Torchlight 2, A Ramble.

[[ Vaporeon Noises ]]

Torchlight 2 Review

As a fan of first the FATE series games I had nary a second thought about Torchlight when it came around, I devoured the first one. The second one I eagerly awaited, even with the juggernaut that was Borderlands 2 baring down upon it, I stuck to this game.
Maybe I chose wrong this time around.

There's no one reason why after ninety hours of gameplay time into Torchlight 2 why I have suddenly become less enamored with the game. It's fun, it's addictive, it's everything the FATE series and the original Torchlight are...

Maybe that's the problem, it's a polished product of everything to this point and little more. It now has a multiplayer component to it, a lonely and impersonal compenent at that. Playing with friends is about the best way to enjoy this game as the means with which to interact is sorely behind the times.

For several reasons in fact, the UI to even start a multiplayer session is clunky. There's no fluidity to the UI, just a series of boxes and options to search for a game. Usually with said friends. Joining any game at random is of course a crapshoot, being held to the whims of the host who may or may not be anywhere near you and thus rendering the gameplay experience questionable at best.

There's no social component as mentioned before. You bring your own friends or you wade the turgid waters of said impersonal multiplayer. You're not given a means to interact beyond external groups through Steam or the Runic forums, your friends list really only tells you when people are online, there's no VOIP communication, there's a crummy little chatbox shunted into the corner and finding games to play requires you take a chance.

Tangental to multiplayer is the amount of polish that has gone into the many spell and particle effects. This can be good or bad depending on how you enjoy your games. Coming from League of Legends, a game where spell effects have to be visually appealing while staying minimal enough not to interfere with combat, Torchlight 2 believes in none of this.

Several times a friend and I would be playing together on our Engineer and Berserker, the Engineer going Tanky/Summoner while I as the Berserker spec'd for AoE spells and mobility. Everything was going fine for the large part, they'd take aggro for the first few seconds giving me enough time to wolf in, cast Northern Rage and wolf right back out. Then Emberquakes started to ripple out as well.

If you can see where that's going, I applaud you as we both lost eachother in the myriad of particle effects and quickly had to stop playing together with that class and skill combination. I wish this was an isolated instance, it's not. I have a sizable pool of friends with which to play and no matter what classes and skills we would use, everything would devolve into a sparkly mess.

In regards to spell effects, various buffs and de-buffs. There's nothing to really communicate what's happening in an effective way. Someone who has casted Elemental Boon near you applies a tiny little square to your already cluttered UI that's quickly lost to the brightness surrounding it. Not to mention they don't stack so if you're playing two of the same class in different flavours you might over-write a better buff with a weaker one.

Going back to the brief mention of League of Legends, a game built entirely around combat through abilities and your chosen champion's basic attack, there's a very fluid feel to combat, your UI isn't cluttered and you can tell when you've been given a buff. If someone purchases the same aura item, they stack for you and that person. Not so impactful in League of Legends. But, it feels good to know that at least it's not going to waste for you and them.

Beyond that, Multiplayer is a great amount of fun, you share items, trade the ones you're too greedy to hand over in the name of camaraderie. Though, that's just a minor salve upon the rawness of what multiplayer is in this game in regards to everywhere else in the gaming world. Unfortunately, probably not something that will be remedied anytime soon.

Multiplayer aside, lets quickly touch on the four classes as these are what make the game personal and fun. But, only in passing as this is the most subjective. Personally from a design stand point they're all mediocre and some shine far brighter than others, there's a long winded examination of them all towards the bottom or in the next post.

Overall the class with the most polish, of the four classes this has been my main and the most over-all fun to play. Though, it's overshadowed in what you'd expect in a mage by the Berserker. Insofar as to say that I have only to manage five separate abilities to the Berserker's full bar and then some. The Outlander can be this as well, except with nothing but damage abilities it's a very... Boring class. While the Engineer embodies the whole Spank-And-Tank philosophy with none of the core aspects like drawing aggro from your squishier allies.

That said, lets get to the main gripe I have about Torchlight 2.
The UI.

