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Torchlight

Moby ID: 43225
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

Thick veins of the magical ore Ember lie beneath the streets of Torchlight, and fortune seekers have been flocking to the small mining town since its discovery. To extract the valuable ore, a labyrinth of tunnels has been dug deep into the earth. What the miners don't know, but will soon discover, is that something much more deadly resides beneath. Ruined civilizations, now long forgotten, have hidden horrors no one can even imagine .. and now those horrors are about to surface. It is up to you and your trusty companions to stop the onslaught of monsters and save the town's citizens.

Torchlight is a single-player action role-playing game in which you play one of three character classes: The Destroyer (a warrior), The Alchemist (a spellcaster), or The Vanquisher (a rogue). Each character class has unique weapons and armor and three skill sets.

Although the majority of gameplay is handled in typical Diablo-like fashion (exploring, killing monsters, completing quests, buying and selling, levelling up, etc.), there are a few distinguishing features. For instance, your character has a private stash for storing excess items. All of your party members also share an additional pack which can be used to transfer items between them.

The animal companion you choose at the beginning of the game can be used for a variety of purposes. This pet can wear two rings and an amulet, can carry as many items as you can in its own pack, and levels up with experience. Its items can be sold to shopkeepers or shared between the party. You can teach your pet tricks, like fetching dropped items or to cast two spells of your choosing. To turn your pet into a vicious fighting monster, feed it fish before a battle. Different fishes found or caught by you in the game have varied effects on your pet.

Most levels in the game are randomly generated. Inside you'll find secret rooms, traps, swinging bridges, levers, shrines, non-monster encounters, and elevation changes. The game features an auto-map feature to help you find your way around, and tool tips for getting acquainted with the gameplay.

Spellings

  • 火炬之光 - Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

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  • Megalomaniac
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[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 82% (based on 75 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 74 ratings with 4 reviews)

What? huh? Where? STOP IT!

The Good
At the start of the game you can choose a pet which will be your companion. Aside from just acting as a cut pet they can also be used to go back to the surface to sell items you have collected. I really liked this because this is one of those games where every fight gives you at least two new weapons and most of them are useless, so instead of going back to sell them yourself you can explore the dungeon further while your pet does all the annoying work. Just be sure to give them a fish afterwards.

The Bad
This is one of the rare games where I get lost before all the tutorials are done and lose interest before figuring out what I did wrong. I was ordered to go back into a dungeon and find a location on the Third floor. Once I got back to the right floor I just started looking for it, but everything looked exactly the same and I ended up walking in circles without noticing. I also had a quest that told me to go a library, but never quite told me where the library was, there were a lot of quests that did this and it just left me confused and annoyed after just two hours of gameplay.

When you want to fight in this game you need to click on your opponent, when you want to walk in this game you need to click on the floor. This would be alright if the enemies weren't constantly moving around, but sadly they do. I have fought at least fifty groups of enemies and every single one of them was an uncontrollable mess. You want to hit an enemy, but you end up walking towards him instead. It's also annoying when you want to cast spells because it just ignored my commands half the time. You would think this means the fighting is hard, but no, there is no challenge to this. Once the enemies stand still you just hold down the button until they die and sometimes you use a potion to keep yourself alive.

It has the same problem as Borderlands where it just feels like the game takes 1% from another game and tried to present it as its own, in this case World of Warcraft. The graphics were pretty much identical aside from a lack of light (might have been my gamma settings); you have the same interface and everything is presented the same way. It's very odd to say the least, but World of Warcraft was a really entertaining game, so you'd think a rip-off of this magnitude would be slightly entertaining, right? The answer is "no".

The writing is deliberately kept simple, so the game can focus on the action, but this is a solution I can only respect so many times. When Borderlands did it, I cheered for it and I did the same for Portal, but by now it just starts to feel like the developers are lazy. I buy a game because I want an interactive story, I don't like it when I put a disc in my computer and discover that only the interaction is inside though. One last thing: please stop teasing us with cut-scenes and dialogue, if you don't want to tell a decent story you shouldn't have to interrupt the interaction with this kind of stuff.

My final complaint is that the town is very small and there is only one, you do practically no travelling around the main world and spend most of your time in the copy & pasted dungeons instead. This made me really sad because I have to agree that underground caverns aren't that interesting and there is little to no variety in there, but in other RPG's we at least get to visit some other places like castles or meadows. It's kind of funny how the town is so dark though, it makes it feel like you're still under the ground.

The Bottom Line
I tried to came up with positive things to talk about here, but I just stared at the "good" section of this review for ten minutes before giving up and mentioning the kitty you can have as a pet. I wanted to mention the graphics, but then I remembered that was the same as World of Warcraft, I wanted to mention the combat, but remembered it wasn't challenging. In short: This game wasn't worth my time or 2.97 EUR at all.

