September 20th, 2012 by Steve Perry
GRAPHICS:
I really love the art style of Torchlight II. It’s similar to the first game, but for those unfamiliar – it’s a bright, cel-shaded cartoon style of art that blends together nicely with the intricately designed 3D world. The UI is very familiar in its form and function. The map is nice but I do sort of wish I could easily open a full-screen map for quick glances instead of having to rapidly flip through the map alignment just to see a wider view than the porthole gives me. In addition, some of the animations make it a bit tricky to tell when you’ve killed an enemy unless they die fast or explode. Then again, they do explode quite a bit.
AUDIO:
For starters, TL2′s soundtrack is glorious. Oh, and you can download it in full CD quality – for free. In addition, the voiceover work is very well done, the sound effects are excellent, the ambient noise and creature sounds are distinct and clear, and it all comes together with the visuals to provide a full, well-rounded experience.
FUN FACTOR:
Click, click, gib, loot, click, gib, smack, fireball, gib, loot. What’s not fun about that? I was able to personalize my character, personalize my pet, customize all of my stat upgrades, pick and choose all of my individual skills and skill upgrades in the tree, load up on gear, load up on gold… Yeah, you might say it’s a bit of fun. All that, and you can do it with up to five friends.
REPLAY VALUE:
Where do I start? In addition to playing the campaign solo, you can also play the game with – as I said – up to 5 friends in co-op multiplayer mode. You can level up to 100, so you’ve got a lot to do there, and that doesn’t even begin to touch the tip of the iceberg. Torchlight II supports full modding, which means you’ll be playing this game for a long, long time to come. Let’s just say that I can’t wait to see what the playerbase comes up with.
GAMEPLAY:
Like every other aRPG before it, TL2 handles like a click-click-boom manner of gameplay. You use your weapon with the left click, use your abilities with the right-click, and you can also assign any of your spells to the 10 number keys atop your keyboard as well as assign a “hot-swappable” right-click alternative which you can switch to on the fly with the TAB key. Between that and all of the other fun little commands you can play with, there’s very little not to like about this game.
OVERALL:
Look, this is a game that only costs $20 that could very easily fetch more. When a game like Diablo III can sell for $60, it’s amazing that you can get an equally – if not MORE – fulfilling game experience out of a game that’s only a quarter of the price. I’m not really sure what else to say other than buy this game. Buy it now. Buy it, play with friends, and love the hell out of it because Runic Games has absolutely delivered in just about every area. There is no good reason to NOT buy Torchlight II unless you don’t like aRPG games. In which case, why’d you even read this review? More Torchlight for me!
OVERALL SCORE: 9.5/10
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