The UI is holding this game back like a ball and chain, it's clunky, its unresponsive, it's ugly and most of all, it's unituitive. Remember how I mentioned that the spell effects quickly overwhelm everything else? The UI does nothing to mitigate this, it's chunky, it's huge, it's ugly, it's old. It's everything bad in a UI in the modern scene of gaming.

Lets look at League of Legends and DotA 2 in this regard, both companies have a very fluid interface by comparison. But, if you ask these two communities about it, they'll say they're still being held back by the UI. Arguabley, the biggest enemy in these three games is the interface for various reasons. Torchlight 2 has almost everything bad and nothing good for it in terms of UI improvements.

The hotbar and resource metres are all huge and chunky and can't be clicked through. The Camera is zoomed in too close to the action or the enemies are too large and can't be fought to any effective degree. If you're going to play a hardcore character, turn EVERYTHING to it's minimum values, spell effects and UI scale both as these will quickly kill your character faster than any mob will.

Isometric games will all suffer from this to various degrees. These can be remedied very easily by implementing UI improvements like zooming out the camera, toning down the visual effects and adding clearer means of conveying various elements like being Debuffed or damaged.

Spells have monstrously long cast times far too often. It incentivizes Cast-Rate increasing gear but at the cost of damage/survivability/mobility/utility in general. With cast-rate increasing gear so rare already, these things should be toned down massively to create a more fluid combat experience. Again to compare this to League of Legends, a cast time is 'long' if it's half a second. Some of these abilities take a full second to cast and lock you out of doing anything else. While some of them look cool the first few times you use them, they all quickly start suffering for it and start getting you killed.

I want to blast the loot system, I really do. But, it's got enough variety to be a positive point. But, lacking in certain areas. Like for example the inclusion of Cannons, Shotguns and Staves. These three items are all a hinderance to anyone using them in that they all do paltry amounts of damage for too high the risk to classes wishing to use them.

By far the most effective way to use gear is to sword 'n board as you'll find weapons with great DPS for abilities without sacrificing your ability to live. With a lot of really unfair mob-types, you really don't need to get yourself killed any faster while using the already hostile UI system.

Speaking of unfair mob-types, why are some mobs allowed to be minions to a champion monster? Trolls being minions to an even larger Troll? Come on, where's the sense in that? Or how about a group of Death Caps being lead by a brackenwitch or Elemental Guardian thing?

There's a really un-fun amount of mob set ups that quickly lead to infuriating and unavoidable deaths. Monsters that slow and pull you in with no way to break it save killing them. Being pulled into things instantly by bread and butter soldiers and into rapid firing mobile turrets with again no way to escape save having a move learned to disengage. Even then you're vulnerable and unable to break free.

Massive AoE abilities that require you invest heavily into +res gear to survive long enough when things get massively unfair. Like again, facing two large groups of all spell casters with huge AoE/DoT abilities that gib any character not explicitely beefy.

Moving on from something that has infuriated me more often than not, lets talk about the ignorable storyline. Save some guys on the way to killing the Alchemist and discovering the True Final Evil behind it all. How unexpected... Really, I'm honest here. I was NOT expecting the final two bosses to be HUGE push overs and underwhelming in comparison. The Alchemist's chosen stage was more dangerous than he was and the True Evil Bad Guy Boss was just this huge beast in a tiny room making all of his threat coming from unavoidable damage. But, if you dance around it, it becomes a waiting game and war of attrition until you've won. Oh, you don't even get a chest for killing him. Lame.

I could nitpick more. But, I'm going to go back hunting for shinies in the End Game Room. So with that, I leave you with a satisfied 6/10 review for Torchlight 2. Objectively 'good'. But held back a horrible front end, lack luster design and any sort of thematic approach to anything that wasn't overwhelm-you-with-particle-effects.

Happy Looting.

As a point of comparison, lets use the Embermage, arguably the one with the most flavour and overall 'fun'ness.
The Embermage is the archtypal spell caster, specialising in wands and staves they use them to best channel their various spells to great effect. Spells falling into the Fire, Ice and Lightning realms of thematic presentation.

