Torchlight III

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Game Title: Torchlight III
Released: October 13, 2020
Game Length: 19 Hours
Grade: C-

Development Nightmare

Designing the Game: So Torchlight came out in 2009 as a single-player game with 14 employees and Torchlight II came out with the backing of $8.4 million from Perfect World Entertainment as a cooperative 6-player game in 2012. These guys are the ones who were originally from Flagship Studios, designers of Hellgate: London. So they thought developing this series would be perfect to complete the original concept of Mythos with MMO-elements before the company closed back in 2008. Unfortunately, many of the key players left the company which eventually led to Perfect World closing Runic Games in 2017. Despite the complication, news of Torchlight Frontiers hit 2018 with playable demos at game shows and gameplay videos being shown off on Youtube.

Rebranding: About 18 months later, Max Schaefer (you may know him as one of two brothers who helped with the making of Diablo) came out with an announcement that the game will now be another staple of the series: Torchlight III. This means that you will pay one price for all the content instead of the Free-To-Play with monetization it originally planned. The game also transformed from something that was originally going to be part of Arc Games to a Steam Game along with other platforms. The in-game store is removed and an offline mode included. The price tag was set at $40, something many found to be too high for what was made available. Thankfully, there have been Steam Sales every month that mark the game down to a more reasonable $9.99 deal. I've also found reports of it being offered for $20, but could not find any sort of confirmation on the matter. However, I don't think it is worth getting even for that much (as I will explain further down below).

No More Updates: The developers were adding tweaks to the game almost every week. Most of these consisted of cosmetic changes, more items, UI changes, class adjustments, or platform fixes. October 29th "Gear N Goblins" update allowed you to buy respectacles. That along with the December 15th "Snow & Steam" update allowed you to collect special holiday-themed decorations from their Reward Track Contracts. Unfortunately, I don't think the game was doing so well since it reached Xbox Gamepass $15 monthly service on January 14th. Then a mere 5 months later after releasing the game, Zynga acquired Echtra Games in March 2021. So before handing over the IP, they came out with one last update with the Cursed Captain Class, the ability to sort your inventory, and a bunch of other adjustments.

The Loot Problem

Not So Torchlight: So what made the game so bad? Perhaps it had to do something regarding to all the things curiously missing or changed from the first two games. And because there were so many of them, I've decided to add a bullet list:

