’ve been able to absorb both at the same time in such an enjoyable way.
There’s two other things that must be mentioned. First is the price. It’s £15 on Steam, Direct2Drive and elsewhere, and only £12 if bought directly from Runic, which is absolutely spot on perfect. And second, and even more significantly, is the customisation. In the next day or so the editor will be released, which we’re told will let you easily create your own levels, texture packs, and so on. It also lets you mod every detail of the game, tweaking loot drops, skins, animations, music, the UI…
It does want for horizontal spread and a greater sense of purpose for playing. But as a pure mechanic it aces the dungeon crawler, and does it in an ultra-bright, cheerful way. At such a smart price, and with so much modding potential, it seems well worth it.
Edit: People in the comments have reminded me of something I had intended to mention – the difficulty levels. I started the game on Normal (as one always does for a review), but wished I’d gone for Hard. It’s a shame you can’t change level during the game, once you’ve learned where the difficulty is pitched, but when I play it again with a different class it will definitely be at least on Hard.
30/10/2009 at 10:14 neems says:
I have been tempted by this, but at the moment my looting needs are being fulfilled admirably by Borderlands. I’m sure it will keep.
30/10/2009 at 10:16 Nick says:
Hmmmm. I’m not sure. The words dungeon crawler scare me… yet, I want to have a game I can work on. I haven’t been able to commit recently. :(
30/10/2009 at 10:18 RiptoR says:
Great write-up! I’ve got the same feelings about the game regarding quests and story. But then again, those things don’t really come up when I just want to bash heads in for 30 minutes before heading of to the pub…
30/10/2009 at 10:21 JM says:
Nick, neems,
Just get it. It’s not a game where you worry about the commitment or think it might be too samey to Borderlands or whatever. It’s just a tightly designed little masterpiece that brings a smile to your face.
And it’s dirt cheap.
30/10/2009 at 10:23 Lars Westergren says:
“If you can see it, attack it, then pick up its loot. And repeat. For the rest of time.” [..] “The same attention to volume appears with its loot. It roars out of the screen like a geyser”
I get the feeling this game isn’t targeted at me, because that sounds like a vision of hell to me.
:D
Scary thing is that like with Diablo, I’m sure that if I tried it I would be trapped for hours just as John describes. Whenever that happens with this type of game, I always feel physically numb and completely mentally and emotionally empty afterwards.
30/10/2009 at 15:26 yutt says:
They seem to take us to some primal meditative state.
Or maybe it’s vegetative.
30/10/2009 at 10:29 Skalpadda says:
I’m amazed by the sheer mindless joy of it. It would certainly be even better if the story was in any way engaging, but they have the basic gamplay mechanic down so well that the lack of depth is almost a strength.
I usually love complex games that take a while to learn and forever to master, but the instant joy of this makes me think it’s one to come back to for random play sessions for a long time to come. Really looking forward to what’s to come in the way of mods :)
30/10/2009 at 10:31 ArtyArt says:
some random thoughts: 1) I enjoy this a lot more than any other dungeon crawler since the first Diablo, and it looks so very wonderfully good. But why the long load times? meh. – 2) to any aspiring players: start on hard difficulty, normal is too easy. Only one death in 20 levels seems to confirm this – 3) the game should run on basically any computer out there, it has even a netbook mode – 4) wot he said
30/10/2009 at 13:42 Spoon says:
I’m wishing I started on very hard. Hard is a decent challenge in the beginning, but once you get some decent loot and develop your skills a bit, it becomes much easier.
30/10/2009 at 15:05 Daniel Klein says:
Long load times may be fixed in the next patch according the nice chaps over on runicgames.com. An even nicer chap by the name of ISAWHIM posted a nice hacky workaround for now that seems to cause considerable loading time shortening (I swear the water was very cold… oh wait, short is good) for some people. Point your brows-o-mator here
30/10/2009 at 10:31 toni says:
this beats borderlands out of the park with a much smaller budget. Also: play it on “very hard” and the clicking stops and the running starts. everything of the above can be applied to borderlands only torchlight nails the combat and feeling of ueberness spot-on. Borderlands just relies on bad taunts “is there no end to my power ?”
30/10/2009 at 10:44 neems says:
Heretic.
*Hugs Experimental Exploding Tech Blast Sniper before incendiary phase shifting to safety*
30/10/2009 at 10:54 Tei says:
Borderlands is a random weapons generator. PERIOD. Too bad the mosters are not random too :-/ (or not random enough). It give every few hours a new weapon you want to show everybody. My 2 last ones: a pistol with very good aim that corrode people really fast. And a autopistol that has lots of “speed” bonuses and clip size bonses, it has a giganteous clip that empty in 0.8 seconds… and It has very good aim, Is *brutal*. The only problem with Borderlands, and It will be fatal, is the moment the game can’t trown at you anything with a minimal challenge. I am looking forward for DLC’s (???), and I am still a very low level player (!!!).
30/10/2009 at 10:35 Psychopomp says:
Played the demo, and got bored very quickly.
The art design is absolutely lovely, though. It’s really nice to see that between this, TF2, and the Okami sequel, warmth and charm is making a comeback the past few years.
DOWN WITH BROWN
30/10/2009 at 10:36 Chobes says:
I was aware of this game a fair amount of time pre-release and completely dismissed it as I simply couldn’t see myself playing Diablo II without the multiplayer. The demo was released on Steam and I figured I had nothing to lose giving it a shot and now I’m in a power struggle against my impulses to not spend the savings I have to keep me going while I’m between jobs. I still think it’s a damnable shame that there’s no multiplayer in the works, but damned if that slick-clicking experience didn’t win me right over.
I’ve dug around and found little promising nuggets; anyone know the plausibility of a third-party MP mod? I’m not holding my breath for an official add-on when an MMO is in the works.
30/10/2009 at 10:41 abhishek says:
I’ve been hearing praise for this game pretty much everywhere on the internet. Very tempted to pick it up but I’ll be getting Borderlands next week, and Dragon Age & L4D2 soon after that. This game will definitely get lost amongst the big ones, so I might as well wait for a sale. The lack of co-op play is a big flaw in my opinion.. ARPGs, of all games, are the best type of game to play with friends. And also, the blocky, cartoony graphics don’t even match up to Titan Quest, which is 4 years old now? It looks a lot like Fate to me.
30/10/2009 at 10:46 Drool says:
This game is your favorite hooded sweatshirt straight out of the dryer.
30/10/2009 at 16:15 Baris says:
Well done, that’s actually a pretty great analogy.
30/10/2009 at 10:46 mrmud says:
The one thing that bothers me to no end with this game is that the way the skill system is structures just begs for munchkin builds that focus on a single skill and then passive damage boosters. The result is a game that is frankly boring to play.
30/10/2009 at 10:56 Kester says:
I thought this just from the demo. There’s no incentive to specialise in any more than one skill, and some are obviously better than others. It’s pretty unforgiveable to have poor character building in a game that is only about loot and character building, so I think I’ll give it a miss. I do really like the overall style though, especially the fact that you can have guns.
30/10/2009 at 10:59 Psychopomp says:
To be fair, Diablo 2 had the same problem. All the “best” builds involved putting all the points you could into 2, MAYBE 3 skills. Hated it.
I don’t like dungeon crawlers in the first place, though, so I’m not the best judge.
30/10/2009 at 11:00 Kieron Gillen says:
Kester: My traps/ranged Vanquisher disagrees.
KG
30/10/2009 at 11:02 mrmud says:
Diablo2 shares the same problem but slightly less so.
Skills in d2 require you to have the prerequisite skills (so that means at least 1 point in other skills)
In the later patches synergies were introduced that allow you to spend skillpoints early and still get late game benefits.
30/10/2009 at 11:09 mrmud says:
KG, Cashing out for low level skills is still going to bite you in the arse later on.
Granted on medium it is so mindnumbingly easy it is of no consequence anyway.
Just like in D2 the best way to go is to always save your points so that once you hit the important skills you want you can keep putting points into them every level until they are capped (and this is unabashedly bad design).
30/10/2009 at 11:13 Chobes says:
If by “bite you in the ass” you mean “entertain you until later levels when you get the official respec mod”, then yeah.
http://www.torchlightinsider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=270
30/10/2009 at 11:16 mrmud says:
Ok, now that I wholehartedly approve of. My inner munchkin need not suffer 20 levels of boredom anymore, thanks!
30/10/2009 at 12:50 Kieron Gillen says:
mrmud : You are aware of the contradiction in your argument – I don’t mean sarcastically, but in a “you actually are because you’ve said it” way. If you don’t get screwed for playing a sub optimum build, *you’re not screwed if you play a sub optimum build*. That it’s SP only means there’s no worries about being competitive. And I’m not entirely sure my build – which is pretty concentrated, just in a “more than one skill and passive” way – would end up being totally unproductive.
But yeah – also: Respec!
(I do wish the game let you alter difficulty levels)
KG
30/10/2009 at 13:04 mrmud says:
Im just a little annoyed that the game rewards the diablo 2 style skillpoint hoarding a little to much. I thought that game made it very clear why this is a bad idea.
30/10/2009 at 13:53 Spoon says:
You get quite a few skill points, and you can easily boost a bunch of passives to max and still boost 2-3 skills to max/respectable levels. Also, if you boost the magic skills, you are potentially boosting four active abilities for the price of one.
30/10/2009 at 16:18 Lobotomist says:
Well single skill specialisation – like it or not.
There is a mod community. And i am sure we will see modified skill trees, and even different skills in future
31/10/2009 at 15:50 Chobes says:
I doubt this will be seen in context as we’re at page 3 of comments now, but I noticed that skills at higher points in the tree have level requirements on ranks and it’s set up so that the minimum level requirement to get the skill is never lower than the talent tier. Basically, this means that point hoarding is useless anyway as you’ll have to spend that point on early skills anyway.
30/10/2009 at 10:47 Tei says:
“And the focus on the process of battling and loot-sorting I found it one of those ideal games that lets you be completely engaged in all it offers and also listen to podcasts. My choice for Torchlight: RadioLab.”
Wow!.. I use to play Red Faction Guerrilla with “Babylon 5″ in background. Its like cool to play in mars as a terrorist, with the news of Babylon 5 about revolts in mars in background. It just merge the two things, Red Faction Guerrilla in the Babylon 5 universe.
Man, G’Kar and Lando are awesome.
30/10/2009 at 12:23 David says:
That would be awesome.
30/10/2009 at 10:49 Paul says:
Addicting awesome game.So unoriginal it is incredible.But i have not played so addicting game since D2.
30/10/2009 at 10:51 Antsy says:
Its a wonderful game that hits that Rogue nail square on the head. I sat down for a quick shot on the night of release and forgot to go to bed.
It certainly isn’t telling a story you’re going to be gripped by (or even aware of sometimes) but, my God, if you’re at all entertained by dungeon crawlers this game will consume you. For a while at least :)
30/10/2009 at 10:56 Uglycat says:
More games need autopickup of gold.
Even the old text-based dungeon crawlers had that ages ago, and this is one of the few modern games that do it.
All they need to add are options to autopickup purple/green/gold etc., and it will be perfect.
30/10/2009 at 11:07 Scoteh says:
I lost 3 days of my life with this game. Lost them. Dont know where they went. But I know I had fun. Phenomenally addictive game. I had been playing Borderlands until this came out, and frankly with the massive price difference, I really shouldnt of been pulled off of Borderlands and sucked so wholely into Torchlight. But I was.
Fantastic achievement by the Runic lads, and cant wait to experience the modded content, even create some of my own. Bravo.
30/10/2009 at 11:14 Paul says:
I started doing the random dungeons you can get from vendors, and there’s also a guy in town that gives quests to send you to a random dungeon. I’ve done about 6 or 7 in total and now I’m about 5 levels higher than everything in the main dungeon. Playing on normal the game was already incredibly easy, but now it’s just boring. Massive oversight there.
30/10/2009 at 11:15 TotalBiscuit says:
Fact is if you like dungeon-crawling hack-and-slash loot fests then there should be nothing stopping you from enjoying this. It oozes charm and polish from every pore and there’s enough variety within the skill-trees to ensure replayability (the retirement system is also great in this regard). Stop dawdling and buy it.
If you don’t like that kind of thing then this isn’t going to convince you otherwise.
30/10/2009 at 11:28 Psychopomp says:
“It oozes charm and polish from every pore”
Pretty much. The art style just *works,* and carries the paper-thin world on its more-than-capable shoulders.
30/10/2009 at 11:20 Po0py says:
That was a spot on review. And your absolutly right about the podcast thing. Just turn down the sounds a little and hack away to your hearts content. I’m actually running out of podcasts to listen to now. It’s probably one of the most addictive games I’ve played this year.
The pacing of each floor is just right for small doses with a short pause in the middle to sort out your inventory and send your dog back to town. Large enough to feel like your being challenged but small enough to make you think, “What the hell. I’ll do one more floor.”
Cant wait to see what the modders get up to. I’d personally like some over-land maps.
This game is gonna have legs.
30/10/2009 at 11:27 teo says:
Meh, I don’t know
I’ve played a lot of Diablo clones and I can’t say I’ve enjoyed any of them. I played the Mythos Alpha / Beta, Sacred, just bought Titan Quest and meh again. I did like Dungeon Siege when it first came out but it was too shallow
30/10/2009 at 11:39 Schaulustiger says:
The only way to find out if you like it is to play the demo.
But I too got nothing out of any of the Diablo clones. Hell, I didn’t even like Diablo 2. I quit Sacred after about 2 hours and never came back. I forced myself through Titan Quest. I didn’t like Dungeon Siege. I found Fate to be too simple.
But I absolutely love every minute in Torchlight so far. And I can’t even tell you why. I guess it’s some kind of gaming magic.
30/10/2009 at 11:30 Azazel says:
I never played Diablo. I did however play a game which is said to be somewhat comparable – Dungeon Siege.
So – is this better or worse than Dungeon Siege? Because I got bored of it half-way through.
