Torchlight 2 Release Date set

[Hammerskjold]

Sure, the game feels like a less serious Diablo, but with mods it's shaping into a decent ARPG game with more modern mechanics.

I bought the full version, non Steam standalone version. Yes Steam has some great sales etc, but I wanted a standalone version anyway with no other things attached, no I don't want the extended warranty\club membership\curly fries etc. (Ok I'll take the curly fries, but only that.)

It's funny reading some of the reviews now, some people hate some details that I like, and vice versa. Eg: one reviewer missed the inventory 'tetris', whereas I say goodbye, and good riddance.

Some reviewers complain about the story, I say at it's core games like these is a hack and slasher. Always was. A story is a nice to have, but not a core requirement. Replace 'Dark Wanderer' with 'The Alchemist', and theres yer story.

I like the art direction however, and how they made a virtue out of necessity because let's face it. While Runic is not some 2 person indie working out of their garage, they can't compete budget wise, with a certain 900 lbs gorilla company, owned by a bigger 9000 megatonne super saiyan simian megacorp.

So they did the smart thing, and they didn't. Instead of fully rendered 3d cutscenes that screams dolllah dollah bills, they went with a 2d styled cutscenes. Call it my bias, but I always liked this style and it's dynamic when done right*. Like this:


*I don't hate on the Starwars Clone wars 3d cartoon. But I always thought the previous one done by the creator of Samurai Jack, was awesome.

Funny enough, I don't know if it's intentional or not, the 2d cutscene is sepia toned, while the actual gameplay is lower poly with cleanly done warm and cool colours. Maybe a happy accident, or a sly response to satisfy all those players who want 'brown grit on everything' to make things extra hardcore and gritty and so dark you have to spell it with a Q. Like 'Darque'. And I'm a D1 player who still have D1: HF installed. There's gothic dark, and then there's muddy and I can't see a damn thing because everything is too damn dark. Sorry, 'darqh'.

It's not perfect, though there is no such animal. There is a technical issue that threatens to intrude too much into the gameplay. I dunno if it's a memory leak or what, I'm not a compuscientist guy. What I do know is sometimes in a long game session, framerates starts to drop to a stuttering speed.

While I don't have the latest rig, it was able to play it ok on the highest graphics settings, and noticeably faster when some stuff was turned down. I thought that was the problem, but it wasn't. I ran it on windowed version, and I thought that was the fix.

Turns out me exiting\restarting was the 'fix'. Now I hope this will be fixed in the next patch, granted it's still a fairly new game so Runic is still hunting a few loose bugs\ glitches.

But this kind of technicality can really hurt a game like this, because this is the kind of game where 'I just wanted to play for 30 minutes at 9:30pm, what the hell I looked up it's now 5 AM?!!!' is actually a compliment.

In short, hopefully some technical issues will be fixed soon. Aside from that, it's a fun game. Yeah sure, for 20$ and change or so, but would it stand up to a full retail price test? For me, I would say yes. Now I'm glad they went the digital download route to be able to offer the game for 20$, but I say I feel it was worth my money.


TL,DR version edit:

TL-2= tweaked and streamlined elements of D1&D2 + Gauntlet Legends + pets with backpacks and goggles + fun + hugs and kisses for players who wants an Offline SP option.