  • There are no gems. You cannot collect, transmute, or slot small additions into your gear anymore.
  • No more identifying items. Torchlight I made it essentially mandatory while Torchlight II at least allowed you to automatically discover a rare item if you hit a specific level. Torchlight III removes this mechanic entirely.
  • Enchanting happens only after you beat the game. You are either able to unlock the ability to enchant after you reach level 46 or after you complete the game (which both happen about the same time). However, the only items you can enchant are the ones that drop with slots after-the-fact.
  • Vendors no longer sell gear. This might be a bit shocking to realize, but there is very little you can buy from the vendors - potions, respec tokens (which was added after release), and gambling for new items are the only things available. They do provide you with common weapons for free if by some chance you find yourself in a situation completely broke and gear-less. Not having enough gold isn't really a problem anymore since I managed to go over the 20,000 gold cap that was originally in the game.
  • There are no core stats. Instead of focusing on items with "might" and "agility" when it comes to getting your gear, the only thing you will be shown are the cold facts - damage dealt, damage prevented, and auxiliary bonuses. Each item will also show off a specific "box" of stats. This means that common items have only one box "roll" with health or defense added while uncommon (or as the game likes to call them as - "Magic") and rare items will list two boxes.
  • Elemental afflictions are based on region. There are three zones you will traverse through on your Frontier map. Each one will only focus on one type of element - the Goblin Forest deals fire, the Infested Forest deals poison, and Echonok Mountains deals electricity. Although it is possible to encounter more challenging enemies that will dabble between all three elements, the fact that most enemies will only deal one type of elemental damage means that the gear will only contain that type of protection. Gambling items will randomize these stats, regardless of what region you are working on.
  • Legendary items are multi-faceted, but limited. The first thing you must come to realize is that there are only a couple dozen legendary items in the game (to which some were added in after release). This is maddening when you have nearly 100 in Torchlight II. They also removed ordinary set pieces and instead added that function to the legendary items. The major difference of these items from their predecessors is the unique functionality of modifying skill behavior and using up to 3 of those abilities (pending your level) without actually wearing the pieces. But don't worry about not obtaining these items through your travels since they are offered at all levels. I repeatedly received the same item with upgraded stats each time at level 9, 12, 18, 24, 33, 36, and 39... even though the perk was only usable at level 20 and above.
  • Less Inventory Space. Torchlight II provides you with 64 spaces (counting personal and pet) and 80 places in storage (counting both character and shared). Torchlight III provides you a total of 40 spaces and initially 20 places in shared storage (no personal storage) with the possibility of unlocking 20 more in chunks as you progress (I had 120 by the time I finished the campaign).
  • You can't move when accessing your inventory. This was a pretty devastating realization, but accessing your inventory freezes your character in place. It does not pause the game. This means that monsters can come along and kill you if you aren't paying attention to the stragglers out there. The proposed methodology of the third game is to summon a portal (which no longer uses an item) and take care of the matter outside of combat.
  • Equipping things is weird. Torchlight III lumps all the things you can equip into one window. Whether or not this is convenient is depending on how well you like the new interface. Storing things onto your pet requires a new button press, instead of simply shift-clicking the item. You must now switch between the equip window, pet storage, and chest storage instead of having them all up on the screen at once. You are limited to having a max of 20 potions where you must equip between three different types of potions. With the removal of jewelry, there are now only 12 things to worry about, including a potion slot and the three pet slots, instead of 15. Comparing items is fundamentally the same as before, but I do want to make a note that comparing a pet's tag will not show both items slotted.
  • There is no dual-wielding. There is no ability to hold two weapons, not even if you are the sharpshooter. At least they added red markers that can be seen from a glance in your inventory if something requires two-hands to wield, as long as the "new item" text isn't covering it up.
  • Diversity in equipment can be confusing. This brings me to my next point: certain classes have unique circumstances that distinguish them apart from others (as seen when buying items from the gambler). The "Forged" is a robot that has locomotion, hatch, and random chest gun. The "Cursed Captain" can wear capes. Each of the classes can increase their bonuses in the equipment they are "meant to have" to compliment their fighting style. In addition to wearing a shield, a person can now equip "Focus" objects, which is a fancy way of them saying magical artifacts that go into your off-hand. Very early in my experience, I received a level 2 shield with +10.1% block and a level 1 shield with +10.5% block. I also amusingly received a pet collar that made him immune to fire damage but also "rolled" additional fire defense in its stats. There are some massive jumps in stats too like how a level 26 staff does 214 damage while a level 33 staff (identical legendary weapon) does 503. So, it is important to be aware of what you might be collecting.
  • Weapon damage made unclear. Another problem is that they removed any indicators for damage per second and weapon speed. Instead, a weapon will simply display its damage and basic attack dealing a percentage of the weapon's damage. So there is nothing there that tells you that a rifle fires slower than a pistol, or how much damage you are dealing per second. It becomes harder to just compare the damage meters since the basic skill description may provide something like 200% weapon damage or 400% weapon damage, depending on the type of weapon.
  • Sharing items is out of the question. For one thing, there seems to be no way to share items between your single and multiplayer characters. You also cannot trade items with other players. You can't throw items onto the ground.
  • Lifebound Scrolls. One new thing introduced in Torchlight III is the ability to buy "buff scrolls with a catch" as I call them. These things will increase your overall stats of a specific item by 20% but will make them disappear the moment you die. You cannot use them on legendary items. You can use them on pet items and will remain if they die (since the condition is still based on your vitals).
  • Contracts. Another new addition is the ability to gain items in exchange for killing priority targets. The original "fame" mechanic really didn't do anything other than provide you with a rank to compare with friends. Now, it provides you with points you can deposit between four types of contracts that will give you random loot, decorations, reagents, or pets.