30/10/2009 at 11:32 Psychopomp says:
Dungeon Siege was shallow, and practically played itself, so…
30/10/2009 at 11:36 Azazel says:
Right… well fair enough. I might be tempted at £12 then.
As my only experience of this particular genre I was always wondering: are they all a bit like Dungeon Siege?
I suspected probably not.
30/10/2009 at 11:56 PHeMoX says:
Dungeon Siege probably has about the same depth. If you liked DS, you’ll like TL.
I’m talking Legends of Aranna, not Dungeon Siege II.
I personally can’t quite get into the colorful art direction. What ever happened to the good example Diablo gave on how to make things look dark and haunting and exciting? Toooo bad.
30/10/2009 at 11:59 TotalBiscuit says:
Most of them are better than Dungeon Siege to be honest, but again, it requires you to enjoy the repetitive nature of the combat. I am impressed by Torchlight’s ability to make me overlook that.
30/10/2009 at 11:31 Carra says:
It’s a fun game but I miss the outdoors. When I’m in a dungeon in WoW or Titan Quest I always want to get out asap.
The game does offer a few useful extras. Walking over gold picks it up or having a pet with an inventory which can go and sell your equipment are fun little extras which makes life easier.
30/10/2009 at 11:34 Hoernchen says:
My interest-o-meter dropped from 90% to about 0% as soon as I realized that there is absolutely no multiplayer whtasoever.
30/10/2009 at 11:37 espy says:
Just downloaded the demo yesterday to have a quick look, the next moment I’d finished it and it was suddenly the middle of the night. Terribly addictive and very well done. I must not allow myself to buy this under any circumstances. It would just sap my time away. Maybe when the weather gets worse. Maybe.
30/10/2009 at 11:37 Chaz says:
I don’t usually nit pick on spellings and what not, as lord knows I’m not the best at grammer myself. But a “skellington”, really Mr Walker, you’re a big boy now, time to start using proper grown up words.
30/10/2009 at 11:46 skalpadda says:
Skellington is an amazing word. I envy the British for having it all to themselves.
30/10/2009 at 17:13 John Walker says:
YOU SHALL NEVER TAKE AWAY MY SKELLINGTONS.
(And it wasn’t exactly a spelling/grammar mistake!)
30/10/2009 at 11:51 Uglycat says:
I don’t think it’s in TQ (I’ve been playing it fairly solidly for the last month – if there is one, I’m going to be angry!) but it would be so simple to introduce :|
30/10/2009 at 11:52 Uglycat says:
Reply fail ;(
30/10/2009 at 11:55 Woop says:
Bought it as I like to support smaller outfits where they’ve done something half decent. I loved Diablo, D2, played Fate, Titan Quest and Mythos, so it seems foolish to stop now anyway!
Very fair review. The good is good, but the complete lack of originality or interest in creating something a little more interesting is bordering on the silly. Even the music is a steel from Diablo in places. Is that the original Diablo guys having a sly wink, or just being lazy?
Anyway, looking forward to getting the editor and seeing what I can kick out ;)
30/10/2009 at 12:04 Zaphid says:
It’s the guy who composed Diablo music, Matt Uelmen. I mean, you can’t really say they are ripping off Diablo when they guys basically made it.
30/10/2009 at 11:56 Peter says:
“Parting with them can be a sad moment, which is precisely how I want games like these to make me feel.” I love it that you want the game to make you feel sad :)
30/10/2009 at 12:00 Karry says:
“In the next day or so the editor will be released”
I’d rather to see a couple of patches released, instead of editor. Who needs editor if the main game is on the Daggerfall level of bugginess ?
30/10/2009 at 12:46 Wolfox says:
You’re blowing it away out of proportion. It has bugs, yes, but they’re not nearly as prevalent as you make it sound. Bugged skills? Only one is actually relevant in terms of game enjoyment. Brink not following? You can keep playing and if you skip the cinematic you can proceed. And so on.
Sure, it has bugs – but don’t you dare compare it to Daggerfall or such. And the devs are on it as we speak, and should have a patch out today or early next week, before the editor is released.
30/10/2009 at 12:49 TotalBiscuit says:
Are you serious? Somehow I don’t think you played Daggerfall on release. In fact, compared to the majority of recent releases, Torchlight is almost bug free.
30/10/2009 at 15:37 Bremze says:
Some people are losing their saves when making multiple characters. Quite bad but not Daggerfall levels of bad.
30/10/2009 at 12:02 Zaphid says:
Just FYI, the main campaign has 35 floors and you owe it to yourself to finish it, the last boss looks awesome.
My guess it will be like Oblivion, you finish it, then you pick it up a year later, mod it and play a completely different game.
30/10/2009 at 12:06 Dominus says:
I can’t believe you didn’t mention at all the gorgeous music composed by Matt Uelmen!
30/10/2009 at 12:06 MonkeyMonster says:
Dangerously addicted. Never played an rpg before but the juggling of gems and weapons and gambling to get an uber weapon +222 dps have suckered me in.
Can understand the lure of wow a lot more now and I doubt very much i’d ever play this multiplayer if/when it comes out. CoH, DoWII and TF2 can do that for me.
Its all about single player and pick up and play for 20/30-360 mins when I want/can.
30/10/2009 at 12:11 DeepSleeper says:
It would be terrible if it were that buggy.
It isn’t.
Bring the editor on!
30/10/2009 at 12:16 Karry says:
Yeah ? Wanna hear the latest popular bug ? Installing a mod increases the game loading times by several hundred percents. Thats right.
Every aspect of the game is bugged : NPCs disappearing, dialogues get stuck, several items dont work, skills are bugged, sfx arent playing, bosses dont drop loot, and thats not mentioning ever popular crashing to desktop and refusing to launch.
Just take a look in the support board of the official forum, its amazing.
30/10/2009 at 13:59 Zaphid says:
I don’t think we are playing the same game.
30/10/2009 at 12:25 wm says:
So I am the only one who gets the graphics bugs? You mean you can all see your inventory when you run the game full screen? Because I can’t. I see one third of it, the other thirds sticking out the edge of my screen.
And then in windowed mode, I get all kinds of little nits that basically render the demo unplayable.
30/10/2009 at 12:29 quamper says:
How is this any different from Fate? I played Fate a few years back and aside from the updated graphics this seems almost a carbon copy of it.
Not that I’m bashing Fate, but it always seemed overly simplistic and this feels the same way. That doesn’t mean it’s not fun, and not a good value. But it just seems like a direct knock off.
30/10/2009 at 12:50 TotalBiscuit says:
Since when did ‘spiritual sequel with basically everything improved, at a budget price no-less’ become the equivelant of ‘knock off’? I swear some of you actively avoid being happy.
30/10/2009 at 13:49 quamper says:
See that’s the thing, you saying basically everything improved. All I see is graphics improved. Is that bad? No.
But it doesn’t feel like a new game to me really. Again that doesn’t mean its not fun.
30/10/2009 at 12:30 jsutcliffe says:
What I should be doing: Getting ready for work, especially since I’m fricken swamped this week
What I am doing: Sneaking in a bit of Torchlight
30/10/2009 at 12:47 MonkeyMonster says:
I was there this morning…
30/10/2009 at 13:00 jsutcliffe says:
“Eh, I don’t need breakfast. Or to shower or shave. That gives me 30 minutes or so …”
later
“Nobody gets to work at 9:00 on a Friday anyway.”
later
“So if I skip the 8:30 bus, I can get there at about 9:40. I think I can get away with that.”
later, around 11:00
“Morning, guys. Sorry I’m late. Had a, um, plumbing emergency I had to fix in my house this morning. Yeah.”
30/10/2009 at 12:49 L1ddl3monkey says:
That taranchlea has trianglea legs.
Do I need to tag that for grammar nazis or are we cool here?
30/10/2009 at 13:33 Chaz says:
In my best Herr Flick voice. “No. As a punishment you shall stay behind tonight and practice your spelling from the Gestapo Big Book of Words. For tomorrow there will be a test.”
30/10/2009 at 12:59 Ravenger says:
I’ll probably get the steam version of this, as I loved the demo.
The direct download from Runic has 10 limited activations if that’s an issue for you. (It is for me).
30/10/2009 at 13:02 Demiath says:
A thoughtful and fair analysis of a neat little indie (or at least semi-indie) game, although it might be worth mentioning that the “neat little indie” part probably explains (if only partly excuses) a lot of the criticized limitations – such as not the least being the lack of multiple dungeons with access points in different geographical regions etc. After all, there’s only so much you can accomplish within a year of development (pre-production started in August 2008 according to Wikipedia) which is then to be released with a lowly $20 pricetag…
30/10/2009 at 13:13 jsutcliffe says:
A respost from the Torchlight forums, for those wanting to change difficulty on the fly. It’s a little fiddly, but if you’re sad about being on Medium when you want to be on Hard, give it a try. Personally I’m happy on Medium, because I suck at games.
—
A short tutorial on how to change settings (including difficulty) without being branded as a Cheater.
1. Download Cheat Engine (newest)
2. If You know how to use it go to 3, otherwise run through the tutorial, or continue if you feel clever ^^
3. Enable the cheat console by changing console :0 to console :1 in settings.ini
4. Start a new character and open the console using shift and ~ (just above tab)
5. Type in the command you want (ie. setdifficulty) set it to any working number ( ie. 1 )
6. Load up CE and connect to torchlight.
7. Search for the difficulty number cell by alternating the value.
8. Exit the character, go into the one you want to modify and simply change the value in CE ( the cell address stays the same )
Sounds pretty complicated but took me 2 minutes and if you used CE before I am sure you will do it within seconds aswell.
30/10/2009 at 13:19 Frye says:
Sometimes i feel it’s a blessing to the world that my opinion doesn’t matter and i am NOT a games reviewer. I would have crushed this title, thinking nobody could possibly like this. Even in the very first dungeon i stopped looting because my bags were full and when i noticed yet another stairway down i closed the game and i’ll never play it again. Just not my kind of game i guess, but it looked well-made.
30/10/2009 at 14:11 TotalBiscuit says:
So basically it’s a good job you’re not a game reviewer because you are incapable of being objective? Yeah… you’re right.
31/10/2009 at 04:28 Frye says:
Sigh. The fact i realize that myself actually makes me objective again but that subtlety was lost on you.
30/10/2009 at 13:41 Sergey Galyonkin says:
You can change difficulty, but it will label your character as a cheater.
Edit string in settings.txt to CONSOLE: 1
Press SHIFT + ~ in game
Type: SETDIFFICULTY 1 (normal) SETDIFFICULTY 2 (hard) SETDIFFICULTY 3 (very hard)
30/10/2009 at 13:52 MadMatty says:
Wot i cant believe is that they didnt throw in multiplayer. Its afterall a continuation of the old MUDs (Multi User Dungeon).
Multiplayer is also the reason i still play Diablo 2 occasionally even tho i know that game as the back of my hand
30/10/2009 at 14:07 Sean w/o an H says:
Yeah, the lack of multiplayer is a little sad, but given the designers’ pedigree (and the complete debacle that was the SP/MMO of Hellgate), I can understand why they split up the singleplayer and (apparently) F2P MMO sides of the game… I guess it’s kind of a beta for the MMO (like most MMOs on release… :rimshot: )
30/10/2009 at 14:14 KilgoreTrout XL says:
I started it on normal and quit after 10 levels. I restarted on hard and am finding the game much more enjoyable- like night and day really. I actually have to be concerned with getting killed now.
One annoyance- the constantly shifting stock of of town vendors drives me absolutely fucking bonkers from time to time. Otherwise, it’s hard not to love this excellent game.
30/10/2009 at 14:40 Lobotomist says:
This game is must buy for every fan of dungeon crawling , procedurally generated rpg. Thing that started with original Rogue , to Nethack, to Diablo, to Dungeon Crawl.
Some people are bashing it for lack of story or rpg depth. They do not understand this type of games.
This is 3D Roguelike at its best.
Its why its more closer to Diablo (that was direct copy of Rogue) than Diablo 2.
One more thing. The game is fully moddable. So it would be safe to expect many variations and tweaks.
For 20$
This is a game you will be playing for long time. Every time you feel you need a break from “deep” modern RPGs and “choices”. Its perfect casual fun!
30/10/2009 at 14:45 Tei says:
Seems… I will not buy this game, because there are lots of other games already, and I am not rich. This “aim for winter period release” think is very hardcore unfriendly :-(
30/10/2009 at 14:51 Gotem says:
I’m curious
how many minds are beneath the town of Torchlight?
30/10/2009 at 15:04 jsutcliffe says:
Also, completely off-topic, thank you Mr. Walker for mentioning RadioLab. I’ve been wanting a new podcast to listen to. I listened to the most recent one this morning and it was quite interesting.
30/10/2009 at 17:23 John Walker says:
Check out War Of The Worlds for an absolute extraordinary episode. And Race is pretty fascinating.
30/10/2009 at 15:11 Arnulf says:
Is it just me or are people trying really hard to find fault with this game?
I’ve read weird stuff in all forums, Runic’s, Steam’s, F13, and now even here in RPS.
- one guy wants his money back because the music is exactly the same as Diablo’s
- the game has no multiplayer and no respec button (builtin)
- it’s way too easy
- and apparently buggy as hell
- and, yes, for some it’s too cartoony and colourful (the WoW-syndrome…)
I’m sorry, why even bother then? Torchlight is not perfect, and it’s not the end-all-be-all. But at least Blizzard has something to be measured against when they’re finally ready with Diablo 3.
It is as if this type of game attracts the most pricklish fans on earth.
30/10/2009 at 15:45 Demiath says:
Are you seriously defending Torchlight? I mean, come on, it doesn’t even cure cancer!
30/10/2009 at 15:15 Richeh says:
It’s great, but I made my Necrolike character on medium, now I’m about level 17 and I’ve got an ion cannon up my sleeve that annihilates bosses wihthout emptying my mana reserves once.
I mean, it’s been fun playing as a god of death, but I think in the long term it’s going to spoil my game.