Maybe I am just spoiled and I need to accept that not every game has a well-written story or functional controls, maybe I also should come to terms with the fact that not every game can come up with its own graphics style or interface. If I have to recommend this game to somebody, it would probably be the fans of Diablo and similar games, I warn everybody to either stay clear of this game or buy it for somebody you really hate.

Windows · by Asinine (956) · 2011

Cute and cuddly Diablo clone. More like Fate II.

The Good
What is presented here is presented well.

The Bad
I couldn't get into Fate or Torchlight due to their lack of plot and I prefer a more mature visual style. It is a very simple formula...go into the mines, kill all the enemies, gather all the loot, and return to the surface...rinse and repeat.

The Bottom Line
If you prefer a colorful, cute, cartoonish art style and just want to kill enemies and gather loot then you will probably like this game (and its twin, Fate).

The elements missing from Torchlight which made Diablo II one of the best games ever made, are:

  1. Cinematic cut-scenes: In Diablo II these were the best! They were artistic, meaningful introductions to the next section of the plot. There are none in Torchlight.

  2. Atmosphere: The atmosphere fit the genre. Sound effects, colors, musical score all combined to create a mood. These aspects are too cute in Torchlight. It is pretty and well made, I just do not like the artistic style..

  3. Plot: Torchlight's plot is barely there. It took two elements from Diablo, the endless fighting and the plethora of loot with special item upgrades. Diablo II actually had a plot with elements of horror, mystery, and even some humor. In Torchlight, it is just go, kill, gather, sell.

Windows · by Rod Mayton (13) · 2011

Diablight!

The Good
Very little thought is required to play this game, and there's not a thing wrong with that. Torchlight follows the conventions of the genre set forth by its illustrious predecessors with basically no deviation. Red and blue potions for health and mana, copious amounts of loot with an almost neverending variety of enchantment combinations, constant action and movement, and a completely irrelevant plot.

For some strange reason I enjoy tracking statistics. Torchlight is kind enough to include a journal that tracks a variety of things including number of steps taken, total quantity of gold collected, potions used, spells/skills used, monsters beaten, etc. etc. While this doesn't contribute in any meaningful way to the game, it is mildly interesting to see.

Upon completing the main quest a new area of exploration, The Shadow Vault, is opened. This is from all reports an infinitely deep dungeon. So if you are so inclined you can continue to play and explore this endless and completely randomized dungeon. (The main dungeon is randomized too.)

While I haven't actually done this, you can "gift" selected items to your characters' heirs (new characters). I think this does lend a little towards the replay value, though not much.

This game ran quite well on a two year old system (Core 2 Duo E6850 with a pair of 8800GTS cards). Sound quality was adequate as far as I could tell (I am unfortunately playing with a very substandard set of speakers at present).

The Bad
I did experience a couple of random crash to desktop events, but even these had no real impact as the game saves in realtime. Which ultimately was my only, albeit minor, complaint. There isn't a way to save the game manually. I've long been a firm believer in the theory of "save early, save often" and while I didn't have to worry about it here, I was unable to save, test equipment changes, and reload if I didn't like it. As I said though, that's a minor complaint as there's always better loot and lots of it.

The Bottom Line
Just like the other games I've played in this genre (Titan Quest, Sacred, Dungeon Siege) this game is both narrow and shallow. I played the demo a few weeks ago and it intrigued me enough to be worth dropping a 20$ on it. And I have no real complaints with it. The developers did a good job of creating something new enough to intrigue, but not so new as to require anything even resembling a learning curve to play. I played the heck out of it for about two weeks (as much heck as I can spare anyway, with real-life in the mix) but I don't see much longevity in it. There is an editor included with the game, and I've seen that there are already a few mods either released or in the works. But even still.... this is the gaming equivalent of a summer action flick; great fun while you're playing but who's going to remember it next year?

Windows · by agamer (24) · 2010

[ View all 4 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Free on GOG for 2 days Cavalary (11610) Jun 18, 2013

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Torchlight appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Awards

  • Game Developers Choice Awards
    • 2010 (10th Annual) - Best Debut Game
  • GameShark
    • 2009 - Best Indie Game
  • Gamespy
    • 2009 - Sleep When You're Dead Award

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by phanboy_iv.

Linux added by Hamish Wilson. Macintosh added by Hammerlore. Xbox 360 added by WWWWolf.

Additional contributors: Indra was here, Jeanne, Zeppin, Big John WV, Cantillon, Rik Hideto, FatherJack.

Game added November 11, 2009. Last modified September 16, 2024.