The Fort

A Fashionista Dream: Hopefully, I haven't scared you away with that list. There is another category that I must cover in the next section below: decorations. It becomes clear when dissecting the content that is available in the game that the majority of the developers' time and energy went into creating cosmetic features. If the game was going to be free, this would be the major selling point. Unfortunately, the transformation didn't translate well with so many features dedicated to making things look pretty. Let me go over them below:

  • The Fort: The biggest thing that makes Torchlight III different from the other games is the ability to build your own base. No, you won't be defending this base in some sort of siege mini-game. You'll have the ability to build from a large range of decorations and functional structures. While you will retain a lot of objects when you first inherit your home, a lot of recipes and random decorations will be obtained from contracts. Decorations can overlap with a maximum placement limit of 500.
  • Crafting: There are three different types of resource nodes - wood, stone, and metal. If you thought it was possible to craft your own equipment, you'd be wrong. The material that you collect from these nodes only allow you to craft more decorations. Like some sort of mobile game, you'll stick these materials into the crafting stations and wait up to a minute for the particular reagent. Then you can use whatever comes out to build fences, bricks, walls, campfires, etc.
  • Global Bonuses: Another weird addition to the game is the ability to contribute items to global buffs. You can sacrifice items to a tree in order to increase your gear luck. Automaton Gizmos will upgrade your gold luck. Killing goblins will allow you to collect fury for fire prevention or killing hyvids will allow you to collect paste for poison defense. What is strange is that it appears to only go up to 5% in any category and that there isn't an item for electric defense.
  • Respec: There is a nice building for each of the classes that allows you to use respectacles to refund any skill point. Like I mentioned above, they added the option to buy them for 2,500 gold each. This is a great addition that was severely lacking in the previous games.
  • Challenge Maps: Another thing they added after release is the ability to play randomized challenge maps. The actual decoration that provides this feature doesn't become available until after you complete the game.
  • Wardrobe: So, let's say there are some good equipment that you don't want to throw into storage. There are these statues you can add that allow you to throw your equipment on and swap sets with a single button. Switch out your weapons, armor, or all items. Though, they might have went a little overboard on the characters. There appears to be a ton of different ones to choose from - one for each class, for each difficulty, for each region, and for each rank. I never used this feature, but I guess it can be useful for some people. At least you can change the statue to male or female from the statue's menu options.
  • Pet Shelter: After a long day of collecting different kinds of pets, you can come back to your Fort and choose which one to have follow you around. This functional building will allow you to hold 50 pets. Considering the different types and colors to choose from, I nearly hit the cap after finishing the campaign. Each one can be named and given their own set of skills (which can be globally assigned to any pet). They can be sorted by name, type, or rarity.
  • Style Station: When you loot a specific item, the cosmetic appearance of it gets unlocked at this station. If you wish to change the appearance of any item or dye it from a list of about 25 colors, this station will allow you to transmogrify it for a low price. Do note that changing the appearance to a legendary item will forever retain their gold color and cannot be changed.

The Settings

Gameplay: Now comes the hard part of my posting. There are many things they decided to modify when it comes to your overall gaming experience. I will not be covering how vastly different the interface looks or how the graphics look like a combination of the first two games. I will be looking into some minor details that gradually impacted my respect for the game.