Also, Borderlands is better. Shiny equipment collecting aside, FPS > Cannonfodder-with-one-character. Also playing as a necro it gets way too busy and I can’t see when my critters are dying.
30/10/2009 at 15:37 IjonTichy says:
No, it’s a continuation of Rogue, which was single-player.
30/10/2009 at 15:52 Marty Dodge says:
Throw me a line guys… Torchlight or Borderlands for my next buy?
30/10/2009 at 15:57 TotalBiscuit says:
Based on the dossier of information you’ve provided as to your personal preferences, computer’s capabilities and past gaming history, I can safely say Torchlight because if you don’t like it you’ve only spent £12 so who cares?
30/10/2009 at 19:56 Lobotomist says:
I got both. But i can say this for sure. Borderlands is a game you play once (although a lot of hours). But Torchlight is one of those games you never uninstall.
30/10/2009 at 15:55 liquid says:
My favourite game this year, easily. I’ve never enjoyed Diablo clones, and I’ve played them all in search of something worthy and this is just what I needed. Everything you love about Diablo is here + some more. True, it doesn’t blow your mind with originality but it is unique in its own way with light and cheerful art style and kind of caricature story. It’s by no means to be taken seriously, just have some fun! And fun this game has in abundance.
I can’t wait for the MMORPG version to come out. Co-op, PVP would rule. Just like in Diablo, only better. And until (and why not even after) Diablo 3 comes out in 2150 this is the next best thing to quench your monster-killing needs, mouse clicking desires.
30/10/2009 at 15:55 Wulf says:
I have nothing but good things to say about Torchlight.
It is simplistic, but that works. I thought Diablo II was shit, I’m sorry, I hated it, it was a testament to bad game design, and if it wasn’t for the werewolf (which I admit, I loved) and his rip-and-rendy joys, I wouldn’t have stomached even a little bit of Diablo II. The reason I say this is because, quite frankly, Diablo 1 got it right.
In the original Diablo, you had one dungeon that went on and on, you had quests in the town and you just went into the dungeon to hack up monsters, it was pure simplicity. But Diablo II went for a more open world thing, and that ruined it, because whenever I played it multiplayer everyone wanted to do a mad rush, no one ever wanted to look around. And it was so visually confusing that I actually got lost often. The game, visually, was a mess.
This is exactly the problem I have with Diablo III, it seems like it has loads of locations thrown together from the cutting room floor of World of Warcraft, Warcraft III, and various other games, some of the screenshots look like they’re from different games, sometimes you’ll have brightly glowing enemies in dark locations which have no excuse to glow, and once again Blizzard fails in an era where they often fail: Art design. It’s funny, because they didn’t fail at all with Diablo.
What is Torchlight to me? The original Diablo, with lots more charm, great art design, the simplicity, and a nice graphical update. Now, my former complaints have nothing to do with “WoW gayness”, they shouldn’t anyway considering that I’m gay, I certainly won’t talk derogatively about that. :p Compare shots of Diablo III with Torchlight, in fact, compare all the shots of Diablo III with all those of Torchlight. You’ll see it.
This guy is ex-Blizzard, and he’s kept the part about Blizzard that I really did like; bright, colourful, and characterful locations. What he’s left behind is the horrible art direction which leads to a disjointed experience where the game feels as though parts of the game don’t belong with other part of the game. He’s managed to create a game with visual cohesion.
And it goes beyond that, because monsters that don’t look like they’re supposed to glow like nuclear reactors don’t (like those bizarre boars from Diablo III), but yet they manage to stand out against the background, and it’s the animation that does it, they move in very noticeable ways, and if you see a monster flow, you know to run! He’s used animation to very good effect to show were creatures are, without making them stick out like sore thumbs, as though they’re glowing just for you to see them.
Then there’s the dog. What a brilliant mechanic the dog is! I bloody love the dog! He fights with you, he can wear some doggy equipment, and you can fill his inventory with junk you can’t hold and send him back to town to sell it when you’re done with it. One of my primary hates with Diablo was how often I had to return to town to sell junk. The dog is simple, so simple, yet genius.
Just a random segue for a moment, as I’d also like to come back tot he character of it all, it feels a bit like Labyrinth as things are a touch on the too-cartoony side, but oddly it works, it gives the denizens lots of personality, and individuality. The effects of spells and things are also suitably over the top, and it all looks enchanting because one can see the effort that was put into it. I’m pleased as well that it has its sown visual approach to things, and everything I summon seems to be oddly loveable in it’s own way, even quadrupedal imps.
Another massive bonus is that the chap realised that, oh hey, some gamers might have bad sight, so creating huge fonts won’t hurt anyone but creating tiny fonts with no way to adjust them has lead to many games I didn’t buy purely because I couldn’t read the bally things. Eve always comes to mind when I think of this, and how easily they could’ve reworked the UI to allow for larger fonts. In fact, every developer should take a page out of the Torchlight book when it comes to UIs.
Not only that but there are audible warnings of health and mana being low, and the game seems to be developed from the standpoint of someone with a visual disability, perhaps the developer knows such a person, or is such a person, and it really shows in their work. This is not something that most people would appreciate, or even understand, but i appreciate it.
In fact, to go off on a bit of a tangent (and you all know how I love my tangents), this is one of the few things I do love about the new console era. I loved the UIs of Oblivion and Fallout 3, even though I felt that both games were incredibly flawed without mods (Wolves that charge at an armoured man who can call down lightning out of the sky?), the UIs were perfect. Now before anyone raises their nose with disgust, consider that those big, cheerful fonts were actually helpful to someone with a sight disability. Like… me!
I preferred the big fonts and that everything of importance was voice acted in Oblivion and Fallout, I loved that about Torchlight, I love that about Borderlands, it seems like we’re finally entering into an age of accessibility, where people are finally understanding that huge resolution sizes mean unreadable fonts for some people. Anyone who doesn’t think it should be that way can, quite frankly, stick their head where the sun doesn’t shine, because games are getting easier and easier or disabled people to play, and that’s bloody brilliant.
In fact, the thing I hated most about Risen was having to squint at the tooltips, and Risen is a fun game but it’s a testament to shit UI design, and UI design is just another area where Torchlight lives win, and its opponents fail hard (possibly with a vengeance). Just pointing that out to tie this all together. I want the rest of the PC gaming World to catch up to Torchlight.
Even in Neverwinter Nights 2, one of my all time favourite games (especially Mask of the Betrayer), I had to do a significant amount of UI editing. I couldn’t just change the font size and tha twas that, because the UI was designed for small fonts. I had to change the size of boxes in XML, and I even had to redo some of the art (with albeit simpler, shittier things).
But I’ll stop about the UI, now.
For anyone who’d like to play something very much like the original Diablo though, with improvements that would make Diablo a modern day game, Torchlight will appease, to such a demographic, there will be love for Torchlight, much of it, gleeful and undisputed.
If the developer had allowed me to be a shapeshifter… *sigh.* if only… if only… I would’ve found clicky hacky slashy nirvana. As it stands, this is amazingly close regardless and pushes a lot of fun buttons in my head.
30/10/2009 at 17:03 mujadaddy says:
On your point about Diablo vs. D2, I’m the kind of person that found Diablo immensely dull at the time, yet I find Torchlight interesting. Nice write-up.
30/10/2009 at 19:56 Frankie The Patrician[PF] says:
Wulf, have you just compared this game to Diablo 1? Have you? Oh, drats *squeezes a tear* iif it is true, I’m definitely sold… Diablo is IT in hack’n'slash for me. Diablo II bored me, even thou I tried so much to love it, Dungeon Siege got me bored and annoyed, Titan Quest gets too complicated by the time in the desert… Man, I really hope you are right…
31/10/2009 at 00:18 armlesscorps says:
wow, blizzard always fail on art design, never thought id hear anyone say that
30/10/2009 at 16:05 Marty Dodge says:
First of all yer name is Wulf so I kinda have to believe you. Us “wolves” have to stick together especially against them damn zombies and blood-suckers. Er, where was I. I will give Torchlight a try, it’ll be a good break from beta-testing and bugs!
30/10/2009 at 16:20 Wulf says:
Heh, I’m a therian, which probably makes me a World-class weirdo.
Torchlight though is very worth it, in my opinion, I was enraptured after testing the demo.
Another neat point: If you get the demo on Steam, and find you like it and want to buy it, you don’t have to download another kilobyte after that, Steam just ‘unlocks’ the demo version, which is handy.
But yes, I lost four hours to Torchlight last night.
30/10/2009 at 16:07 Taillefer says:
I found the difficulty stepped up around level 32. But, I hadn’t spent any skill points and hardly increased my stats at that point. Also, my dog is a giant spider.
I’ll definitely be playing through again on a harder difficulty.
30/10/2009 at 16:30 Antsy says:
I didn’t do anything on Wednesday but play Torchlight. I demand my Wednesday back! (so I can do it again)
30/10/2009 at 16:32 spinks says:
I decided that normal mode was too easy by about level 4 and restarted on hard (I do agree it’d be nice to have the option to alter difficulty partway through).
But at the end of the day, this pretty little timewasting game just makes me happy when I’m playing it, and I think that’s worth a lot. But again, I loved Diablo and I’m a huge Angband fan so single dungeon with multiple random levels is fine with me.
I’m intrigued by the possibility of being able to retire characters once they have finished the plot and pass on some skills to a future alt though. I also love the fishing, I have no idea why.
30/10/2009 at 16:32 Fat says:
I played most of the way through Titan Quest a matter of weeks ago and stopped because of the endless ”click click click, loot, repeat”. Seems every 2 minutes i stop and compare/swap items, and there was no real challenges, just take HP pots and hack away.
Playing the Torchlight demo, it reminded me of the same thing, just without the need to take HP pots, ever.
Granted the full game might be different, but i just see the same ”click click loot” grindfest as in TQ. Not my kind of game i guess. Feels like i’m playing a point-and-click version of WoW. World of Monkey Island, maybe?
30/10/2009 at 16:36 Heliocentric says:
Jesus wulf, if you like the game so much why don’t you marry it? Actually, its nice re see someone with passion for a game properly explain it. I’d rather be a crazed fan than a perpetual cynic.
30/10/2009 at 17:21 Wulf says:
What can I say? It’s bright and colourful, and yet it has character, and it isn’t a total abortion of art design and direction, it has a well-considered and functional UI, instead of being filled with fluff and tiny fonts, and it actually feels classy and elegant, as opposed to being sloppy and lazy, it has soul, as opposed to a marketing team which is great at brainwashing hordes of sheep with too much money.
Yes, I’m looking at you, Blizzard, and using you for comparison.
If I could, I’d redirect every sale away from Diablo III to Torchlight, because Torchlight is how a colourful dungeon grinder is done properly. And that what’s basically a one-man team has trumped the entirety of Blizzard with their game, at least in my eyes, speaks volumes.
The problem with “WoW gayness” isn’t a bright and colourful game, those can be done well, it’s that the game doesn’t look like something that one of the family’s kids could scrawl on a napkin with crayons in their spare time. I love Torchlight because it’s what I always wanted, and what Blizzard has always failed to give me.
As I said: If I could, I’d redirect every person thinking to buy Diablo III to Torchlight instead, for it is far, far more deserving of their money.
30/10/2009 at 16:51 Alex says:
Played the demo last night, much fun but can I say full 3d doesn’t necessarily improve over DII graphics? For some anywhoo now I’m obsessed and buying it so whatever. I hope we get a good mod scene with this thing.
30/10/2009 at 16:53 Railick says:
for those of you wanting torchlight but with multiplayer have no worries they are releasing a free to play MMO version of Torchlight which is suposed to be pretty much exactly the same game but mmo (I don't know exactly how that works but it sounds awesome)
I introduced my wife to Torchlight last night because I'm loving it so much. She has NEVER played an action RPG before EVER. Not Diablo, nothing of the sort. Not even a normal RPG. She loves TF2 and flash games and Day of Defeat Source that is about it :P
After 4 hours she is TOTALLY hooked to the game and is playing like a pro (At first she kept moving her fingers to the WASD keys to move her character when she was getting ambushed, it was adorable she kept popping up tons of windows and switching out her auto map and weapon selection :P) But after about 2 hours she had it nailed and only needed my help with sorting her loot out.
30/10/2009 at 17:18 Vinraith says:
Runic seems like a good group, but the Torchlight demo completely failed to grab me. I get the sense from John’s review that it’s missing the crucial element that keeps me playing any RPG: a sense of exploration of new places. Action RPG’s are well and good, but I have to feel like I’m going to see new and interesting things if I keep playing, and my sense is that Torchlight’s dungeon is just too darn samey.
30/10/2009 at 17:33 Schaulustiger says:
I found the change of environment pretty refreshing in Torchlight. It changes from a mine to a tomb to a lava thing, to a dwarven city to.. well, I have to play futher to tell you that. But the environment changes drastically every three or four floors which contributes to the “must get deeper” because you really want to see what kind of beatifully crafted floor Runic throws at you next.
30/10/2009 at 17:26 Railick says:
The first time I played Diablo was really excited. Anyone else remember the first time you found the Butcher? I was freaking disgusted (And then totally destroyed) Diablo was one of my first action RPG games ever (actually I think it was THE first) By the time I made it to hell I was really having a good time but also getting sick at all the imapled bodies and really wanted revenge on Diablo for making me truge through all that crap. (and being a young teenager I was also excited with the sexy demon ladies, you know which ones I mean!)
Diablo 2 lost a lot of the charm that Diablo had for me but it was fun for its own reasons. The only play was very addicting if only because I had a friend who loved to play it with me. However all we really ever did was play online together but alone (solo group anyone?) just to make the monsters and the loot better. If anyone actaully needed the other persons help we'd pop over and assist but generally we were on totally diffrent quests and sections of the games.