Fire is almost entirely all damage as would be expected save for Immolation Aura and Firebombs which decrease damage taken at higher levels and cause monsters to flee.
Ice has a lot of utility abilities, your teleport, summon, protection, buff and debuffs all come from this tree. Which is a nice take on things, usually that's saved for the Energy/Electricity tree.
Speaking of which, this is the most lack luster of skill sets, the design behind these are all schizophrenic at best with less than half the abilities really related to the named theme.

Without nitpicking at every single ability (And there's a lot to nitpick) the Embermage will provide once again, the best playing experience. Why, you might ask? Lets go to my second character, the Berserker. This guy's older, kind of wiry more than beefy and is supposed to be your frontline fighter. I was disabused of this notion very early on.

Playing this game, the gear is just there to make things marginally easier as relying on drops quickly renders you ineffective, a point we'll touch more on later.
Starting out, I began by dual wielding withou the passive bonus to it. Figuring that since I had kept finding the stat to increase my chances of a swinging both weapons at once made it seem useless.

Skills wise, this class is a little more well-rounded and truer to its design than the Embermage is. There's a very solid feel to the way the abilities are presented, Feral.
Harnessing martial abilities, animism and the fury of winter, the Berserker is a very action-oriented class.

Warfare has exactly what you would expect, your main sources of weapon-based fighting come from here with your strongest buff and debuff being placed in this tree alongside various forms of dealing death to your foes.
Tundra has a lot of AoE-Centric abilities and your only ranged protection when dual-wielding. Overall, it's lackluster abilities wise, but has a lot of utility use.
Shadow is where your main form of sustain comes from, your summonable creature and several more utility abilities, it's unfortunate some of the better skills unlock so late, you'll miss out on quite a few fun ones in favour of actually getting there in the first place.

Back to the being 'disabused of weapon-fighting' I quickly found out that staying in place and smacking things required you invest in a lot of life steal to stay alive to kill quick enough before being overwhelmed or invest heavily into reistances in order to live long enough to kill things. But, at a much slower and less fluid pace.

So, re-rolling I went with Northern Fury, Howl, Battle Fury and Shadow Burst as a means of jumping in, blowing everything up, jumping out and doing it all over again. I became a spell-caster to a more satisfying degree than my Embermage. By comparison, my Embermage focused in Prismatic Bolt and a few other skills to keep him alive meaning I only had three or four abilities to manage...

My Berserker at time of writing has all ten slots filled, forcing me to use QWER, 1234 and DF for ability keys. If you've played League of Legends, this is how everything is set up and makes playing the Berserker viable in this way. Is this ideal? No, it is however immense amounts of fun and satisfying to see things chain-reaction explode from two abilities.

And on now to a class that has the least effective execution in its presented theme, the Outlander. What went on when this class was being designed? They've given this poor class so many means of dealing damage that focusing in any one thing quickly defines the character. But, becomes the least rewarding of all the classes as that's all you get, various forms of damage where spec'ing into 3-4 abilities is the ideal way to go.

Lets start out with Sigil skills. This is where your summons are, your main defensive abilties are and the best skill to use with a ranged weapon... if it wasn't so awful to try and use.
Lore skills are all various ways of deal damage with a magical glaive. Which would be cool if there were glaive weapons to add to the theme.
Warfare skills are once again, all ways to deal damage... With pistols, bows and crossbows.

This all sounds unfair until you dig deep into the class and find out you've got the most engaging melee fighter class around. You're given a combination of abilities that allow to engage, disengage and sustain yourself nicely. Too bad it's lost to the allure of an long range class that pales in comparison to the Embermage. Oops. At least it's a better take on weapon-fighting than the berserker.

Finally, lets look at Engineer, the sole class to make use of the most useless item in the game, Cannons. This class is your tank-class, and a terrible one at that. It's a selfish tank class, you live indefinitely while everyone else dies around you because you have no way of keeping aggressive baddies locked onto you and not your squishy, tastier allies. Oops, something went wrong here.

Indepth skill wise, the Engineer is made to slog to the heart of a melee and start laying down a steady amount of damage, safely.
Blitzskills encourage you to find a big stick and start laying out a bunch of AoE damage.
Construction skills are where all your summons are and the only two abilities that explicitly need a cannon. Stick with the summons and you'll be better for it.
Aegis skills are what give you that indomitable sense, housing most of your defense-oriented and augmented abilities. This class is really choose two of three.

