Review: Torchlight

Creating a dungeon crawling hack-and-slash game these days is mighty tough on the developers. Each game that even attempts to go near the genre gets compared to the Diablo series and ultimately gets crushed in its shadow. When Torchlight was announced and it was learned that some of the developers behind Diablo 1 and 2 were behind the project, a small ray of sunshine appeared. Could an action RPG game not named Diablo finally make an impact?

The answer to that question? Sort of. Certainly, if you’ve played a Diablo game, you’ll be right at home as soon as you start up Torchlight. Click enemies to begin the head bashing process, gather loot, complete quest (sometime by accident), level up and start the cycle all over again. For people who have never played a true dungeon crawler this may seem like a repetitive formula; however, the hours will soon melt away as you continue to mutter “Alright, just one more level, and I’m done” to yourself over and over.

It’s not to say that this is the standard Diablo formula through and through. A few changes have been made to the gameplay to make it different from its older brother and to bring it up with the times. A pet has been added, giving you a companion to play alongside with. Your pet serves multiple purposes – pack mule, attack companion, and broker. Your pet (you can choose from either a dog or cat) isn’t a powerhouse by any means; some of the more difficult enemies will barely link an eye when Scruffy or Mittens goes to take a bite out of them. The real value of the pet appears when it comes to inventory management. Your pack will quickly fill with goodies, some of which you’ll want to keep and most of which you’ll want to sell off. We all know that trips back to the city are a pain when you’re in a groove and Torchlight makes it easy to get rid of your trash loot. Simply throw the items into your pet’s inventory, click the button to send it to town and in 30 seconds it will return with gold in hand (paw?) for all the items.

The dynamic between your character and your pet is also expanded by a fishing/feeding system. As you traverse through the layers of the dungeon, you’ll often find small rippling bodies of water. Click on it and your character will begin to fish, similar in fashion to World of Warcraft. Once the fish is in your inventory you have the option of feeding it to your pet. You won’t feed it to make it happy – the fish have effects that alter the molecular structure (ok, I made that part up, but how else would you explain it?) of the animal to turn it into something else. Give it a Web Fish and it turns into a spider. Give it a Murkfish and it turns into a Goblinhound. Give it a Firefish and it turns into a Fire Elemental, you get the gist.

The artwork and graphics in the game, although not Diablo 3 quality, have a lightness to it that lends well to the game, especially with your pet turning into all sorts of crazy creatures after you’ve fed it a fish you’ve caught. Most of the environments are fairly detailed and have nice touches that differentiate each level from the others but it would have been nice for a few outdoor maps, as almost all of the game takes place in the underground (because that’s where scary things live). Anyone with a fairly modern PC should be able to play this game to its fullest potential – something that it accented by the fact that the game comes with a “netbook mode” for those 9AM Philosophy classes.

Character models are fairly similar to each other, and while the game does try to differentiate your three choices with a pseudo “class” system, each of the characters basically can specialize in either branch of combat (magic, melee, and range). Basically your choice is to pick which one you’d rather look at for hours on end since they all tend to meld together into a single hybrid class a few levels deep.

The one area that really hurts the value of the game is the glaring omission of multiplayer. Dungeon crawlers, in their barest essence, are basically built for cooperative play. Including a pet system to have someone to take along with you on the trip fixes the issue of running through a dungeon by your lonesome, it’s still more fun to play with another person. The feeling of showing off an epic piece of loot is something all gearwhores cherish and it just doesn’t have the same effect when you’re mailing a screenshot over.

While not everything is perfect in the game – you’ll often run into a few graphical glitches, the pathing for enemies and NPCs is downright idiotic at times, and lack of any true story – it’s still a game that is worth a try for anyone who longs for a dungeon crawler or would like a primer before Diablo 3 is released. For the retail price of $20 it’s hard not to recommend to anyone, even if it is a single-player only affair. The game isn’t ridiculously hard by any means and the accessibility of being able to play even on a netbook, perfect for plane rides or long car trips, paired with exceptional artwork and gameplay make this a title that is placed in the upper echelon of action RPGs.