Torchlight 2's world is a place I want to spend my time in. Death stings in Torchlight 2, not because it eats time and money, but because it stems from human error. When I died, it was my mistake, and I paid for it by being booted back to the pre-quest camp area or, if I was willing to sacrifice 10% of my cash, the beginning of a quest's zone (Extra cautious players may also want to use portal scrolls, which allow them them to teleport to and from camp). The freedom of choice is, at times, overwhelming.īut the nicest compliment I can give Torchlight 2 is this: I never felt like it was wasting my time. My Outlander could have specialized in poisonous shots, long-distant projectiles, or conjurable hexes. Skills can be mixed from the various groups, as I did, or they can be focused. Each class has three groups of a dozen skills with fifteen levels each. This could have gone very differently, not just by picking a different class, but different skills. Doing so required a watchful eye on my mana supply, and a ninja-like use of my keys assigned to each skill, but not a single click of the mouse. I then hurled my glaive to thwart long-range enemy archers, and spewed Bane Breath to turn close-range critters into shadowling fiends, flying monsters eager to do my bidding.īy the final battle, I ensconced myself in Bramble Wall, while summoning a dozen beasts - flying fiends, giant ghouls, and a half-dozen skeleton archers - to fight on my behalf. Clicks become tactics.įor example, as the Outlander, a rogue class that specializes in ranged-attacks and "low magic," I conjured a barricade of thorny vines called a Bramble Wall to impede larger enemies attacking from behind. They're tools that, applied creatively, can reshape the battlefield, literally. Skills, unique to each character, upgradeable at each level up, aren't designed simply to make hits stronger or shields more protective. By the second act, survival demands that these adversaries be managed, not merely clicked to death. Scrimmages begin to incorporate a variety of enemy types, from close-range bruisers to long-range shooters to colossal hit-takers. But after a couple hours of rewarding the player's proficient use of their index finger, the difficulty inclines. So starts Torchlight 2, releasing the hero in a field of clicky things that need a good clicking. Action role-playing games, particularly those in the vein of Diablo, have a deserved reputation for converting their players into mindless, mouse-clicking zombies. It sounds thoughtless, like many of its contemporaries. Side-quests require no foreknowledge of the Torchlight mythos, but follow the same go-here-and-kill-this logic. More settings, more enemies, more loot, and the bad guy returns with even more muddled motives.Īllow me to sum up the arc in six words: The Alchemist is evil kill him. The original Torchlight sent a hero into a mine to kill evil creatures, collect loot, and eventually fight some really bad guy who did really bad things I've forgotten about.
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