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Torchlight

Developer / Publisher: Runic Games
27 October 2009
Torchlight - cover art
Glitchwave rating
2.94 / 5.0
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301 Ratings / 1 Reviews
#3,143 All-time
#134 for 2009
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Title
Your hero travels to a small town called Torchlight, located near a source of a mysterious ore known as Ember, which has the power to enchant or corrupt. Hordes of creatures live beneath, and you will plough through them all.

Torchlight is often deemed a "Diablo clone". It is a hack-and-slash game with lots of loot, through randomised levels. The levels seem to follow templated blocks so you will often see familiar areas. The cartoon style graphics look nice.

You choose between three characters which are essentially a warrior, rogue, and mage.

You click (or hold) to attack where your mouse is pointing, and shift holds your character in position. Spells and potions can be assigned to the number keys.

When you level up, you have 5 attribute points to assign: strength, dexterity, magic, defence, as well as a skill point. Defeating strong enemies gives you Fame which also gives you one skill point.

The main quest sees you progress through the caves floors, with the theme switching every several floors. Each floor features hordes of enemies then a few stronger enemies. Some floors feature a boss and then unlocks a teleporter to easily return. You can teleport out to town before you reach these checkpoints by using a spell or a scroll.

You periodically need to return to the town to sell your loot and store items in the chest. There's a few side-quests which just involve going to a different dungeon and working your way though similar floors.

You briefly have a partner near the start of the game, but most of the game is you and your pet animal. The animal attacks, can transform when you feed it fish, and can carry loot. You can send them back to the town to sell what they are carrying, then they will return a couple of minutes later with gold. With the amount of teleport scrolls you find, you may as well just return to town alongside them.

The loot is a bit too plentiful which means you end up going into your inventory to see if you have anything decent, and frequently go back to town to sell it. Many items need an identify scroll to actually see what it does which further slows the game down. Items can have several bonus traits like boosting your main attributes like Strength, or add magical resistance/damage. Sometimes items have one or more slots for gems which also add similar modifications. There is a guy in town that can fuse 2 similar gems together to create a single upgraded version. Gems can be removed from items at the cost of destroying the item, or you can destroy the gem if you want to replace it.

The game gets repetitive really fast. I don't mind the idea of having multiple floors with the same theme before switching, but I think the floors are too big, or maybe it's the fact they contain too many enemies. If I have mauled down 50 goblins, do I really need to keep proving myself against 50 more? Then on the next floor, it's the same enemies but maybe 1 level higher, but you are probably 1 level higher, and then might have better equipment and a new skill - so it is probably easier. There was one point I thought I'd do some of the optional dungeon side-quests but then I was in the exact same cave theme that the main quest was using so there was no variety. The difference was that the enemies were stronger in level, which meant when I went back to the main quest, it was now even easier than what I had just accomplished. Then when I got to the fire themed area and there were totally different enemies, I thought it would be a nice challenge, but it was so easy, I had to hover over my health bar to check they were doing damage - it was so minute, it wasn't enough to update the visual. I did wonder if I made it easy by investing loads of points into defence. However, when the theme switched again, the enemies were rapidly depleting my health. I did see many message board threads commenting on this difficulty spike which mainly is due to the "Dark Zealot" enemy who has powerful ranged magic.

Once you have about 5 skills, you will just be investing points into these, so there's not really any change of strategy throughout the game.

When there are 3 characters, and the game has features like a "shared chest" which encourages you to replay, it seems odd that the game is so long. It took me about 16 hours to get through, so I wasn't enthused about replaying it at all. There's even a new hard dungeon after you complete the main storyline.

Torchlight seems to be a highly praised game but I don’t really get it.
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CaptainClam 2023-03-13T19:52:04Z
2023-03-13T19:52:04Z
3.0
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i can't believe this actually has devs that worked on diablo 2. its so childish and pussy compared to the legend that is D2. the artstyle and general tone of the game is really fucking bad honestly. character design, armor, items, all visually look like shit and I can't get excited about any of it. the gameplay is pretty poor, and the rpg mechanics (most important part) suck and the skilltrees are completely boring. i never got excited about loot, leveling up, or progressing, ever. thats a bad thing in an ARPG. you just crawl through dungeon floors until you get to the very last one (35?) and fight a REALLY OVERPOWERED SHIT BOSS that i could only finish by zerg dying over and over at an entrance. it does not reset when you die, so i just took off 0.1% health for 45 mins until it was over. terrible. i guess the core gameplay loop and killing enemies is sort of fun thats all i can say.

5/10
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darkrecollections 2020-09-03T23:08:46Z
2020-09-03T23:08:46Z
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Catalog

eliottstaten Torchlight 2024-03-14T01:31:03Z
2024-03-14T01:31:03Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Tarnum Torchlight 2024-03-07T19:15:56Z
2024-03-07T19:15:56Z
2.5
1
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
ARPG
Vila35 Torchlight 2024-02-25T04:01:54Z
2024-02-25T04:01:54Z
3.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Dkito Torchlight 2024-02-17T19:54:07Z
Windows / Mac
2024-02-17T19:54:07Z
4.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Nery_Mrotis Torchlight 2024-01-31T12:41:52Z
Windows / Mac
2024-01-31T12:41:52Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Skeletor_Lord Torchlight 2024-01-27T09:11:06Z
2024-01-27T09:11:06Z
3.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
2009 Diablolike High Fantasy Dungeon Crawler
jiux Torchlight 2024-01-25T14:50:22Z
2024-01-25T14:50:22Z
1
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
todessehnsucht Torchlight 2024-01-21T15:08:52Z
2024-01-21T15:08:52Z
4.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
macius Torchlight 2024-01-18T18:17:00Z
Windows / Mac
2024-01-18T18:17:00Z
3 /5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
TeezyBBQ Torchlight 2024-01-16T04:38:25Z
2024-01-16T04:38:25Z
3.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
ElectricLizard Torchlight 2023-12-22T19:42:24Z
2023-12-22T19:42:24Z
3.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Zaltys Torchlight 2023-12-03T06:09:23Z
2023-12-03T06:09:23Z
2.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
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  • King_Death 2022-04-06 07:39:36.307379+00
    diablo 2 but not as good
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  • ... 2023-08-17 14:49:40.609836+00
    I rated 4/5 but I should theoretically give it 3/5 because I think I went so far in the game (ARPGs are bloody addictive and trigger my completionism) that it started crashing every 2-5 minutes, Windows 7/10 steam, windows 7/10 drm-free, Windows XP retro pc, Linux via steam inside of wine, linux via linux steam's proton, doesn't matter, I just can't max my summoner without teleporting back to town every minute to save in case it crashes. Which is not fun at all.
    Also, not being able to rebind controls and there being no way to reset skills is kinda bad. I can cope with that though, i enjoy making new characters to try to optimize them as much as possible, and there's plenty keyboard rebinder software online. But I'm not gonna try to make a new char if i can't fix the crashing.
    That being said I haven't found anyone else on the internet with that issue, so it might just be my savegame being corrupted or something. Or maybe people didn't like it enough to get 30 floors deep into the post-game dungeon (I did)
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