Torchlight however seems to reduce all that into just mindless joy. I even enjoyed watching my wife play it for 4 hours straight just giving her advice on what loot to keep and telling her about all the options she had open to her (enchanting, gambling, exploring random dungeon side quests ect)
One thing about people who are complaining the game is to easy. Never forget there is an infinite dungeon. This is the end game (like playing Diablo 2 through on Nightmare) and it is HERE you will find your challenge. See how deep you can get and how powerful you can make your character. You can get to level 100 I believe, character level, so there is no reason you should have only one skill at this point you should have many Some scale better with the weapon you use than others and monsters may be immune to certain things deeper down :) There is a thread on the offical forums over there to post how deep you've gotten into the infinite dungeon.
30/10/2009 at 17:30 Vinraith says:
Torchlight does seem to have a lot more in common with Diablo than with Diablo 2, which is probably part of my problem. I made it about 13 levels into the original Diablo before I simply got bored. There wasn’t enough character variety, environment variety, and loot variety to keep me going, it all just felt like the same thing over and over. Diablo 2 worked much better for me, because what really keeps me going is seeing new stuff and Diablo 2 never failed to show me vast new areas with new enemies and unique stuff.
It’s conceivable the Torchlight MMO will work out better, on the (very) off chance that it’s structured in a way I find palatable. I expect it’ll be a considerably larger and more diversified world, at least.
30/10/2009 at 19:59 Lobotomist says:
I got to agree. Diablo 1 was just better than Diablo 2. Perhaps because it was much closer to its Roguelike roots
30/10/2009 at 17:32 Railick says:
@Vinraith – As far as Torchlights dungeons being to samey I have to disagree. The first few levels in the mines aren't all THAT good but below that the levels can be AMAZING. With things going on down below and beautiful buildings randomly generated. For a game that has random levels they seem very well put together (That is because they're not totally random they actaully have larger chunks that fit together well giving you the feeling you're in a hand crafted dungeon) I love the library looking levels and the necropolis they are very beautiful with aquaducts flowing by and bats flying over head ect.
But you are right this is not an RPG of any sort you're not going to be exploring anything new other than what sort of new loot you can get :P Knowing you as well as I do I think you're probably right not to play Torchlight.
Personally I'd love a game where you get to choose character or build one from scratch and then set about exploring the world in an open environemnt (the real world) say something where you're sailing around the horn of Africa trying and discover new lands and go a shore and battle or befriend natives, discover treasues ect and develope relationships with the people you meet. (or enslave them depending on your character) Travel to the far east and meet interesting people, find a beautiful foreign wife ;) Make tons of money by bringing back ships full of silk , all in first person even commanding your vessel.
That is one the reasons I enjoy Torchlight so much there is no limit to it, it never ends. You can keep going down into the infinite dungeon as long as you please .( I believe there is a technical limit to how deep it goes but I seriously doubt I'll ever reach it withing getting bored myself)
30/10/2009 at 17:36 Vinraith says:
I wonder how deep it continues to have new environments and tile sets? Eh, maybe I’ll pick it up on sale down the road, it’s not like I’ve got any reason to rush out and buy new games right now anyway. :)
30/10/2009 at 17:44 jsutcliffe says:
There are, I think five distinct tilesets. I can understand people fearing that that’s quite limited, but I’m sure once the mod tools come out (possibly today, more likely early next week) people will start making additional tilesets.
I’m planning to make one myself — I haven’t done any game modelling since about 2003, and relish the prospect of playing with Torchlight’s chunky, low-poly style. Of course, planning to make one is the easy part.
30/10/2009 at 17:46 Vinraith says:
It is VERY nice to see a PC-only developer so ardently supporting the mod scene. Some part of me wants to give them $20 just for that, but that part fortunately doesn’t have access to my bank account and credit card numbers. :)
30/10/2009 at 17:49 Railick says:
BTW Vinraith the game actaully can be played co-op
My wife plays and if she finds something she thinks I could use she sticks it in the community chest. If I find something I think she would like I stick it in there (on her side) and leave it as a surprised for her to find. You should see her eyes light up when I leave her a giant rifle with a skull for a mouth peace that makes the one she has look like crap (And I mention I made it from scratch with a normal rifle and spent 30,000 GP on it hehe) How romantic :)
30/10/2009 at 17:55 jsutcliffe says:
What kind of a world do we live in that a skull-muzzled rifle is considered romantic? ;)
30/10/2009 at 17:53 Wulf says:
@Vinraith
I can’t help but feel that you only did two, maybe three floors at most and then suffered a bout of ADD and couldn’t get yourself to look at it again, in fact, your comments evidence that. One thing I keep praising about this game is how amazingly different it can look whilst still actually making visual sense, in fact, it does this so well that the visuals are storied, one could imagine what was going on down there, one could weave their own tales, it’s bloody marvellous.
Just because it’s infinite doesn’t mean it has less variety than Diablo II, in fact I dare say it has buckets more, if Diablo II could be played to an infinite degree, the verisimilitude would become very clear, very quickly. Torchlight has greater variety, and the visuals aren’t anywhere near as sloppy and amateur as those of Diablo II. I believe Runic is a one-man team aside from the voice-actors, no? That means that this guy is an artiste, he really knows his way around beautiful visuals.
If you’re worried about the infinite dungeon, then don’t play it forever, I don’t think anyone is expecting you too, just take the same amount of content out of it that you’d get out of, say, Diablo II and then leave it at that and consider it done. You do have the free will to know when to stop and move on to something else, right? Good. When you’re done, go play something else, then come back to it if you ever feel the urge to explore the Torchlight again.
But don’t just play two or three floors, get ADD, and then base all your opinions off that, because frankly, that just makes you look a bit… silly, I’m all for valid complaints, but such a tiny sampling of the game and thus only seeing one of the visual themes doesn’t even begin to dream of being a valid complaint. And there’s no need to assume that just because something is focused into one, tight, dungeon-based experience doesn’t mean that it can’t have just as much visual variety as any other game.
30/10/2009 at 17:56 Vinraith says:
“I can’t help but feel that you only did two, maybe three floors at most and then suffered a bout of ADD and couldn’t get yourself to look at it again”
I didn’t play it anywhere near that long. My suggestion that the levels were “samey” comes from the reviews, not from personal experience.
30/10/2009 at 17:57 Vinraith says:
“But don’t just play two or three floors, get ADD, and then base all your opinions off that, because frankly, that just makes you look a bit… silly”
I don’t have an opinion on the game, I’m trying to form one based on the opinions of others.
30/10/2009 at 18:00 Schaulustiger says:
As much as I love your essays about Torchlight, but Runic Games is by no means a one-man-show. They’re pretty small for a games company but IIRC they have somewhere around ten employees. Take a look at the dev diaries on torchlightgame.com and you’ll see an office with quite some people in there.
I completely agree with the rest of your writings, though ;)
30/10/2009 at 18:04 Railick says:
You should totally play it a bit more vinraith or maybe watch some videos on Youtube or something :) The levels really are beautiful and no where near as samey as Diablo 2 ( I got sick of every Act except for one in the expansion after a while because the randomly generated levels got to be very boring)
I dunno how they'll hold up to Dialbo 3 though.
The gun isn't romantic in and of itself. It is that I took time out of my game and money to create her REALLY rockin weapon then left it for her to find without telling her I made it: P It's nerd romance man don't knock it. (We'e been married for 4 years now with 2 kids so anything I can do to make her happy at this point I will do it.)
30/10/2009 at 18:12 Vinraith says:
“You should totally play it a bit more vinraith or maybe watch some videos on Youtube or something :)”
I’m getting that sense.
30/10/2009 at 18:15 justagigolo says:
Six pages of comments have pretty much confirmed my fears about this game. It seems to have all the same heavily addictive properties that pulled me into D2. Hearing Railick talk about saving/creating rare items for his wife. This is something I would do while playing with my ex-girlfriend at the time.
Hopefully this will fill that perfect niche of game to play over breakfast and coffee before work.
30/10/2009 at 18:38 Railick says:
I used to do something similiar with my best friend at the time Diablo 2 came out. We'd find items for each other and share without forcing the other person to pay (at that time most transactions were done with SOJs and bartering since the money was kind of worthless)
30/10/2009 at 18:42 Railick says:
Man I'm in PC gaming heaven atm. I've currently got Torchlight, Test Drive Unlimited, King's Bounty, Disciples 2 Gold, Euproa Universalis 3 Complete, TF2, DoD:Source, Space Empires V, Spleunky, Dwarf Fotress, ADOM, Space Rangers 2, and Windows Pinball installed on my computer :) I can't think of another time I had such a great range of new games (to me) To play combined with a bunch of old favorites to fall back on.
30/10/2009 at 20:07 Vinraith says:
Then allow me to compound the “problem” by pointing out that both Sword of the Stars Complete and Galactic Civilizations 2 Complete are considerably better (at least as single player games, and in the case of SotS for co-op as well) than SE V. :)
30/10/2009 at 20:22 Railick says:
I have Gal Civ 2. It is kind of cool that I registered it when I first got it and now I can get it from Impulse (which didn’t exist when I baught it) whenever I want.
Sword of the Stars I own as well and couldn’t get into it , not currently installed.
The only reason SEV is installed is because I really want it to be good but it isn’t :(
30/10/2009 at 20:32 Vinraith says:
Ah, but the key question with both GC 2 and SotS is “do you have the expansions? SotS in particular is really kind of crap without the expansions, but brilliant with them. Gal Civ 2′s expansions might as well be sequels for all the content they add.
Just something to know. :)
30/10/2009 at 20:37 Railick says:
I don’t have the expansion for Gal Civ 2 at all. I do have all the expanisons for Sword of the Stars or whatver it’s called up to but not including Murder of Crows.
30/10/2009 at 20:39 Vinraith says:
Hmm. Well, I couldn’t say whether you’d enjoy SotS complete or not, then. I tend to think of MoC as the cornerstone expansion for the game, as it adds an enormous amount of depth and variety to gameplay that rather needed it. Eh, if you see it on sale for cheap (which it often is) it might be worth your while.
30/10/2009 at 21:59 Lagmint says:
“…Test Drive Unlimited”
Goddamn, I remember when I got that for 360. It’s not a TERRIBLE game, but I’ll just say the to-the-metre recreation of the island is cool, but outweighed by the fact that there are NO HUMAN BEINGS walking the island. I felt like I was the survivor of a neutron bomb or something.
30/10/2009 at 18:58 Foofighter says:
Could anybody tell me how this is any better than Fate? It looks EXACTLY the same but the graphics might be a little better…
30/10/2009 at 19:04 Elos says:
I’ve played quite a few MST3K episodes in the background while playing this. Because of this my new character is named Rowsdower and his dog Zap.
“So, Rowsdower, is that a stupid name or…?”
30/10/2009 at 20:23 Jad says:
“Rowsdower, have you always been a …” “Hopeless drunk?”
30/10/2009 at 19:09 Railick says:
Foofight did you used to play UO on LS shard?
To answer your question is it more or less JUST like Fate but with better graphics and some more advanced options.
BTW my wife just E-mailed me this while I'm here at work
"OMG, this game is sooo addicting! I just played for 2 hours. Enchanted my weapon about 3 or 4 more times, and now it is awesome. I also found a lot of stuff u might want. Love You! : )"
30/10/2009 at 19:09 Mort says:
took a massive punt on this, having not been in the slightest bit interested throughout its growing hype. It’s really rather good.
However, criminal lack of multiplayer?!?!
And I’m guessing the uncanny similarity with Diablo2 music isn’t coincidence, (yes, I read who the composer was). Even departing slightly from Diablo would’ve been better, in my opinion.
Nicely done, have a gold star and £12.
30/10/2009 at 19:23 foghorn says:
Does it have DRM? Would it better to play with a gamepad?
30/10/2009 at 19:24 Railick says:
I don't know that you can play it with a gamepad it is point and click, try the demo.
30/10/2009 at 20:13 Jeremy says:
The game is really fun, and exactly the kind of game an action RPG should be in my opinion. Easily accessible, automatic save so you can jump in and out whenever you have some spare moments, enough variation in the game so it doesn’t get too stale (in terms of skills, builds, etc.). For me, it’s the perfect mix of hardcore and casual in a game that I have ever seen. That unfortunately will be its biggest problem I think, barring some amazing work from the modding community. The storyline is definitely slim (fitting into the casual stream of thought) and there really isn’t any variation in that either, you essentially repeat the same things over and over again(fight boss on level 5, now fight boss on level 8, now fight boss on level 14), but that’s not necessarily a horrible thing. This is the kind of game that is just straight up fun to play, so it doesn’t necessarily need a story or something like that to keep me playing it. However, it’s because of that fact that it would never entire into any “top 10″ lists in my mind, because it really is mostly a casual game, and without a big emotional connection (I actually feel more emotionally connected to my pet than my character), this will be a game that I play in between the times that I’m waiting for my next game to be released (currently waiting for Dragon Age).
30/10/2009 at 22:01 Lagmint says:
On steam does it use Steamcloud? I’d love to play it during my lunch breaks.
30/10/2009 at 20:32 Railick says:
One note, for those of you with girl friends an wives ect and only one computer. It may NOT be the best idea to introduce them to Torchlight as if you actaully want to play it ever again you may be out of luck :) my wife is like level 15-20 now and my character is lagging behind quickly lol. Between this and her TF2 addiction I'll be lucky if I get to play the PC while she's awake ever again.
30/10/2009 at 20:45 jsutcliffe says:
But its system requirements are so low you could get a second Torchlight PC pretty cheaply ;)
30/10/2009 at 20:49 Vinraith says:
It IS a fairly ideal laptop game. Hell, it’s even got a “netbook” mode, whatever that means.
30/10/2009 at 20:52 jsutcliffe says:
“Netbook mode” disables some special effects and reduces the texture resolutions for improved performance, I believe.
30/10/2009 at 21:00 Vinraith says:
I was envisioning that option turning the game into a pixelated 8-bit side-scroller.
Come to think of it, that would be kind of awesome.
