I saw Torchlight advertised as coming soon on Steam many months ago, I have to admit that I didn’t take all that much notice of it at first, but once I heard more about the game, as well as who was behind it, I couldn’t wait for it to be released. Torchlight is an Action Role Playing Game in a similar vain to Diablo by Blizzard. The game is single player only, but don’t let that put you off, if you love this style of game, they don’t come much better than Torchlight.
Word of Ember blazed across the land, and the town of Torchlight flared to life.
Ember is the essence of magic and the keystone of alchemy; it lures the restless with promises of power and riches. Miners burrowed deep beneath the dirt streets of Torchlight, discovering veins of the ore richer than any found in living memory- but they were not the first to covet these mines. The miners broke through into the buried past, a dangerous labyrinth of caverns and ruined civilizations, twisted creatures and the bones of those who came before. Evil bubbles up from the depths and threatens to overrun this town as it has so many others. The heart of a villain has infused the Ember, and his darkness seeps through the veins. To survive, the townspeople must break the cycle of destruction; they need a champion who can destroy the evil at its root. Removing the source of the rot may purify the Ember, but it is a long and perilous journey. The champion must battle through rock and fire, through lost cities and ancient tombs, into the palace of the villain himself.
The adventure is set in the mining settlement of Torchlight, a boomtown founded on the discovery of rich veins of Ember – a rare and mysterious ore with the power to enchant or corrupt all that it contacts. This corruptive power may have dire consequences however, and players set out into the nearby mountains and depths below to discover the full extent of Ember’s influence on the civilizations that have come before.
Players will choose from among three character classes, and venture from the safety of the town of Torchlight into randomly generated dungeon levels, with a huge variety of creepy monsters, endless variations of loot to find, and quests to complete. The endless randomization ensures a long-lived gameplay experience.
- Randomization – Our level layouts are randomly created, so each adventure is unique. Monsters, treasures, puzzles, and items are also different each time you embark on an adventure.
- Easy, approachable interface – Torchlight is designed to be easy to play right from the beginning. The intuitive interface gives players easy access to a rich and varied world.
- Retirement System – Once characters are sufficiently leveled up, they can “retire” and bestow specific benefits and perks to new characters.
- Pets – Players will choose a pet to accompany them. Pets can level up along with the player, and will help in battle, carry items, and perform a variety of helpful services.
- Character Classes – Players will create and customize a character and choose an animal companion. Through cosmetic choices, skill path decisions, and the treasures they acquire, each character will be custom-tailored and different.
- Fishing – Players can take a break from the high-energy pace of adventuring to visit one of the fishing holes and relax and see what they can catch. Fish have interesting benefits for the player and pet, and other rewards can also be discovered
- Editor – Runic Games is embracing our modding community by providing an editor so our players can create and design their own content.
Torchlight is a follow up to the Fate games, they have similar art style and feel to the game that makes it play a sight faster than Diablo did those years ago. The storyline is the usual fare when it comes to these types of games. There is a plague surrounding the town of Torchlight. The townfolk do a lot of mining in the area, and have long known that they sit on top of magical ore called Ember. The power of Ember is such that a previous explorer called Alric was corrupted when he ventured underground. As the player, you much battle deeper and deeper down to find Alric.
The story is told and followed throughout the game via both small cut scenes as well as via NPC dialogue. The story and writing in general is pretty good and is very open for a follow up as the game progresses.
As I mentioned earlier, Torchlight is single player only. This isn’t a bad thing as for a single player title, this is excellent. The game has an isometric camera which follows you around, you use mouse clicking to move your character and click to attack an enemy. It is a very easy system and it works perfectly. You also have a host of spells that can be used and setup via hotkeys, you also have some of these attached to a right click attack option, these are usually a lot more powerful than your basic attack.
An attack from above!
You also have a very useful pet following you around during the entire game. He can be used as help in combat as well as serving as a useful inventory and trading tool. Once you have filled your inventory, you can move some over to your pet, who you can then send off back to town to trade the items for gold while you can carry on fighting. You can go fishing too during the game, from here you can then feed your catch of the day to your pet whose skills will improve as well as take on a unique form for a short time.
While we are talking about the inventory, Torchlight has oodles and oodles of loot in the game, from swords, hammers to unique objects and weapons. There is so much here that fans of loot will be in heaven. You can collect gems and items that can be used to improve your weapons too, as well as use them with some of the tradesmen in the game to remove gems so they can be used elsewhere. Items such as rings, necklaces etc are picked up that can improve attributes when they are worn, they can also be worn by your pet to improve them too!
Spells are great in Torchlight!
Quests are the usual RPG style, such as kill a certain enemy, collect certain items and such like, but there is a lot of variety here and you don’t have to follow just one set quest at a time, you can pick up others along the way or just follow the main storyline.
Levelling is well thought out, it is at a good persistent pace and the enemies that you are facing are usually around your current level most of the time, though you will always come up against stronger opponents. Once you level up, you have to assign skill points to classes such as strength, dexterity and magic as well as others.
Spider in games scare me just the same as in real life!
Graphically the game has a comic book art style kind of like a mix of steampunk and medieval characters and backdrops. It all looks great though and constantly ran well even when the screen was full of enemies. Music wasn’t too bad and set the feel well, but the sound effects were excellent as well as some of the voice work used in the game (which isn’t completely voiced). Great work.
So overall an excellent game, not expensive either which is a nice change for a new title. I believe they are working on a multiplayer game that will be set in the same universe as Torchlight so this is something I look forward to hearing more about, but if you are fan of action role playing games, you can’t go wrong with Torchlight.
Buy it now: http://www.torchlightgame.com/
Conclusion
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Good story, great fun, loads of loot! | Unlikely to offer re-playability, around 15 hours of gameplay |
| Verdict | Buy it! |
| Rating |