Overall, Runic Games has improved from Torchlight, but only marginally class-design wise.

[LFurtado]

I cant w8 for MOD classes hopefully TL1 classes will be compatible!... Im having fun as Engineer Cannon/Robots (main) only whished more. I agree that Embermages are the best class ATM... I just start to think about D3 skills being a lot better then TL2, also the Rune System flexibility...

[[ Vaporeon Noises ]]

I can't wait for a bunch of UI mods personally. I'd love to see something like League of Legends with everything displayed tidily and unobtrusively :/ not being able to click-through the UI at the bottom is a huge hazard when fighting downwards in any dungeon with blind corners

[-=!=-Hexlaw-=!=-]

i think and hope that there will be a companions mod where we can equipt them with actual items so it's as if we are playing in multi player but with AI, but i'm not sure if that could be done. and with the multi player i think where they failed big is no lobby chat before you get a game, so u could atleast find others, but that might also be why the game was only $20.

i'm happy with the game. and like all games with a modding community i find they only get better.

[[ Vaporeon Noises ]]

I hear they had just wanted to implement a stable multiplayer system before offering a social component. Perhaps we'll see it implemented later on.

[[ Vaporeon Noises ]]

Just wanting to give this a quick little bump.

[Atech66]

you played 90 hrs for 20 bucks **** and go buy BL2 jesus your a piece a work.. the game was'nt taylored for YOU it was for everyone and they listened and made what the majority are enjoying.. mods will make it more able to be adjusted more to your liking. I think its a damn good game to follow up TL and half the winers ♥♥♥♥♥ its not enough or too much.. live with it wait for mods or go play D3 the whole draw to TL all together was " simple can be fun" its not meant to be .. thats what alot of us DO like about it.. we can jump on play have some fun hunt loot and not have to dig into every detail and build.. im at 130+ hrs finished with mage and outlander..have 2 above 45 and dont have the nerve to complain that for my 20 bucks it could have been better.. its a great game as is and just because you find fault with it doesn;t make it a fault.. it makes it your opinion and i disagree whole heartedly. If your dieing alot playing different toons and builds than something is way wrong with whatever your doing lol Its funny.. they make a game for the fans and they make it affordable to the masses and then people want more the greed is in certain fans wth is wrong with you? it was 20 bucks i paid 60 several times for what amounted to total garbage or 35 hrs of game time in the last 2 years.. what nerve some folks have .. this is why many of the publishers are the way they are.. your gonna piss and moan no matter what so they should take thier 60 bucks and wave bye.. Runic deserves a damn award for this. Then they even empowered the fans to add to the game and build on it and your still complaining wholy *******

[Ezekiel]

Lol I wanna bash you for crying over spilt-milk when the carton is still 90% full, but you did make some valid points.
To be honest, yeah the UI is kinda large, but I've yet to have a problem with it. The spell particles has yet to give me too much grief, let alone cause an untimely death. I think that part mainly revolves around your computer specs, and if you're multiplayer, on your connection speed.
I haven't played an embermage too far yet, I've only played Engineer and Berserker to act 3. So far, I know what you mean with the Engineer. I have him spec'd into magic Find, but I have skills, stats, and gear buffs that never let me die lol. Berserker however, I've yet to try the frost path. I'm focused on Frenzy and Rampage, and with my stats/gear set-up, I rarely get hit, and if I do, I am at full health again almost instantly. Granted that's used a lot of "Steal # Health per hit" and "# hp regeneration per second"s But it's still effective.
I honestly, love this game, and haven't really had much problem, minus your point on the story. I have absolutely no clue what's going on, other than I'm chasing the Alchemist for some reason, because there's just no interest in the story.
I will say though, many of your issues will probably be fixable after mod support kicks up.

[[ Vaporeon Noises ]]

Make no mistake, I quite enjoy the game. I just want that extra 10% because I want the game to be even more enjoyable. I'd rather not suffer another Terraria.

I'm running on an AMD Phenom II X6 and a Radeon 6850 and 50mbps down/8mbps up. Speed is not an issue, it's all presentation and the fact that the system is poorly optimised for the maelstrom of particle effects.