Torchlight: Reigniting my Love for Loot

Developer: Runic Games
Publisher: Perfect World Entertainment
System: PC

So, I've been playing this new game "Torchlight" a lot recently. Last night alone I spent seven hours crawling through the Ember filled dungeons of this magical world. In this Diablo-esc dungeon crawler, you take the part of one of three characters. The Destroyer, a sword toting, high HP, close ranged fighter; the Alchemist, a spell using, mid ranged fighter; and the Vanquisher, the "noble" gunslinger, who is the only female fighter, and is a long ranged fighter.


After just a few hours with the game, you quickly realize, that while it may seem to be a simple hack-n-slash on the surface, there is a deeply customizable interior to the game. Everything from your equipment to your pet greatly effects the path of least resistance in the game. Not to mention the passionate, though young, modding community the game has built in it's short life.

Speaking of modding, the officially sanctioned game mod tool, TorchED appears to be a easy to use, and powerful modding tool that will hopefully bring many more hours of game play to the already insanely long game. Torchlight's modding community has already come out with some interesting mods, and though still in it's infancy, I do expect great things from this talented group of modders.

Torchlight uses the same top down, isometric view commonly associated with Diablo. Which is not much of a surprise seeing the game was developed by many former Diablo development team members. But while it plays like Diablo it look more like an even more popular Blizzard game, World of Warcraft. The game was designed to look pretty without putting a strain on even a low end computer, and it does it's job well. Though I have notice some minor slow down when casting spells if more then twenty or so enemies are on screen.

Another thing it shares with it's big brother Diablo is it's soundtrack. It was composed by Matt Uelmen; the same man who composed the score for Diablo. The use of a twelve string guitar gives a level of ambiance not often found in budget titles.

My only complaints so far are that the game seems a bit on the easy side and no multiplayer. Though I haven't been playing long, I'm quickly feeling that it may be a bit unlikely that my low level character is able to go through these dungeons without receiving so much as a scratch until the dungeon boss. Perhaps I should just be playing on a higher level (there's only one more higher though...) but it is a small complaint and seems almost invisible amongst all the praise I have for this game. Simply put, if you haven't bought this game yet you are an idiot. The game is only $20 and serves as a great appetizer to get your lips wet for the upcoming release of Diablo 3.

Pluses:
+ Easy to Pick Up and play
+ Works on Low End Machines
+ $20
+ Hours of Gameplay
+ Plenty Of Replayability

Minuses:
- A bit Easy
- No Multiplayer

Grade: A-