30/10/2009 at 20:54 Railick says:
The dev said he walks around the office playing it on his netbook all the time so I guess if you click that it does something to the game to make it run on a netwbook? (maybe fubars the graphics I dunno)
I'm playing on getting a laptop or a new PC and will certainly be putting torchlight on there. The only problem is that we won't be able to share weapons any more :P
Who knows I may be able to back date her into playing Diablo 2 and expansion with me after she gets bored of Torchlight (if that ever happens, she loves TF2 and I can't stand it)
30/10/2009 at 20:57 arqueturus says:
It’s not out yet.
Diablo III that is.
30/10/2009 at 20:58 arqueturus says:
Le Sigh.
That was to Wulf, on page 1
30/10/2009 at 22:01 Railick says:
I dunno about the 360 version but the PC version has people walking about and talking in cut scenes and there are other car driving about (which would indicate you weren't the last person left unless it is an Overdrive situation and cars have come to life in an attempt to race you :P ) I really like it personally and I can't find anything better ATM that my computer can run.
30/10/2009 at 22:04 We Fly Spitfires says:
It’s hard to beat Torchlight considering it’s price and low system specs. It’s a great game and a lot of fun. And yeah, normal is too easy. Wish there was a way to change mid game.
30/10/2009 at 22:52 Wooly says:
Looks like Borderlands without guns.
30/10/2009 at 23:08 Railick says:
Only it has guns Wooly, so no , you're wrong ;)
30/10/2009 at 23:14 Melf_Himself says:
Surprised you didn’t mention the lack of multiplayer in the review, seems like a pretty major detail for those looking for the next Diablo fix.
30/10/2009 at 23:21 Railick says:
I remember playing Diablo multiplayer . the first time I ran into a guy hacking where I couldn't hurt him suddenly I stopped playing :P
I was also one of the first people in DIablo 2 to get screwed over by the hack someone put up where you open a treasure chest and it explodes with a ton of items crashing your game ;) I certianly miss that.
30/10/2009 at 23:25 mcnubbins says:
It’s so damn good, this game. I’ve never been hooked on anything in this particular sub-genre before, perhaps because I didn’t play Diablo II until sometime last year – seemed really dated. But yeah, Torchlight really got me on the hook: 18 hours played since tuesday, according to my Steam stats. That’s quite a lot, too much in fact, as it means I’ve been doing less of the real-life stuff.
Anyway, pointless thing I noticed: The in-game hours counted are less than the Steam total, about 12 hours combined on two chars, because the game pauses when you have two windows open in-game. So basically I must’ve spent around 6 hours not bashing monsters, but instead sorting loot in my backpack, assigning skills, attributes etc.
30/10/2009 at 23:47 Him says:
I’ll be blunt – Torchlight is simply Fate redux, and not enough has changed to hold my interest.
30/10/2009 at 23:47 Lagmint says:
Damn, it’s not even co-op? I’ll wait for that multiplayer version and then jump on that.
30/10/2009 at 23:48 drewski says:
The thing I still miss about Diablo is a chain lightning spell anyone can learn. Screw all games without spammable chain lightning.
31/10/2009 at 00:08 Aldehyde says:
About the difficulty, I was stupid (bold perhaps?) enough to immediately take very hard and hardcore only to die at the first real boss. Perhaps hardcore isn’t what you should take on your first time through the game? Anyway, I don’t see any reason to why take anything but very hard.
31/10/2009 at 00:15 Ballisticsfood says:
It’s Fate with extras and a bit more of a story. Also it looks prettier, has better sound, and you can dual wield pistols. Aside from that, and the lack of utterly randomised quests, it’s fate. It even uses the same controls for the vast majority of, well, everything.
31/10/2009 at 03:38 Taillefer says:
Harder difficulties are a different game.
31/10/2009 at 03:39 Vinraith says:
OK, I’ve played it a bit more. On the plus side, kudos to any game that lets me have a wizard with a flaming staff in one hand and a pistol in the other, even if it’s only a halfway sensible idea at first level.
Questions for those in the know:
1) is there any reason for an alchemist to take strength or dex? Similarly, any reason for other classes to train non-class abilities?
2) What’s with the ranged weapons? They only fire about half, maybe 2/3 of the screen. I’m constantly able to see things, aim straight at them, but not hit them WITH A PISTOL because they’re supposedly beyond the range of a damn bullet. Does range increase with better loot or… what?
3) How the heck do I give my pet loot? I see that I can send him off to sell, but can’t seem to find the actual pet inventory stash.
3)
31/10/2009 at 03:45 Klaus says:
Re: Pets. You press the collar on the upper left hand screen.
31/10/2009 at 03:46 Klaus says:
Oops. I meant bowl, misremembering. Sorry.
31/10/2009 at 12:59 mcnubbins says:
Or press P.
31/10/2009 at 13:01 mcnubbins says:
Or easier yet: Just shift + click any item you want to move to its inventory, and it goes there automatically.
31/10/2009 at 03:50 Taillefer says:
Vinraith,
Click the bowl icon thingy to open the pet sheet. There’s also a button nearer the bottom of the screen with a paw on it.
Some items increase range. And some abilities sort of do, “ricochet”, for example, causes shots to travel through enemies and bounce off walls. It looks impressive when you get multiple critical hits as it passes through a line of enemies. I think it would be too easy to have too long a range.
There aren’t really class stats considering the skill trees concentrate on different things. It’s possible an alchemist could be a melee character. Other than that, items have stat requirements to use. So you may be wanting to match the requirements of something fancy.
31/10/2009 at 04:13 Vinraith says:
“Click the bowl icon thingy to open the pet sheet.”
Yup, found it. Thanks to you and Klaus.
“I think it would be too easy to have too long a range.”
I’ve never seen an action RPG that restricted range weapons to such an absolutely silly degree. Most of them allow you to shoot enemies off screen, but even failing that it’s just absurd to fire a gun at something and have the bullet fall to the ground 10 meters away. I’m actually okay with the artificially restricted magic range (it’s magic, after all, and follows its own rules) but the range restriction would make it impossible for me to play the ranger without getting really irritated.
“There aren’t really class stats considering the skill trees concentrate on different things. It’s possible an alchemist could be a melee character.”
So while there are elemental, ranged, and melee weapons, any character can wield anything whose stats they fit and any character could therefore benefit from points in the corresponding attribute. I assume a given class has skills that benefit their corresponding weapon type, though, so wouldn’t it usually be self defeating to pump points into an “off class” attrib anyway?
31/10/2009 at 05:19 Taillefer says:
Hmm. There aren’t that many class-exclusive skills which directly benefit a specific weapon type. But each class has one branch on the skill tree that does. Although the destroyer has the Berserker tree which has skills which need a melee weapon, he has other options where he could be a summoner that uses weakening spells on the enemy, for example. You’d need higher magic for this to be more effective, natch. So you may aswell be armed with wands in that case and keep your distance.
It’s more a case of a weapon type and stats being suited to your skill selection, and not necessarily the class. The more traditional class role is only one branch of the tree.
31/10/2009 at 05:27 Vinraith says:
Thanks for the analysis Taillefer, that’s really a very cool way to handle a class system.
31/10/2009 at 05:07 justagigolo says:
Well, Vinraith my recommendation is to browse through the skill trees for the char you are using. If there seem to be skills that sound like they would make a particular weapon class more appealing then you might want to invest the stat points accordingly.
I have only played through the demo as the alchemist, but I noticed a skill to improve ranged weapons, staffs/wands, swords/n stuff, and a skill that improves dual wield. I went the summoner route and really just tried to maximize my number of minions. I distributed the stats however necessary to equip the current tasty looking armor in the inventory. If you are casting spells, there is a drastic difference in damage between equipping a staff/wand and anything else.
31/10/2009 at 05:09 Vinraith says:
Interesting, I’ll have to pore through the skill trees.
31/10/2009 at 15:25 Marty Dodge says:
Well I am still playing the demo, but I will certainly get this. Its great fun and I found the day disappearing (after I got my writing done) at a good pace. Been a long time since that has happened.
31/10/2009 at 16:49 matte_k says:
Fantastic! If only that quote could be printed on the box art or quoted in ads-I’m all for describing games in a similar manner :D
31/10/2009 at 19:02 garion333 says:
The patch is going to add difficulty switching mid-game.
31/10/2009 at 21:44 Edgar says:
31/10/2009 at 23:19 Frankie The Patrician[PF] says:
The final blow why I WILL buy the game:
http://forums.runicgames.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3279
FFS! I gotta show I STILL appreciate a classic Diablo-eque experience….
Fair pricing, great music, passable graphics, excellent gameplay, nice ideas and THE FEEL… :)
01/11/2009 at 00:37 jsutcliffe says:
The graphics are more than passable — they pack a lot of charm into those blocky characters. :)
01/11/2009 at 02:02 Wulf says:
They do, they really do.
It’s blocky and colourful, but it’s frequently also pretty well done, beautiful, and charming. The Alchemical Golem, for example, is one of the most fun pets I’ve ever had in a game, mostly because he reminds me of Freefall robots. I’m almost tempted to ask the developer to put in an animation where he randomly leans over and pokes things.
The reason I say this is due to the erratic nature of the silly bugger, he sometimes strolls, and sometimes he’ll run madly in circles for no reason, when he needs to catch up to me he’ll bolt forward, arms outstretched, almost as if in a blind panic, and to attack he just swings his arms around like a madman. I love that little mechanical guy, and that he seems to have some few hundred-odd screws loose only adds to his personality.
I love the dog too, I love equipping things on the dog, and most importantly I really get a kick out of feeding my dog transfigurative fish. That’s just so silly and absurd that I can’t help but appreciate it, and you should all know how I love my absurdity.
“Here boy, catch!”
*Catch!*
*OMNOMNOM!*
*…RAAAAWR!*
“Hmm, my dog appears to have transformed into a Fire Elemental. … Jolly good!”
Reality needs physical transformation-inducing fish.
01/11/2009 at 02:14 DeepSleeper says:
@Wulf
Dear god, Rowne, SHUSH already. Not everything needs a twenty page essay.
01/11/2009 at 02:23 Wulf says:
“Dear god, Rowne,”
You can Google, good for you. Can you also count up to five without using your digits?
“SHUSH already.”
NO U!
“Not everything needs a twenty page essay.”
Not everyone is stuck in a slovenly torpor, thus not everyone gets hostile about posts which are an affront to their TL;DR lifestyle.
01/11/2009 at 02:58 Klaus says:
I loved that thread. Didn’t care for Diablo, too dark and dreary for me.
01/11/2009 at 02:58 Wulf says:
I mean, seriously “DeepSleeper”, you do realise that reads as “Durrr, TL;DR… ANGRY INTERNET NERD SMASH WITH EASILY GOOGLED INFO!”, right? It’s incredibly immature, not clever at all, and by your writing style I know who you are, too. It’s pretty obvious.
We’ve locked horns before, over your childish antics, many times. I mean, really, you’ve decided to hound me on RPS now with your temper tantrums? Well, bully for you if that’s what turns you on, I suppose.
01/11/2009 at 00:09 Frankie The Patrician[PF] says:
I bought it directly from Runic…YAY!
01/11/2009 at 22:10 mcnubbins says:
Looks like someone is exploring the possibilities of making a co-op mod: http://forums.runicgames.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3569
01/11/2009 at 23:30 invisiblejesus says:
OK, so I’m more or less sold on this game. Anyone know if the version direct from Runic has DRM on it? I saw it mentioned in the thread about the coop mod but haven’t been able to find any info on the site.
02/11/2009 at 00:35 Vinraith says:
I’d very much like to know this as well. If I’m going to buy an indie, I’d prefer it be direct from the dev unless there’s a compelling reason not to do so.
02/11/2009 at 08:44 Frankie The Patrician[PF] says:
it has key activation…not sure if there is something past that..
02/11/2009 at 03:33 invisiblejesus says:
So I Googled a bit, and according to the Runic folks it’s got DRM but very minimal: http://forums.runicgames.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=687
Not sure if there’s any more definite info out there than this.
02/11/2009 at 04:00 Vinraith says:
Well, the dev in that thread said:
“If you do buy it through our site – well we haven’t decided how many unlocks you’ll get yet but you will have a limited number.”
Which is reason enough not to buy it directly from Runic. They also mention that the Steam version doesn’t have limited installs, apparently they consider Steam DRM enough. They also imply that the DRM varies wildly from DD distributor to DD distributor.
I think under those circumstances my leaning would be Gamersgate or Steam. Since Steam locked me out of every game I own for the entire weekend (was out of town with my laptop, no internet, and offline mode crapped out AGAIN) I think I’ll go with Gamersgate.
02/11/2009 at 04:14 invisiblejesus says:
Makes sense. Personally I think I’m gonna go the Steam route, but I get where you’re coming from.
02/11/2009 at 09:48 Daniel Klein says:
From this thread on the official forums:
And on a related note, if you’re running it on Steam you can’t get to the console yet. That’ll be fixed in the same patch (due out today or tomorrow).
02/11/2009 at 10:35 Richeh says:
Or, buy it once from wherever and get a pirate copy. Conscience-free DRM circumvention. Only problem i can think of is patching a hacked copy.
02/11/2009 at 15:57 pkt-zer0 says:
The “hacked” copy is most likely the DRM-free retail version, so patching shouldn’t be a problem, either.
02/11/2009 at 11:38 Gothnak says:
I played it at the weekend and actually thought the previous game, Fate was better.
02/11/2009 at 12:47 James G says:
Bah, wish I saw this before I brought it last night. Purchased direct from Runic because a) It was a bit cheaper and b) I hoped they'd still get a bigger cut. Must admit, DRM barely even occured to me, as most Indies seem to be moving away from it. Did get a bit suspicious when I inputted my activation key and it took a few seconds to go through.
Bah, steam would also have allowed me to co-install it on my netbook.
02/11/2009 at 15:25 Vinraith says:
Understandable. I don’t think it would have ever occurred to me that an indie dev would saddle their own game with limited install DRM voluntarily. For what it’s worth, they claim there are “lots” of installs, and that they think people should be able to install it on multiple systems.
Still, this kind of activation system from an “indie” makes me not care terribly much about supporting said “indie,” I think I’ll wait for a sale.
