Torchlight is an action RPG from the creators of Diablo. Set in the mining town of Torchlight, players set out to uncover the mysteries of the Ember mines. Featuring a customizable character, randomized dungeons, and a never before seen pet system will Torchlight be able to hold you out until Diablo III?

Requirements

• Windows 2000 or later
• 800MHz processor
• 512MB RAM
• 400MB free HDD space
• DirectX-compatible video card with at least 64MB of addressable memory
• DirectX compatible sound card
• Keyboard and mouse

Installation

As I play more and more non-Valve games, I noticed one thing when I install all of them using Steam. They always try to install the latest version of DirectX 9 and this got me thinking...can't they just ask for a saved variable (by Steam) that tells them exactly what kind of DirectX a user has? Because now it's getting annoying and that's a -1 for Steam.

First Impressions

I've been playing third-person view RPG games ever since Diablo came out and I've played through the entire Diablo series and I'm currently waiting anxiously for Diablo III. And having a touched by the creators of Diablo, I have very high expectations from this game meaning that this game is supposed to make me play it as much as possible until Diablo III comes out. And so having said that, the very first time I played Torchlight one thing kept popping out of my head. It was in fact a cartoonish version of Diablo except for a couple of stuff that I'll be discussing later.

Singleplayer

You know what I hated about Diablo and probably almost every single RPG game out there? It's the loot. Loot is very important early in the game and I just have this urge to collect every single loot that I find. But since your character's inventory isn't a a big vault, you are forced to choose whether you should actually take everything that you see or just select a few of them (something along the lines of uncommon, rare, and unique). Didn't your parents ever told you that you can never have a million dollars without having one cent? Yeah that's right, every little bit helps at the very start and frankly Torchlight did a brilliant job in solving that problem because with Torchlight your pet does the selling when you're down there whooping ass.

The game got progressively boring as I played it even though I kept telling myself that this has some Diablo touch in it. I don't really know which part of the game should I blame because Diablo didn't really have a nice story, it was just be the good guy and defeat evil type of story. Torchlight also has side quests that you can do. I've narrowed it down to a couple of things and the main one would probably be the flimsy controls. When I'm hitting a monster, my cursor doesn't actually lock on to that monster. This makes it feel that I don't have any control of who gets his ass kicked when I swing my axes. The second one would probably be the graphics. Yes I know, I saw the early screenshots and I know what the game looks like even before I started playing it but let's face it...your character must appear bad-ass later on. But with the game's character designs even if you have a nice-looking armor, it's just not as bad-ass as let's say a Brotherhood of Steel armor, or an Enclave armor from the Fallout series.

Multiplayer

Torchlight does not have any multi-player so I'm skipping this section.

Final Thoughts

You know even though I loved playing this game on my spare time, I just couldn't get myself to not play other games if you get what I mean. It tends to get boring the more you play the game and once you're done with character, you never tell yourself hmm...I'm going to make another character but with a different skill tree/path and even though you can the push just isn't there.

Don't get me wrong, if you're just a casual gamer and you wanted to try out a nice game that should give you a couple of hours then I suggest you buy this one. But if you're looking for a game that you could really play over and over again then I suggest you look somewhere else. The infinite dungeon level just doesn't cut it.

Ratings

Installer - Steam's getting annoying now especially if you play non-Valve games. Why does it have to install DirectX all the time? Sure I can just say no but for an average user that's like a big red flag.

Graphics - It's like a chibi Diablo! It's decent but it doesn't scream bad-ass RPG game. What it does say is RPG game for the casual gamer.

Sound - Pretty decent considering the limited time and funding the developers had. But just because they didn't have enough money or time doesn't mean I'll give it a 4 or 5.

Gameplay - Almost Torchy...almost. Torchlight is a nice game...for casual RPG players that is.