Torchlight II

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Luminis

Luminis

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Torchlight II: An action RPG, released on the 20th of September 2012, for just twenty bucks on Steam - and nobody's talking about it? Gotta change that :lol:

So, what is Torchlight? It's basically a Diablo clone, which first appeared in 2009. Developed by a studio called Runic Games, a lot of people out a lot of hope into it. And it somewhat failed to deliver. Torchlight and Runic Games got a big name behing them, namely Max Schaefer, of Diablo I and II fame - that's where the expectations came from, one would assume.

Now, three years later, the sucessor to the original Torchlight has been released. And while it's still largely based on the same, somewhat out dated graphics engine, it's not quite comparable to the first game anymore. It's bigger, better, and more beautiful then ever. And, most importantly: It plays very well.

In Torchlight II, you've got four classes to chose from, a rather large, open world to explore, four difficulty settings that are available to you right from the start, a great soundtrack (composed by Dibalo II's componist, to boot), and some pretty good old school hack and slay action.

Basically, Torchlight II comes across as a better sucessor to Diablo II than Diablo III is - while it might not look as dark or carry the name of one of the best known franchises in the ARPG genre, I'd still say that it is much mire in line with the spirit behind Diablo I and II. And you get all of that (and mod support, starting in a while) for a third of the price of a normal retail game.

Personally, I've yet to sink a lot of time into the game, but after soending about five hours with it, I can certainly say that I am more impressed with TL2 than I was with Diablo III.

TL2 is currently rated at 90/100 at Metacritic by critics and 92/100 by by users (compared to Diablo III, at 88/100 and 38/100 respectively).

Let me finish this little introductory rant by quoting IGN's verdict of the game, which, in my opinion, hits the nail on the head.

IGN
Torchlight II doesn’t do anything radically new, but does everything incredibly well. It fits all the pieces of varied monster behavior, interesting items, excellent skill design and random surprises together into a near-perfect formula, where the action never stops and rewards are never far away. Every level up, skill boost and item replacement flirts with a sense of invulnerability in a world obsessed with killing you, demanding continued play by teasing eventual omnipotence. The story and characters aren’t particularly memorable, but that hardly hurts the strength of Runic’s focused design in what’s one of the finest loot-driven action-RPGs available.
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Well I think the main thing is that with the new one it's pretty much the same just polished, I tried the beta and well it just felt like the first one, just polished up added a few more characters and thats about all.

Spoiler
There is a Borderlands 2 Easter Egg in the game.
 
Been playing it a little bit with some buddies. Was majorly disappointed with D3 so this is a very nice alternative.
 
TJ13
Well I think the main thing is that with the new one it's pretty much the same just polished, I tried the beta and well it just felt like the first one, just polished up added a few more characters and thats about all.

Spoiler
There is a Borderlands 2 Easter Egg in the game.
Click to expand...
Well, dunno... I did play the first Torchlight, but TL2 seems to have added a bit more than just polish - but that might just be my impression. After all, there's an entire world this time around, as opposed to just one large dungeon in the first game.

Plus, it's got multi player this time around, which adds a lot of value, in my opinion. But to each their own ;)
 
Torchlight II have much larger variety of loot, and more unique ones too. Tons of cool loot have been found by T2 players so far.
 
just picked this up and it's great so far 👍
the game has similar art style to the first, but everything else is completely different. The gameplay is more fun than D3 IMO, plus the loot is miles better
 

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