Torchlight 2: First Impressions

Sometimes I forget that I bought Diablo 3, but then the bitter memory of it seeps back in and I my heart sinks to despair.

When I played Torchlight 1 a few years back, I was hooked. The formula of loot collecting, exploring and fun combat stole hours upon hours of my life. Just like Diablo 1 and 2 did years before. I keep telling myself that I'm not a RPG fan, and I guess to some extent games like Torchlight and Diablo aren't traditional RPGs. Dungeon crawlers, hack n slash or whatever you want to call them, I love em to bits.

After Torchlight 1 came and went, I thought to myself: boy I can't wait for Diablo 3.

Without getting into the shit flinging too much, let me just say Diablo 3 started out great but ultimately fell due to its own reputation. It just didn't deliver on what I wanted and what it did serve up wasn't enough.

I was very hesitant to pick up Torchlight 2, even though I loved the first one, after the events of D3 I thought that maybe I'm just not into this genre of gaming at the moment. I should just stick to Borderlands 2  which has been nothing but the Bees Knees.

But thanks to a friend I was able to get myself a Steam copy of Torchlight 2 and I'm so damn glad that I did.

Torchlight 2 is a gem.

It's a special game. It has charm, and character and it thrusts you into a world that strives to kill you but never seizes to amaze you.

Just going through its list of 4 classes had me sitting there clicking forever because I couldn't decided which one was the coolest one to play. Eventually I settled on an Engineer named Issac and his pet ferret Ishi.

As the game begins you find that the biggest let down in Torchlight 2 is the story, or lack there of. There is a narrative in there somewhere, but even the game knows that it's not important. What matters is that you have a reason to step into your characters shoes and cause havoc.

Visually the game looks amazing, I freaking love the art style. It's unique art make it as though you were playing through a Disney Cartoon. It sort of looks like a higher rendered version of what you see in world of Warcraft, and given that the Dev crew were ex Blizz members, you can see how Torchlight 2 borrows heavily from such titles as Diablo and WoW. But what it borrows it polishes and gives back in a big way. Even the Music is done by the same guy that worked on Diablo 1 and 2 - so the atmosphere and environments are a joy to go through. In fact the music and environments to explore are a major draw for me.

Soon you don't care who you're collecting quests from, or where you have to go. You just grab quests, look at the reward and then kill shit as you make your way towards a star marking some location on a map. And this to me is the game so far. But please don't take that as a negative, because this simple mechanic of killing, looting, moving on is some how made so damn addictive by the good people over at Runic Games. If it wasn't for Borderlands 2 I would have been sitting there for hours just exploring and finding new things to kill and strip off loot. But I really want to finish my first play through of Borderlands 2 before I get into anything else.

But let me just say, that my first few hours of Torchlight 2 were insanely more satisfying than my time spent finishing Diablo 3. If D3 has left a bad taste - Torchlight 2 is here to bring the sugar.