Torchlight II
Released: September 20, 2012
Game Length: 28 Hours
Grade: A-
Introduction
Release: It is pretty surprising to think that Torchlight II came out way back in 2012. I didn't even realize that Runic Games were the same people who created Hob in 2017. The sequel brought out the framework from the first game and added quite a bit of support when it came to playing with other people and generating your own types of mods. Unfortunately, the reports I hear about these types of things nowadays aren't that great. That and their age is perhaps why they were added to the Epic Games Store Free List with Torchlight during the week of July 11th, 2019 and Torchlight II twice on July 16th, 2020 & December 30th 2020. Though, both games are still decently priced at $15 & $20 respectively.
A Better Torchlight
Story: When the first game came out, it felt like they fit the narration to the setting. Characters only had a couple of lines that repeated as you continued to gather whatever randomly dropped from a named spawn on whatever floor you were progressing towards. The floors were randomly generated and designed almost identically in each setting. You'd receive a little bit of narration after completing the level. The sequel massively improves this by establishing - what my statistics page told me when I completed the game - 95 quests & 55 levels from a wide-range of characters. The over world isn't just 5 random instances of whatever environment you are in but are vast wastelands to explore. Each area has its own sub-sections that subtly tell you a story of what might have happened. You'll discover wrecked ships in the desert, a village of people that turned into werewolves, and an ever-invading backdrop of monsters seeking to destroy the world. There is even a questline where you entertain a genie! I personally liked how the developers added the original characters into this one as well.
Character: The original game gave you three primary classes: Destroyer, Vanquisher, and Alchemist. They had three skill trees to choose from with about 5 active abilities and 5 passive skills in each one. It was enough to satisfy what people are used to in an RPG: melee, ranger, or magic. Torchlight II generates four different classes: Engineer, Outlander, Beserker, and Embermage. They decided to change it to 7 active abilities and 3 passive skills for each tree. The interesting thing this time around is that you can now customize your physical features when creating your character. I counted at least 10 different options available depending on whether you made one male or female. No longer are you forced to be a male Destroyer! Your pet has also been expanded upon to include at least 10 different options as well.
Loot: One of the major problems of the first game was how your equipment was arbitrary balanced to one specific build. Although technically this is still present in the second one, there is a bit of flexibility. Each of the core abilities will now add something that will benefit your overall performance. Strength will increase your weapon damage, dexterity will reduce "fumble" damage, focus increases "execute" maneuvers while dual-wielding, and vitality will increase your armor. You can now merge gems, or embers as they call them sometimes, into brand new combinations that will benefit things like knockback resistance or mana regeneration. Enchantment is now its own separate category where I never lost any abilities. You can pay to add or even remove certain Enchantments. There is also an option to use a couple gems to create empty slots in no-slot equipment. The equipment you earn is also a little more tuned to the level you are. No longer will you get an uncommon level 30 belt that has +5 armor and +12 health. The amount of physical and elemental armor they provide will always be generally better the higher level it is. You can still send your pet to town to sell items, but there is one new cool thing: auto-sort inventory button. They even thought of making the gems slot at the end of your bag, away from your equipment.
The Same Torchlight
Gameplay: Although they were able to solve a lot of problems from the original game, they unfortunately left a lot of issues intact. One huge problem is the fact that you are only able to slot 10 things onto your skill bar. This is in addition to the new feature of swapping between two weapons and two active skills. You still automatically use the ability when you click them on the screen, but at least you are now able to remap them to a button of your choosing. Torchlight II also provides you more to toy around with - 21 abilities (and up to 4 scroll abilities) - all while giving you the same number of slots from the first game. The only community solution to this problem is to download the mod: More hotkeys and remap the function keys accordingly. The phase beasts return to give you more fun puzzles and challenges to mix things up, and you can choose your own random maps or check out new game+ after you complete the main campaign.
Chance: When you play an RPG, you expect a certain level of randomness. Although Torchlight II does provide a little bit more leniency when it comes to your experience, much of what existed in the first game is present in the second one as well. Combining gems no longer gives you a simply better version. Instead, it assigns new values to it. You can combine four unique items to form a new one. Sadly, the seven times I did this gave me something worse or completely unusable by my class. One of those times gave me an exact replica of the weapon I transmuted! The gambler is back, which thankfully I did not have to use once in my playthrough. You can combine set pieces to create new ones... as if that did me any good. They did include an "undo trait tree point distribution" npc, but it only refunds the last three points most recently spent. You are given a new option to combine two spells to create another random one. I did this perhaps a total of 30 times and not once did I ever receive a healing-type scroll in all my travels. I think what also made me mad was all the fun, unique items I received that had 1-10% chance of doing something cool. I'm not talking about the quest that gives you inferior boots. I'm talking about Vyrax Heartfire that has a 1% to summon a skull head when you get hit or Boletus Spore Sack with a 10% chance on hit to summon a tiny spore. I had a 10% chance Wand Chaos with my Embermage and suddenly casting a meteor after 5 hours of not seeing one scared me each and every time.
Difficulty: Like before, I chose to play on Veteran. Also like before, the game didn't exactly get difficult until my chances of getting new equipment plummeted. This must have been around level 40. Without having a single healing ability for much of the game, drinking down a total of 600 potions isn't surprising after reaching the finale. I only had 8 reported deaths - one I was teleported into the middle of twenty guys, one killed me instantly with a 3,500 damage critical hit, one on the final boss, and five because I wasn't paying attention. I think I should have selected the Engineer from the start - seeing that I chose the range class in the first one, but the Embermage proved to be something I was more familiar with. Sadly, things were brutally easy when all you needed to do was level up Prismatic Bolt & Charge Mastery. The other abilities were decent enough to have a simple point thrown in. Frost Phase & Ice Prison were perhaps the only other essential ones I needed in order to survive.
Summary
Review: Torchlight II improves over the original in so many ways. Subtle things like auto-sorting inventory, key-mapping options, voice-overs, and swapping out your equipment can make your gaming experience better. The world and its environment has drastically been altered to better accommodate a multiplayer experience. The dungeons are less formulaic and offer unique encounters with better boss fights and a surprising number of new enemy types. However, what made the first Torchlight exhausting are also ever present. The game reinforces the idea of using a select number of abilities while drinking down potions to stay alive as the primary gaming loop. Then there is the always-present chance you will gain nothing of benefit from using any number of features that are made available. Even for a game that is still priced at $20, there is enough here that dresses to impress. I would definitely recommend playing this game.
4-1-2022