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.
Related Stories:
Harder difficulties are a different game.
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)
Re: Pets. You press the collar on the upper left hand screen.
Oops. I meant bowl, misremembering. Sorry.
Or press P.
Or easier yet: Just shift + click any item you want to move to its inventory, and it goes there automatically.
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.
“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?
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.
Thanks for the analysis Taillefer, that’s really a very cool way to handle a class system.
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.
Interesting, I’ll have to pore through the skill trees.
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.
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
The patch is going to add difficulty switching mid-game.
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… :)
The graphics are more than passable — they pack a lot of charm into those blocky characters. :)
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.
@Wulf
Dear god, Rowne, SHUSH already. Not everything needs a twenty page essay.
“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.
I loved that thread. Didn’t care for Diablo, too dark and dreary for me.
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.
I bought it directly from Runic…YAY!
Looks like someone is exploring the possibilities of making a co-op mod: http://forums.runicgames.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3569
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.
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.
it has key activation…not sure if there is something past that..
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.
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.
Makes sense. Personally I think I’m gonna go the Steam route, but I get where you’re coming from.
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).
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.
The “hacked” copy is most likely the DRM-free retail version, so patching shouldn’t be a problem, either.
I played it at the weekend and actually thought the previous game, Fate was better.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Some fish do permanent transformations. Including from/to dog or cat. My alchemist has a pet spider.
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”
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 :)
This game certainly does support making a mule character that you just use for storage. I had 4 of those for Diablo 2 ^_^
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.
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.
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 ;)
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).
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 :)
Aah, D2 mules, what a pain in the arse they were. At least you won't need one purely for SoJs in Torchlight:)
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
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.
@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?
@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.
I agree — no DRM is good DRM, but ten installs is a lot better than most people give you.
It seems that its even more than ten installs, I didn’t have to re-authenticate after reinstalling the game.
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.
Still waiting for this patch to come out, the long load times are starting to get to me.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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. :)
@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 ;)
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.
“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.
Turn off your monitor. Works for any game that has colour in it.
He can also always de-saturate his monitor picture if bright colors offend him.
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 :)
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 :)
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.
“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.
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).
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”
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.)
Wow, the new patch actaully requires you to reinstall the entire game O.o I've never seen anything like that before.
Beep bop bloop human infiltration complete
What happened to Ntvinh's post :P I didn't know that link at the bottom lol I guess it twas a bot
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).