02/11/2009 at 15:15 H says:
I’m surprised no-one else has said this yet, but from the screenies it reminds me of Dungeon Runners. Would be interesting to hear what those who have played both think.
02/11/2009 at 15:39 jsutcliffe says:
I think the Runic version's DRM limit is ten installs, which is quite generous. They've also said that (1) if they go under they'll patch out the DRM first and (2) if you run out of installs they'll find a way of letting you carry on. I get the impression the Runic install limit was Perfect World's idea (Torchlight's publisher) not theirs.
02/11/2009 at 17:30 Railick says:
Okay, it is offical. My wife is addicted to Torchlight in ways I never thought possible. Yes, she BEAT IT before I even got to level 10! Last night she faught the final boss (for like 20 minutes) and beat the game. Not only did she beat it, she went straight into the infinite dungeon without so much as taking a break :P Her only comment was "I'm back to getting 10 gold again?"
I do believe I've created a monster :P If we end up getting a lap top this year I'm going to try and get her to play some CO-OP Diablo 2 with me, that should be a ton of fun.
02/11/2009 at 17:35 Railick says:
A few more highlights from the actual game.
My favorite user created mods so far: Doggles, goggles for your dog (or cat), Respec potion, and Runed Alchemist which adds glowing rune tattoos to his face.
TorchED isn't even out yet and already the Mods roll on! I actually created my own mod already that renames the Enchanter to an Artificer just because I feel like that dude isn't getting enough credit for his ability to make uber items for small fees.
02/11/2009 at 17:42 jsutcliffe says:
Oh man, I couldn’t agree more about the doggles, though they make me regret choosing a cat.
I am extremely excited to about the editor’s release, whenever that might be. I’ve been itching to make mods myself, for the first time since Natural Selection, and I’m eager to see what other people make too. There seems to be a sizable interest in making new tilesets, for example, which is also where my interest lies.
02/11/2009 at 20:43 Taillefer says:
Some fish do permanent transformations. Including from/to dog or cat. My alchemist has a pet spider.
02/11/2009 at 17:47 Railick says:
It seems to be very easy to make mods to the files. Just extract the pak.zip which contains all the games files. There is a program in the official forums that converts the .adm files to .dat files which makes them VERY Easy to edit and it even takes .dat files and converts them back into ADM files so you can easily create your own items and edit the NPCs and merchants already :)
BTW the doggles also work for cats :) (but look totally better on the dog) I personally use the cat as well.
I also made a small mod that changes the tips to strange things so that my wife would get freaked out while she was playing LOL. For example one the tips says "Remember to take a break every 5 to 6 hours, otherwise your husband might cheat on you" :P
Shadowcat “It hammers at my retinas like an evil woodpecker of pure energy”
02/11/2009 at 20:31 Frankie The Patrician[PF] says:
Tooooooooooorchlight…love it so far. It’s quite fun, how my dog became a necromancer…summoning both zombies and a tiny skeleton warrior.. Which is really great for me as a marksman :) And I’m a sucker for things…my shared chest is full :( I will definitely have to sort it out a bit, unless I want to make like…10 other characters :)
02/11/2009 at 20:44 Railick says:
This game certainly does support making a mule character that you just use for storage. I had 4 of those for Diablo 2 ^_^
02/11/2009 at 20:45 jsutcliffe says:
If you filled your shared stash with one character, how is having ten more going to help? :P
re: permanent dog-cat transformations, I've found that if I change my cat into a dog, then feed it a fish, the pet reverts to its original form when the fish transformation runs out. I think Runic consider it a bug, so it might be fixed in the upcoming patch.
02/11/2009 at 20:54 justagigolo says:
Mule characters are usable in the sense that they can easily take from the shared inventory and move items to their personal inventory. That way you can quickly sort out the unique weapons mule, set items mule, gem mule etc etc. When you want something from the mule, you can quickly move an item back to the shared inventory.
02/11/2009 at 20:56 Railick says:
If you make 10 more characters and move stuff from the shared stash to their personal stash for long term storage that's how ;)
For example make the characters named "Swords" "Armor" "Rings" "Gems" "Spells" so on and use their personal storage to keep items you don't want to get rid of but can't use. Then when you make a new character you want to really play you can go through your other characters finding the best weapons for the build you want to use and move the selection to the shared stash so you can access those items with your new character.
This is much better than what I had to do with Diablo 2 which was A)Create a passworded game and have my friend stand around while I dropped items on the ground then logged in as a diffrent character or B)Create a passworded game, drop stuff on the ground and TRY To log out and in as a new character so fast the server doesn't go down,works sometimes :P C)Try to convince some random stranger to hold a weapon for me until I come back and get it D)Go into a random public game with high level players and drop all my stuff in a low level area they won't be at and hope that I can get back in before the server is full or ends ;)
03/11/2009 at 00:00 Chobes says:
I've only been saving Orange or better items, vendoring the rest that isn't immediately useful to the character I'm playing. It's kept my shared stash pretty freed up and it'll give me some room to still enjoy finding new gear when I start playing an alt (now personal stash, which I used for gems, potions, and scrolls, is another story).
03/11/2009 at 00:16 Railick says:
There is suposed to be a patch today, looks like it won't be coming though :( ah well. These load times are starting to become very annoying lol.
I didn't have to start using mules on D2 until I had been playing for a LONG time with several characters but after a while it became a requirment as I was finding to much good stuff I didn't want to get rid of. Of course in D2 it was online so there was an entire economey of trading things so I would keep most of it to see if anyone wanted to trade me for something I actually wanted :)
03/11/2009 at 09:30 pignoli says:
Aah, D2 mules, what a pain in the arse they were. At least you won't need one purely for SoJs in Torchlight:)
03/11/2009 at 18:25 Railick says:
I dunno why they only give you such a limited space to store your crap in these kinds of games. It seems like there is no reason not to give the player a huge storage box with several tabs to hold stuff on it. It seems even more needed in a game like Torchlight where you get tons of loot and there are ways to combine them to create other items and so on. Give me either 1)several boxs or 2) one box with several tabs that can hold as much stuff as I can put in it or 3)One box with a scroll bar that goes down forever!
I do like that all the items take up the same amount of space so you don't have to make that hard choice of the giant battle axe over several smaller weapons :P
03/11/2009 at 19:34 Vinraith says:
You’d think they’d at least offer additional storage as a purchasable item, so as to turn it into a reward/money sink. Forcing you to use mules to store all your crap (*cough* Guild Wars *cough*) is just aggravating.
03/11/2009 at 20:01 LintMan says:
@Railick: Yes! The storage space limits drive me nuts! How is that good gameplay to force players to use mules so they can collect set items or gather gems for transmuting? Why not let players store all the crap they want?
03/11/2009 at 19:57 LintMan says:
@jsutcliffe: Personally, I don’t find any install limit of any number to be “generous”. It’s a game I paid for, so I should be able to install it as many times as I want without worrying about their DRM screwing things up or them going out of business, etc.
As far as the developer promising to patch away the DRM if they go out of business, I find that very very unrealistic… Failing developers usually have little staff left to devote to something non-moneymaking like removing the DRM from some old games of theirs, and quite possibly by the time the developer fails, some investor or publisher company will own the rights to the game and may not allow a DRM-removal patch to be released even if the devs actually produced one.
03/11/2009 at 20:26 jsutcliffe says:
I agree — no DRM is good DRM, but ten installs is a lot better than most people give you.
03/11/2009 at 22:02 Bremze says:
It seems that its even more than ten installs, I didn’t have to re-authenticate after reinstalling the game.
03/11/2009 at 20:22 LintMan says:
Doh – my post above was supposed to be a reply to jsutcliffe’s.
I just finished my first play-through, using the Destroyer. It was fun and quite compelling at first, but by the time I hit the dungeon level 20′s, it was starting to feel all the same and pretty boring and I was just playing to get to the end.
I’ve just started a new character, Alchemist this time, on hard. I suspect I’ll still get bored before the end again, but the first 2-4 alchy levels have been fun. I probably won’t have enough interest for a third playthrough with the archer girl.
All told, Torchlight is well made, looks great, and plays slickly and smoothly, but if feels a lot thinner than, say, Titan Quest or even Diablo 2. It is more like a clone of the original Diablo.
Apparently the devs are making an MMO from the Torchlight engine. I think that the Torchlight game itself was a way for them to fund the MMO effort while refining their engine and game mechanics. So things like the single player storyline and quests really don’t seem to be where the developer’s heart lies. Which is pretty unfortunate, given that Torchlight is an single-player-only game.
Of course, I’m expecting too much from a discount-priced game, but Torchlight’s such a well made game that it seems a real shame they didn’t aim to make it more than just a quality Diablo I clone.
03/11/2009 at 21:31 Railick says:
Still waiting for this patch to come out, the long load times are starting to get to me.
03/11/2009 at 22:20 Railick says:
wow, reading the offical forums one of the devs from the game actaully took a players save game and fixed it for him then uploaded it for him to download and continue playing in a forum thread O.o I've NEVER Seen that, EVER.
http://forums.runicgames.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=1595
03/11/2009 at 22:32 invisiblejesus says:
Yeah, DRM issues aside these guys have gotten up there with Diezel Power in my view as best devs ever. I’m very impressed. Definitely going to at least have a look at the MMO when it comes out.
03/11/2009 at 22:40 Vinraith says:
I’ve seen Paradox do that kind of thing, as well as a few other indie devs. Basically any indie that’s very active and helpful on their community forum tends to do that kind of thing. It’s wonderful, of course, but it doesn’t compensate for limited-install DRM.
03/11/2009 at 22:50 Railick says:
They've actually taking the save game from a player who has a minor problem they could fix themselves by using a console command, loaded it up in their computer, entered the console command, then uploaded it so the player could download the save game and continue playing without any effort?
As far as the limited installs go I think that is a thin excuse not to buy the game, even more so when you can get it on steam and not HAVE the limited installs or just download the torrent version of it after you've paid for it and not have to worry about the limited installs that way :P They'd probably also issue you more installs if you actaully managed to install the game 10 times before they go out of business.
03/11/2009 at 23:30 pkt-zer0 says:
Pretty much my thoughts. The reason they have the DRM in place is to have an unlockable demo, i.e. allow seamless transition from the “demo” to “full game” mode. I don’t see why that’s so sinister.
Or, as said before, just grab the DRM-free retail version from store shelves or torrents.
03/11/2009 at 23:42 Vinraith says:
Yup, I can recall instances of Johann and Patrick personally taking uploaded save files and tweaking them to solve problems. Pdox save files are text-only, so it’s easy enough to adjust things, but the people in question were having trouble doing so. They’re good guys, those Paradox folks. :)
And I wasn’t saying I wasn’t buying the game because of the DRM, far from it. That would be silly, seeing as both Steam (sort of, Steam itself is pretty nasty DRM of course) and Gamersgate completely circumvent the problem. They do lose a few points of their indie cred, though, for selling a game direct that’s not only DRM’d but DRM’d with limited installs. It’s less a practical problem then an ideological one. 2dBoy, Cliffski, and numerous other indie devs have set a pretty good standard for this kind of thing, anyone that doesn’t meet it gets no brownie points from me. I usually go out of my way to directly support independent developers, I’ll make an exception here and buy at the best price I can find from anyone without the limited-install system.
Oh, and pkt-zero, Cliffski’s games have unlockable demos without any DRM (let alone limited install DRM) so it’s not as though the one requires the other.
04/11/2009 at 00:21 pkt-zer0 says:
Unlockable demos might not require online activation, but it’s a fairly convenient solution when you have to buy the game online in the first place. If only because you can grab a crack right afterwards.
And maybe it’s just buying indie games over Steam that’s made me soft, but nowadays I tend to prioritize having the small guys get some compensation for their efforts over fighting an ideological war against them that has insignificant practical implications anyway.
And hey, you could still just complain on their forums, it’s not as if they aren’t listening to anything but your wallet. At least that’s not the impression I got.
04/11/2009 at 00:31 Vinraith says:
“And maybe it’s just buying indie games over Steam that’s made me soft, but nowadays I tend to prioritize having the small guys get some compensation for their efforts over fighting an ideological war against them that has insignificant practical implications anyway.”
Devs don’t get credit for being small, they get credit for treating me better than most of the big forces in PC gaming do these days. If they treat me the same way as the big guys (eg. limited installs on direct sales) I return the favor and buy their games third party at discount. Simple.
03/11/2009 at 23:13 justagigolo says:
Runic made it hard on themselves for those of use trying to make a good moral stand. On one hand, it feels great to support the little guy, and in this case even give them their well earned money directly. On the other its hard to make the point that crippling drm is not ok, I really can't justify the limited installs in any way. The game is really wonderful though, and I am happy I paid for it, but they lost out on whatever share steam is taking in this case. Perhaps if enough people do this the publisher will get the hint and either remove the limited installs via patch, or not use it in the future. At least its a positive way to vote with your wallet.
03/11/2009 at 23:44 Vinraith says:
Exactly. I feel no compulsion to support them directly with that kind of DRM, and if I’m going to buy through a third party I might as well wait for a good sale.
04/11/2009 at 00:30 9Squirrels says:
Ditto. The load times are appalling. If it wasn’t for the fact that I can send the pet back to town to sell my excess baggage for me, I wouldn’t be playing it. I’ve only been playing the demo so far, and just completed the first quest. I’ll probably fork out the cash for the full game now. does anyone know if you can save midway through a quest? That’s one issue I might have. I have a 1 year old son, so extended periods of time to play through a quest are few and far between (I completed this quest by pausing the gae midway through, then coming back the next day to finish it), and if I need to keep restarting a quest I’m going to go off the game pretty quickly.
It really is a lovely game to play though. :)
04/11/2009 at 00:39 Railick says:
@9 Squirrels – Yes the quests don't go away until you finish them or until you go to the Q screen and give up on them. So you can just exit the game whenever you want and it will save your progress and you'll be able to come back and pick it up right where you left off. Infact if you buy the full version of the game now you should be able to continue on with your character without having to start over.
