Torchlight was described to us at E3 2009 as the “spiritual successor of Fate”. This Diablo-esque action/RPG may be traveling light in terms of plot, but sure makes up for it with its fantastic gameplay.
Torchlight lets you pick one of the three available classes to begin your game: the Vanquisher, a female ranger/rogue type of character; the Destroyer, a manly warrior who can take a lot of beatings and deal a lot of damage; and the Alchemist, your resident magician/wizard.
Unfortunately, you can’t customize the look of your starting character, and their class/gender combinations are already pre-selected. You can pick the type of pet, but only as a cat or dog. There is no pet customization either.
Once you have your character and your pet (and this takes only a few clicks), you’re ready to go. With a simple story relating to how the magic mineral Ember can corrupt the citizens of Torchlight, the game sends you off into the monster-packed underground caves.
The game is easy to play for anyone, since it only requires some clicks of the mouse. Of course, if you want to set up a series of hotkeys with your spells and abilities, then you will be pressing those for more effective combat. But the process is gradual and intuitive for those who aren’t familiar with this type of games.
In comparison with Fate, the inventory has been improved. You can still swap items from your personal inventory to your pet’s (and send it to town to tell the excess goods), but now there are separate tabs for spells and fish, which help organize things a little better.
There is only one town, which will be your hub for buying, selling, upgrading and enchanting your gear. You can even transmute items into other items with the help of some kind merchants. There are also two chests in town that serve as your bank. One is your personal stash, which means those items stored in there belong to that character alone. Fate also had a personal deposit box, but Torchlight now adds the shared stash, which allows all of your characters to access whatever is deposited inside: armors, weapons, spells, fish.
Fish are special consumable items that you feed to your pet to turn it into other creatures and give it that specific creature’s abilities. You can start fishing right in the beginning while in town, but keep an eye out for these spots inside the dungeons, since you can get different kinds of fish. Fishing spots will be easy to recognize. Simply click on them to fish, which starts a mini-game of sorts: you must click when the outer ring aligns with the icon to fish successfully. Fishing sometimes can become a break from the hack-and-slashing that goes on inside the dungeons.
Speaking of dungeons, these are all randomly generated and the level design is quite interesting. There are hidden passages, draw bridges that will extend when you step near, levers that open up treasure rooms, chests to open, barrels to break, mana and health fountains, and an endless supply of monsters. Monsters come in traditional RPG forms (goblins, orcs, zombies, slimes, giant spiders – well, it wouldn’t really be an RPG without giant spiders anyway!) but also in some original forms as well, especially some bosses and their sometimes giggle-inducing names.
Basically, your gameplay sessions will be much like a routine: get quest, kill, loot, send pet to town, continue killing, complete the quest, go back to town. But just as you think you’re growing tired of the look of this routine or a particular set of dungeon levels, you enter a new area and the atmosphere changes. You will meet new creatures and explore new corridors, hear new background music and sounds, and the game feels fresh all over again. And then you level up, improve your stats and purchase something new on your skill tree, and everything seems different now with that new ability.
Basically, Torchlight takes what Fate had that made it so great, and makes it even better. It’s a great game to play for a little while or for hours on end. I can’t wait for the multiplayer option to be available!
Special thanks to Jason Varden and Perfect World Entertainment for providing a copy of this title.