  • Fishing has been removed. No longer do you play the little mini-game for the transformation fish, buff items, or equipment. This means that your pet does not have a chance to transform into any monster.
  • The pet system is different. I originally did not approve of the removal of shift-clicking the items to the pet menu, but pressing another button instead wasn't too much of a hassle. Very rarely did your pet die unless you completely neglected oncoming enemies. If your pet did run out of health, it would disappear for 2 minutes. Sending your pet to sell items would also take 2 minutes, or 10 seconds if you were at your Fort, regardless of the number of items it was carrying or where you were in the world. There was no way to change the behavior to aggressive, defensive, or passive like in Torchlight II. However, the AI was performing at a decent enough level that I never felt like it needed to be changed. When you are at the vendor, there will be a "sell all pet items to vendor" button. One more thing: You can't send your pet to collect items anymore.
  • The pet system is problematic. Something strange happened with my pet, and I wasn't sure if it was every time I passed by my Fort or moving between dungeons that caused it. Pet would disappear after using a portal. I would have to go back to my Fort and swap pets in order for it to reappear. Considering that I was a Railmaster, my train would mysteriously disappear too. I know they probably like the idea of it popping out with its whistle blowing when I enter a new zone, but summoning it required a skill slot. I encountered another problem too: my pet somehow randomly dies, even inside my Fort. This might be associated with the next issue.
  • A few graphical glitches can be seen everywhere. When I first saw my level 1 character shake rapidly back-and-forth on a rock, I thought it might have been a fluke. Sadly, I saw this problem more times than I can count. Ironically, even the decorations were recreating this problem when previewing them in my Fort menu. This problem never halted my progress, but there was some sort of crazy invisible wall at the Assembly Line that completely stopped me entirely. Despite them trying to fix it Jan 12th or Feb 17th, I still encountered this problem. Thankfully, resetting the dungeon allowed me to continue. I could talk about how quests don't properly show you where to go or how there are no maps for underground areas, but another little issue I should include is the fact that it is possible to click to attack something without getting close enough to hit it. This was much less noticeable and more rare than the other technical issues.
  • Skill slots are still limited in their functionality. Not counting the passive skills, My railmaster has 19 abilities. A few of them overlap, but a few legendaries provide you with more options. There are a total of 9 skill slots, two of which use the mouse buttons. You cannot click on them, but you can change the keybindings. You cannot switch them out without opening your skill menu which freezes your character without pausing the game. To make matters worse, reassigning a skill to a slot will remove it from its current active slot without actively "swapping" the skill you removed over. I know this sounds like a trivial matter, but it bothered me way too much.
  • The travel system is funky. The previous games allowed you to have a ton of portal scrolls, so turning it into a simple mechanic that does not require an item sort of made sense. Though, there is something intrinsically wrong with how the whole thing is setup. You can create a portal from anywhere at any time (pending a 5 second cooldown between creations) to travel to your Fort or the main town of the region. A portal then appears and requires you to click on it. However, a portal does not then reappear on the other end in town or at your Fort. You must click on a waypoint and choose "your portal" in order to get back. If you accidentally create another portal, it will override the one you have in the world. Also, the Fort is physically located in Goblin Forest which means that you must drag your Frontier Map between the regions to travel around if you do not wish to use the portal back. Creating a portal at your Fort will only give you the option to travel to the main town in Goblin Forest, Trevail Point. And the main town of the region will only allow you to use a portal to your Fort. Logging out or Switching Characters will remove your portal! This is entirely different to how Torchlight II creates a portal at both ends and keeps it open forever.
  • Waypoint system is funky. If traveling around is bad, wait until you hear about the world system. There is something fundamentally wrong with how the world resets, like... constantly. I'm not sure if it has to do with how long you are away from that zone, whether you are using a different portal, or if it automatically clears whenever you travel to a different destination. But you pretty much have to do the whole thing over since all enemies respawn, all clearance comes back, and your discovery of what the map looks like gets cleared even though the region will be identical as before. Waypoints are only discovered if you click on them in the region, including the ones that are directly in front of your Fort at each of the "sign destinations" on the Frontier Map. I don't know why those aren't automatically unlocked when you pass by them or why you can't choose those spots from every portal menu. Killing a boss will create a portal to enter the next area, but the quest will generally require you to create a separate portal to head back to town first. It felt like I was being misled in which direction I should be going.