I know exactly what you mean about having children even when they're asleep you never know when they might wake up and cry for help in the night and that sort of thing ;)
04/11/2009 at 11:47 PHeMoX says:
I can’t get rid of the thought that this game could have looked a whole lot better if they went with a darker style. This game reminds me of World of Warcraft way too much.
As Diablo III is going to look all colorful too, I definitely want a dark-mod or am not going to buy it.
04/11/2009 at 11:59 TotalBiscuit says:
“I can’t get rid of the thought that this game could have looked a whole lot better if they went with a darker style. This game reminds me of World of Warcraft way too much.” – Hell no, the graphics style is perfect just the way it is.
Also Diablo 3 is not ‘all colourful’ at all. I’ve had the chance to play it briefly and the idea that the colour pallete and feel are both very similar to Diablo 2, there’s simply more variety in the locales and enemies.
04/11/2009 at 15:41 jsutcliffe says:
Turn off your monitor. Works for any game that has colour in it.
04/11/2009 at 18:23 Vinraith says:
He can also always de-saturate his monitor picture if bright colors offend him.
04/11/2009 at 19:07 Railick says:
There is already a Diablo 3 hud mod out and Tristiam mod makes the game even more like Diablo then it alread is so maybe someone will come along and make a dark mod. TorchED isn't even out yet and already there a tons of mods for the game :)
05/11/2009 at 00:32 Railick says:
I'm totally impressed even more with Torchlight's Devs. They have an active thread on their forum for the up coming patch that lists everything they are working on and is updated constantly (The first post on the thread is) Going into very good details such as when they've finished a cadidate patch and why the last one didn't work or what have you. These guys are quickly becoming my favorite developers :)
06/11/2009 at 01:50 Mark says:
Why does everyone think that Alchemist is Wizard, Vanquisher is Rogue, etc? EVERY CLASS CAN BE ANY ARCHETYPE.
Say it with me: ANY CLASS CAN DO ANYTHING.
The Alchemist has a melee tree.
The Destroyer has a magic tree.
The Vanquisher has a melee tree as well.
EVERY CLASS HAS SKILLS TO BOOST EVERY KIND OF WEAPON.
You can play the characters however you want. I wish reviewers would stop using their tunnel vision and think outside the box for once, even when the game seems familiar. There’s no excuse for this laziness.
06/11/2009 at 01:57 Vinraith says:
“Why does everyone think that Alchemist is Wizard, Vanquisher is Rogue, etc?”
Because the advertising pretty much said exactly that. It’s a pleasant surprise that it’s not true, but absent trolling through the skill trees it’s not surprising that people assume that characters presented as those archetypes have to be those archetypes.
06/11/2009 at 02:27 Hattered says:
As it’s an homage to the original Diablo, citing the corresponding characters seems valid enough. While the three classes have access to the same base skills, the rest of their skills follow the theme of their archetype (though serving similar functions; e.g. the Alchemist’s summons and the Vanquisher’s traps).
06/11/2009 at 17:59 Railick says:
Actually Hattered they all have 3 skill trees allowing them to do anything like was said above.
The Alchemist has melee abilites that shield him and make his weapons stroger with magic, he can focus on critical strikes and dual wielding and physical weapons ect and spend ALL his skill points in this area and then put all his stats to strength and defense (Also taking defense skill to make himself less squishy) and be just as a good a melee warrior as anyone else
The Destroyer can actually us his basic abilities to summon creatures too and has an entire magic tree he can focus on. The Vanq has an entire melee tree with poison back stabs and thrown weapons to support melee attacks along everything else. You really CAN do anything with any character, they all do it a bit diffrent but no class favors one type of attack over another.
Oh and to the above post, you are warmly welcomed here mate , no worries :)
Shadowcat “It hammers at my retinas like an evil woodpecker of pure energy”
06/11/2009 at 23:00 Hattered says:
Oh, I agree that each character can do anything the others can, they just do it in a way that follows the theme of the character. Choosing a character is less choosing a class than it is choosing a theme. I may have made that confusing by separating base skills (weapons expertise, spell mastery, etc.) and theme skills (Shadow Bowman, Flechette Trap, Alchemic Golem). Mechanically, the theme skills are similar enough to let the characters play the same way, but different enough thematically not to feel as if playing the same character. (I also hadn’t played the Destroyer enough to remember the Shadow summons at the time, but they serve my point, being fighter-themed summons rather than wizard-themed.)
06/11/2009 at 18:22 Railick says:
Wow, the new patch actaully requires you to reinstall the entire game O.o I've never seen anything like that before.
06/11/2009 at 20:09 Chobes says:
Beep bop bloop human infiltration complete
06/11/2009 at 20:16 Railick says:
What happened to Ntvinh's post :P I didn't know that link at the bottom lol I guess it twas a bot
06/11/2009 at 22:46 Vinraith says:
I’ve been playing the demo a bit more, it really is a great little Diablo-like I must admit.
At the moment I’m reinstalling Diablo 2 (figure I’ll give the enhanced resolution patch a play and see how it holds up).
06/11/2009 at 22:48 Railick says:
If my wife ever gets bored with Torchlight I'm going to try and get her to play Diablo 2 with me ^_^ The enchanter in Torchlight kind of ruins the Diablo 2 feel when you get an awesome unique weapon for the first time.
06/11/2009 at 23:03 justagigolo says:
The unique and set weapons still have their place though, especially when you are getting a char started. In the early part of the game it requires a fairly large chunk of money to create a comparable item to what a set/unique item provides. My char just hit level 44 and is still wearing a few unique pieces I found along the way. This is especially true with the items that boost minion stats, as I don't know if its possible to create those stats via enchanting. Granted, I highly doubt I will find a weapon any time soon to replace my heavily crafted set of pistols, but I digress.
06/11/2009 at 23:26 Hattered says:
I felt that way about my super-gun, until the enchanter messed up and wiped out the bonuses (after first wiping out the gun I had been working on as a replacement; bad luck that evening). Luckily, I had found a unique pistol to fall back on, but having my damage-dealing cut in half changed my tactics a bit.
06/11/2009 at 23:07 Railick says:
My wife's gun is closing in very quickly on 1000 DPS and 200 health stolen per hit. She refuses to allow me to install the patch becasue it changes enchanting :P Plus I don't really want to go through uninstalling and reinstalling the game just to patch it either so I'm pretty much stilling with the release
07/11/2009 at 02:05 Vinraith says:
Does the patch make enchanting less abusable?
06/11/2009 at 23:12 justagigolo says:
The enchanting gods have not quite been that kind to me, both pistols are at 750+ dps, with the fastest attack speed. There is a decent crit rate bonus, but I am stuck with a lowly 12 hp, and 7mp drained per hit which is essentially useless.
06/11/2009 at 23:14 Railick says:
BTW anyone having problem with the Ember Lance bug if you assign Ember Lance to one of the number keys it doesn't happen for me, it only seems to happen (VERY OFTEN) when I use it for right click. Hope that helps anyone here that is having the ember lance bug :P
07/11/2009 at 01:57 Hattered says:
When you mentioned this, I was a bit worried. After reinstalling/reactivating the patched game, I found that enchants were much cheaper, especially for uniques (making it feasible to enchant them), and that the probability of enchantment loss is shown. Enchanting my IronJet Head Shredder now costs only 1898 with 2% chance of disenchant, rather than 24000 and who knows what chance. I haven't really dug through their forums though, is there some other way enchantment has been changed I may not like?
The patch notes say, "Visible/increasing chance of stripping enchants via enchanter. Price based on # of enchants. Variables tunable in globals.dat," but I'm wondering if the increasing chance was already present, given it had only happened to my heavily enchanted guns pre-patch. All of my current gear shows a 2% chance.
07/11/2009 at 02:24 Hattered says:
Well, playing a bit, it seems each enchant raises the disenchant chance by 2%. Seems that would make it a little less abusable. I think the lowered price makes it a worth-while gamble. (Additionally, Shrines of Enchantment seem to have half the disenchant chance of the town Enchanter.)
07/11/2009 at 13:28 torchedEARTH says:
Hooray, the demo isn’t just on Steam anymore, hooray it runs on my old dog of a pc.
Check it mofos
http://www.bigdownload.com/games/torchlight/pc/torchlight-demo/
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09/11/2009 at 12:57 vic says:
Yes, now each time you enchant an item, the probability to wipe all enchantments increases by 2%. This pretty much makes enchanting useless expect maybe for creating slots. Even shrines are affected, but increase the probability by only 1%.
However modding this game is so easy that the old behaviour can be restored with a simple text file ;-)
09/11/2009 at 17:46 Railick says:
Many people have reported that yes, the enchanting now costs less for certain items but at the same time has increased risk of failing when you use it a lot AND gives much less powerful enchantments.
I really don't know how I would be able to keep up right now in the hard dungeon without having enchanted my weapons. The ones I've found at no where near what I've enchanted (even the unqiue and set items) and I can hardly make it with this one!
09/11/2009 at 17:55 justagigolo says:
I am not sure if I chose a particularly limited character build, or if its a due to limited firepower, but I struggle with the infinity dungeon on hard. I have tried for a summoner build with the alchemist, but the imps seem to die instantly, and reviving them is almost a full time job. So far I am at floor 8, level 45. Perhaps if I respec the points from summon imp to charm skill+ and spam zombie 5&6 it will go smoother. I definitely see things getting progressively more difficult with the enchanting nerf. Perhaps I will cheat a bit and restore the config file to the pre-patch state.
09/11/2009 at 18:02 Railick says:
As far as I can tell the imps are for one thing and one thing only, and that is the reflect damage spell. Right now I've got it up to 65 % damage reflected and if I get a full 6 imps along with Golem and my pet and cast reflect damage (Whatever the spell is called) the monsters just kill themselves. Also my pet has Heal All V or VI I'm not sure :) I still have to replace them pretty often but it is a simple matter of just rasing them from every body I can see until I see on fade out (I don't count them cause they're to fast lol) The only problem is my current weapon does cold damage along with other things that often results in the monster exploding into ice leaving no body to summon an imp from :P
Works even better if you have high levels of charm with zomies and skelingtons.
09/11/2009 at 19:08 Vinraith says:
Finally cracked and bought this (through Gamersgate). I'm enjoying it quite a bit, and like that the enchantment system carries a cumulative element of risk to keep me from spamming enchants.
I really am a terrible sucker for fantasy games involving fire arms…
09/11/2009 at 19:19 Chobes says:
Some points I want to touch on:
1. Am I crazy or are there no custom binds? I look around their forums and couldn't find anything on the subject, so either I'm missing something or I'm the only one who wants to rebind.
2. Anyone else get some crazy crashing since the patch? I've been fine for the most part but last night I kept crashing several times in a row (once after picking up two rares and a really nice enchantment).
3. Melee Alchemist is fun as hell.
09/11/2009 at 19:28 Vinraith says:
1. Yeah, for a PC-only game the lack of key customization is bizarre. I can’t even find a list of hot keys, so I may well be totally unaware of certain functions. Is there an auto-gather button, for example?
2. I’ve had no stability problems, but I’ve had some weird performance drops that weren’t present in the demo. I’ve got a Core i7 system with 3 gigs of DDR RAM and an NVidia GTX 260, why the hell is a game that can run on Netbooks stuttering on my system?
3. I bet.
While I’m at it, does anyone understand the DPS implications of dual wielding? Dual weapons doesn’t seem to give you a higher rate of attack than single weapons, so isn’t it less damage efficient most of the time? I mean, you’re usually going to have one weapon that’s more damaging than the other, why sacrifice every other attack with the good weapon to get in an attack with the weaker one?
09/11/2009 at 19:35 justagigolo says:
There are a few reasons I can think of. First the Dual Wield trait increases damage far more than the weapon specific ones, at 6% increase per level as opposed to 4%. Combine the two and you can basically double your damage. When you use haste, you also get a rather significant boost in dps. There is also the general benefit of getting the extra stats from having a second weapon equipped, i.e. +10 dexterity from gun 1 also applies to gun 2. I only really consider dual wield with two fast weapons, with the slower ones its seemingly all day between attacks.
09/11/2009 at 19:40 Vinraith says:
Interesting, thanks. I follow you on the others, but can you clarify how haste works? I haven’t cast it, but I thought the description just said it increased movement speed. Does it increase attack speed as well? Does it specifically increase dual wield attack speed? How’s that work?
09/11/2009 at 23:18 Railick says:
I decided to go with a wand and a shield becaue I wanted the ability to block but like he said dual wield (As far as I can tell) Is only useful once you have the skill. There doesn't seem to be an penality to it either unlike D&D Where having two weapons without the feats to use them can actually hurt you. (it is really hard to tell because it doesn't give you the weapons stats like Diablo 2 does, it just kind of combines them)
I'm glad to see you got it Vinraith but the more I play it the LESS I like it :P It is giving me an itch to go find my diablo 2 CDs and introduce my wife to that though :) The destroyer makes me want my duel wielding hammer barbarian back.
09/11/2009 at 23:32 Vinraith says:
I actually bought it after trying and failing to go back to Diablo 2. The resolution is just too low, and the resolution changer mod makes it looks adequate but the AI can’t handle the higher resolutions. They can’t see you unless they’re in an 800×600 box around the character, so if you’re running at 1440×900 like I am you can sit “off their screen” and shoot them all you like without getting a reaction. It’s fairly game-breaking.
09/11/2009 at 23:34 Railick says:
I'm still using the same computer I got when Diabl 2 came out so ;P I think I'd be fine there.
In a slightly related note my friend let me have Planescape Tormet so I'm currently messing with that, I'm going to download the high res mod for that tonight and see how it looks cause right now it looks horrid (But the dialoug is very funny. I'm only a few minutes into it and already I love the skulls sense of humor :P)
10/11/2009 at 04:15 Arathain says:
And, of course, there's the main reason for dual wielding- it looks cool. I can make a double pistol trickshooting pirate chick? +1 sale.
I'm trying the melee alchemist thing. Staying alive requires very active skill use. It's fun, though. Ember Shock is great.
10/11/2009 at 04:33 justagigolo says:
Sorry about a delayed response Vinraith, didn't have the exact stats while at work. With level 6 haste, you get 12% increased attack speed and 42% increased movement speed. Additional points in spell mastery only improve duration from the standard 8 seconds. I am not sure if items that grant increased attack speed stack for both weapons in which case dual wield would benefit more than a single weapon. Both of my pistols have a minor increase in speed but I am not concerned enough to sit there with a stop watch to try and figure it out, the curse of being lazy.
10/11/2009 at 05:51 Vinraith says:
Interesting, thanks for getting the numbers on that. Where’d you pull those from, by the way? I’ve been looking for a good Torchlight resource for these kind of minutiae.
10/11/2009 at 07:30 justagigolo says:
I had to actually look in game, after you learn the spell it gives the full effects listing in the description. I tried looking online and could not find the specifics from anywhere in particular.
10/11/2009 at 09:09 Karry says:
The amount of fanboyism for this primitive game is astounding. I cant believe my eyes. The game doesnt have ANYTHING except visual style. I guess these people like it when someone simply jingles something shiny before them…
10/11/2009 at 09:24 Vinraith says:
Genres I like are smart, genres other people like are stupid.
10/11/2009 at 12:26 Frankie The Patrician[PF] says:
You, Sir, insult me in a way. I don’t really care about the graphics. I’d even welcome if it had more…retro look rather than kind of WOW-look. For me, only one thing really matters – it’s a frigging DIABLO1 sort-of-remake and I LOVE IT! *grabs Wulf and dances arounds*
10/11/2009 at 16:57 Railick says:
Only the last boss is WAY harder than Diablo, and also I've never felt physically sick playing Torchlight (I did get a little sick when I saw the Butchers room and later hell levels. I know the bodies are really a bunch of flesh and red colored pixels but my mind filled in the blanks rather vividly. I HATED the Butcher)
10/11/2009 at 19:35 Vinraith says:
The only thing in a game I can ever recall making me queasy was those damned carnivorous barnacle things in Half Life 1. *shudder*
10/11/2009 at 22:30 Frankie The Patrician[PF] says:
Final boss in Diablo was really a piece of cake…a lot of arrows and some firewalls = insta-win
11/11/2009 at 07:39 Vinraith says:
By and large I'm still enjoying the game, but Runic made some genuinely strange design decisions:
1) No ability to split stacks of loot. I'm sorry, this is just unforgivable, there's no excuse for a lack of stack splitting in an RPG more recent than the mid-90's.
2) No show item filters, no auto-pickup, and in general no user friendliness for loot-whoring in a game that's entirely about loot-whoring. Weird. Inventory size being abysmally small (with no clear way of expanding it) also falls in to this category. Why does a game about collecting loot make it so hard to collect loot?
3) The documentation is a mess. The manual constantly mentions imaginary pets (which were removed from the game) but doesn't have a simple list of in-game hotkeys.
4) No respec system. That's just cruel.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still having a good time, but they really need to patch in some modern action RPG functionality and release a revised and corrected manual with a hotkey list.
11/11/2009 at 07:51 skalpadda says:
Yeah, the inability to split stacks is a bit of a shame, and a “pick up everything” button would be nice, but keep in mind your pet can carry as much as you and you can practically empty your bag every two minutes by sending it to town. Pretty much all the relevant hotkeys are listed on the in-game interface, so I don’t really see the problem there. I got curious about the pets though..
There’s an official-ish mod that lets you purchase a respec potion (it was apparently in the game but disabled before release) here:
http://forums.runicgames.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=2132
11/11/2009 at 08:00 Chobes says:
I actually looked up the respec mod before I bought the game and can't imagine playing without it. Definitely a must-have functionality if you ask me.
This might sound kind of odd but why do you need stack splitting? The only things I can think of that stack are fish, potions, and scrolls. I always kept 20 health/mana potions in my inventory and banked the rest (obsolete potions get transmuted en masses when superiors get commonplace) and just vendor any scrolls when I exceed 20. I never even had the notion to ever split a stack.
11/11/2009 at 09:20 skalpadda says:
“why do you need stack splitting?”
In my case, to be able to decide how many town portal scrolls and potions I hand over to my pet to sell in town. If I keep 20 on me and send the pet away the next potion I pick up will take a whole slot of my inventory! These things matter.
(Not much though ;))
12/11/2009 at 18:57 Pappy13 says:
You're being a bit nit-picky don't you think? Stack-splitting is nice, but it's not really something that's needed, the documentation doesn't have a specific list of hotkeys, but there's a section that explains each interface panel and shows the hotkey associated with it and perhaps the developers would rather you create an alt rather than respec? I'll give you that your inventory can get pretty confusing and it would be nice to see a filter or sort option, but your other 3 gripes are either pretty minor or a design decision that you don't tend to agree with. Here's a quick hotkey list, it's pretty straight forward.
(p) – Pet
(q) – Quest log
(i) – Inventory
(s) – Skills/spellbook
(j) – Journal
(c) – Character sheet
(a) – Auto map
(esc) – Options
I don’t need to “get a life”, I’m a gamer I have lots of lives.
12/11/2009 at 19:05 Pappy13 says:
Once you get an Identify and Town Portal spell, you'll never need the scrolls, just sell them all. :)
As for potions, you should NEVER sell potions other than the biggest ones. Pop 3 in the transmuter to create 1 of the next size up. If you have too many stacks of super potions, just sell them off a stack at a time.
12/11/2009 at 19:11 Railick says:
You get a respec potion for defeating the end boss I believe, there is also a mod that's been released by the devs since day 1 that allows you to buy a respec potion from the guy that sells scrolls, it is VERY easy to install. (I even editted it and made the price of the potion 13 gold instead of 3000 hehe)
12/11/2009 at 19:15 Railick says:
I never even thought about that Pappy (the potions) I believe you can just put a whole stack of 20 potions in there and click transmute and it will do them all at once instead of you having to do 3 at a time. I've been selling crazy amounts of potions :(
(I have a strick 1 stack of each type of poition policy to max out my inventory size you see)
12/11/2009 at 19:28 Pappy13 says:
Unfortunately no, if you try to transmute more than 3, it will create 1 potion of a larger size and drop the rest of them back into your inventory. I have transmute sessions from time to time. :)
12/11/2009 at 19:44 Railick says:
They need to change that then!
I've been having a good time for uniques and set items dropping recently. Have any of you see any of the Ophdian set items? THey increase your poison damage a crazy percentage if you have the whole set ^_^ I only have the shoulders ATM but they are very good by themselves. I've kind of limited myself from using the enchanter to make the game more fun (since my wife won't let me update the game on threat of leaving me and moving in with her mother lol) Right now I've got an almost totally unique/set suit of armor and weapon. I have not found a single unique or set ring or necklace yet, not sure they exist.
I'm thinking about going ahead and modding in a wedding ring for my wife that adds 50% chance to block and 50 resistant to each elemental form of dammage to show her how much I love her ;P Nerdy to the max eye?
12/11/2009 at 19:50 Pappy13 says:
I have a unique ring, so they definately exist. Unfortunately I've not found more than a single piece of any set item and I have 3 toons into their 20's. By the time I find 2 of a set, I'll have to start another toon to use it.
You can quit blaming your not updating with the patch on your wife…no one is buying it. :)
12/11/2009 at 19:55 Railick says:
I wish it weren't true, but I have no ground to stand on. She's played the game for about 50 hours now and I've only got a level 26 character on there :P (hers is in the 50s I believe not sure) She says if I install the patch and it makes it so her gun breaks she is going to break me O.o
I promise if I could install the patch I would, my alchemist has died several times because of the bug with Ember Lance where it uses mana but doesn't fire (Which isn't really fixed any how but I know I'll need to patch it once they do fix that)
12/11/2009 at 19:59 justagigolo says:
I haven't looked into it much, but I imagine it is fairly easy to reset the enchanting variables to their prior state, furthermore installing the patch won't break her already existing items. Steam auto-updated it for me so there wasn't really a choice in the matter.
12/11/2009 at 20:02 Pappy13 says:
LOL. If I'm not mistaken the patch won't break her gun although she won't want to enchant it anymore, but I could be wrong, so don't take my word for it. And there is a way to backup your stuff before you patch just in case, but I hear where you are coming from. I have a little experience with wives myself. :)
12/11/2009 at 20:38 Railick says:
Oh I know but she isn't very computer literate or anything and doesn't believe that I am either. She thinks I'm going to screw something up and erase her save game,weapon,pet, ect and won't allow me to touch it. To be honest with having to uninstall it and reinstall it in order to actaully get the patch in I'm not certian I won't delete her save either :P .
I was able to edit the enchanting files before and make my own mod making the enchanter never fail but from what I understand with the new files it is more complicated now and takes into account the times it was enchanted before ect. I did tell her the new system makes enchanting uniques cheeper but doesn't give as strong enchantments and that totally turned her off and I've got not idea how to edit that either :(
16/11/2009 at 02:09 oisomeguy says:
This game is significantly better when I am drunk.
16/11/2009 at 23:55 Pappy13 says:
I didn’t even know Farnham made it into the game, I’ll have to look for him. :)
18/11/2009 at 09:57 Vinraith says:
Damn, that final boss fight is a real bitch, at least on hard. Doable, though, so I suppose the challenge is balanced fairly well. That was a fun 20 hours, the really interesting test will be whether I 1) retire and start a new character, 2) continue playing on this one in the infinity dungeon, or 3) get bored and stop playing.
Incidentally, I was surprised by the transition to the infinity dungeon, or more precisely surprised by the ham-fisted lack of it. Sure it’s not a story driven game, but not even a word of explanation in a tool tip? If I hadn’t read about it being there before I beat the game, I wouldn’t even have necessarily noticed it.
18/11/2009 at 16:39 Railick says:
Some people felt the same way about the retirment system (and actaully retired by mistake not understanding what it meant :P ) The inf dungeon is a throw back to Fate I supose they just assume you’ll know about it lol :P My wife is at about level 30 and still going strong on normal. Her weapon does like 3000 DPS now O.o
Shadowcat “It hammers at my retinas like an evil woodpecker of pure energy”
18/11/2009 at 16:44 Vinraith says:
I thought the NPC explained retirement pretty clearly, but I suppose it helps that I’m familiar with the concept from other RPG’s (like Etrian Odyssey).
We’ll see where my motivations fall. I have an awful lot of other games I’d like to play, and have never been particularly prone to getting “addicted” to games, so I suspect I won’t last long delving with no clear end goal.
18/11/2009 at 16:57 Railick says:
You’ve already done better than me I havn’t even beat the main dungeon yet (Or even gotten past the goblin fortress levels) Of course I owe that to you getting me addicted to freaking EUIII which I find much more addictive then Torchlight sadly :P Also I’ve been playing through Star Wars Jedi Academy again and that is always fun (There is nothing like running into a room full of storm troopers and killing them all with a lightsaber without getting hit once)
Or as a famous British Prime Minister said ” Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result”
18/11/2009 at 17:03 Vinraith says:
There are just too many good games out there, clearly. :)
And to be clear I’m not complaining at all. I very comfortably got my money out of Torchlight, and suspect I’ll come back to it in one form or another, I’m just genuinely curious to see if it has any immediate continued pull for me in the absence of a finite ending.
18/11/2009 at 17:11 Railick says:
Well if it helps there is actaully a finite ending to the infinite dungeon :P You shouldn’t be able to go past floor 2,147,483,647 because of some sort of computing problem, though they may have fixed that in Torchlight. (It was a limit in Fate and its expansion)
Strange, they just released an expandalone for Fate last month ! O.o
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fate:_The_Traitor_Soul
I guess they’re trying to compete with Torchlight :P Interesting.
18/11/2009 at 17:14 Vinraith says:
Let’s see, averaging a floor every half hour that means I’d run out of dungeon in… about 122, 500 years.
You know, I don’t think it’s going to come up.
18/11/2009 at 17:19 Railick says:
It would appear some people have reached that level, I have no idea how without cheating but someone had to find out :P
18/11/2009 at 17:24 Vinraith says:
Yup, they’ve got to be jumping to the level. Even if you could, somehow, get through a floor every second it’d still take 68 years (not including load times!) to get down to that level.
18/11/2009 at 17:26 Railick says:
Maybe Fate had a way to jump levels without actaully cheating, it had a lot more wacky stuff in it than Torchlight does :)
18/11/2009 at 19:20 Pappy13 says:
OMG, I can’t believe anyone could give up on this game after only getting one toon to the end. I have 6 now because I keep finding so much good loot, I have to start another toon to put it all on someone. I have 2 of each class now, 1 using two 1-handed weapons and 1 using a 1 handed weapon. I loved creating a battle mage and using a 2 handed staff. That combined with the shock glove skill is freaking awesome. Shock-stun ‘em, then play whack a mole. I stuck a bunch of points into defense and that shield skill and I think he might be more durable than my defender.
Great game.
18/11/2009 at 23:04 Railick says:
EU3 is a dark and sultry mistress where as Torchlight is like a younger woman good for a quick fling but ultimately not intelligent, deep, or challenging enough to keep my interest for long.
18/11/2009 at 23:14 Pappy13 says:
I’ll take young and “perky” over dark and sultry any day of the week and twice on Sunday…if I can get it. LOL
18/11/2009 at 23:53 Railick says:
This is totally getting out of hand lol
07/10/2010 at 18:42 Boogie Guy says:
I’ve played a lot of Diablo clones and I can’t say I’ve enjoyed any of them. I played the Mythos Alpha / Beta, Sacred, just bought Titan Quest and meh again. I did like Dungeon Siege when it first came out but it was too shallow
17/12/2010 at 02:30 sell gold arizona says:
I seem to notice a skill in order to improve ranged weapons, staffs/wands, swords/n stuff, and a skill that improves dual wield. I went the summoner route and really just tried to maximize my number of minions.
- – sell gold arizona