  • Dungeon system is funky. The main bosses in the game are nice, but it feels kind of weird to get loot from the boss and a boss chest. Although a portal will sometimes appear over the loot, it does nicely ask you if you are ready to leave the area first. Phase beasts used to be fun little puzzles and challenges, but Torchlight III removed all that for straight-forward boss fights. There was one time I was trying to avoid the little hounds, but a total of twelve appeared within the same zone. I originally set the difficulty up for Hard, until I realized how much of a slog it was in defeating all those health sponges. I knocked it down to Normal around level 15 and practically ran past everything after I realized the futility in defeating things when you can easily catch-up in levels with boss fights alone.
  • Relic system is permanent. When you are first creating your character, you will have the option to choose between 5 different relics that compliment your class abilities. Choose wisely because these cannot be changed after character creation.
  • Food. It is strange to receive a total of three food items through the entire game without knowing how to get more. There doesn't seem to be a way to buy, cook, or even receive more of them. The only thing I know is that they give you these quick 1-minute combat buffs.
  • Statistics are simplified. No longer are you given a laundry list of random recordings. It doesn't show how long you played, how many potions you drank, how many enemies you killed, or the number of times you died. The only thing it shows is everything that is calculated while in battle, like health regeneration or relic charge rate.
  • Story elements are in the world. Speaking of recordings, half of the story will be heard from clicking various objects out in the world. I liked this idea, but there doesn't seem to be a way to access them later. Any little thing can abruptly halt the voice-over, and you have to wait about 30 seconds before given the option to click on the object again. I do like the new option to continue listening to people talk after you walk away.
  • Name plates. I hate what they did with this system. I understand why they changed it, but finding things got annoying. Unlike how Torchlight II allows you to toggle this option on to show everything, Torchlight III decides to revert the option back to pressing the ALT-button. It will only show interactable objects like treasure chests, logs, equipment, and resource nodes. Any destructible objects will not be shown. Gold coins will never show their value on the ground, but the amount will be displayed in the top-right corner when you "run over" them. Coins and items will have colored beams of light to easily grab your attention. Moving your cursor over an item is the only way to highlight its structure. Also know that there are fun objects that you can interact with or destroy that gives no benefit to you whatsoever.
  • Visual Elemental Cues. One thing that I did find incredibly useful was how the screen flashed whenever you were standing in a puddle. Elemental damage is essentially more deadly than anything an enemy can do to you, and knowing immediately when you are afflicted is important. The screen will flash red for burning, green for poison, and purple for lightning. I also extremely liked how lightning locked one of your abilities with visual beams appearing across the skill.
  • Health Potions are instant. There are actually three types of potions. The first potion recovers 60% of your health instantly and knocks everyone back. The other two have a couple of regenerative properties along with elemental protection. There is also a 5-second cooldown before you can use another potion. Although some might feel this to be a bit too powerful, I feel only allowing us a maximum of 20 potions to be a good compromise in the system.

Summary

Perspective: Changing the original vision towards Torchlight III when it was being built as a Free-To-Play Multiplayer game is what ultimately saved and simultaneously destroyed the game. Much of the developers' time and energy went towards the ideals of designing Torchlight Frontiers as a game where people would play with other players and pay for obtaining decorations, cosmetics, temporary buffs, and increasing their chances at getting better gear. However, their transition to a one-time buy meant that they couldn't keep up with their plan to update the game gradually over time as a live service. They essentially gave up and accepted defeat way too soon when they allowed another company to own the rights to the series not even a year later.

Review: The state of the game is an unfinished one. There are dozens of missing features, a laundry-list of technical glitches, a mixed bag of weird design choices, and plenty of annoying things to overcome. Torchlight III is a shadow of its predecessor where the only benefits are self-contained in its decorative and cosmetic features. The story and gameplay are all present, but the mechanics have been simplified to the point where you question why anything matters when collecting gold and gathering resources have very little meaning towards your overall performance in battle. I definitely don't recommend playing this game.

 

4-7-2022