Review: Torchlight

Now that my fingers have recovered from the repetitive strain injury that was caused by this button masher of a game I can finally write my review.

This fantasy-themed, action role-playing game has been causing early-onset arthritis since its successful PC debut in late 2009. Since then it has been developed for Mac and finally has made its way to a console with release for Xbox Live Arcade. Sorry PS3’ers, although rumored, plans for a release fell through.  As of August 2010 Torchlight had sold over 750,000 copies worldwide, so it must be good, right?

As with basically all games of this genre, you begin by selecting one character — the Destroyer, the Alchemist or the Vanquisher — all adaptations from the generic warrior, mage or rogue scenario. You must also choose a pet that will provide you with extra storage and extra teeth.  Choosing a character wasn’t that difficult, as most people who have played games like this before will probably already have a preference as to what character type they like the most. Personally, I like playing as the rogue.

One thing I would like to see with the character selection is having a gender option for each class. Although I didn’t mind playing as a big-busted Amazon woman, I’m sure some would appreciate the option.

I get the feeling that developers were more focused on maximizing killing time than they were at developing any kind of plot. You have the generic storyline of good guy corrupt by evil, bringing hardship to a wholesome town. The Torchlight take on this story has you killing down the deepest mine in the known universe, seriously I thought for sure if I took one more staircase I would turn up in China. Your useless travel companion appears after you’ve done all the work to basically tell you that you need to keep going deeper and deeper to save the day.

The hot: Everything about this game seems to have been developed to maximize the game flow; it was nice to not have to do much back and forth. This is where the brilliance of having a pet comes in — instead of having to go back into town to empty your inventory to make room for that amazing weapon you want, just load up the little guy with the items that have been replaced by better equipment, and send him away. Within about 2 minutes you will have your pet back, along with a nice cash installment. The inventory itself also makes this a lot easier by telling you which weapons and armor have lesser stats than those already equipped.

The amount of items you can find restricts the need to rise to the surface to go shopping. The different variety of weapons from wands to axes, swords and ranged weapons is extensive — some are one-handed, and others require two — and enable you to customize and adapt the way you play the game. Although I started as a Rogue I ditched the ranged weapons toward the end and carried around a big mother of a sword.  Weapons can be customized further with gems you find along the way.

As someone who doesn’t play games purely for the achievement points, it was nice to have 7/12 achievements that were story related, with the other 5 not taking you too far out of the way.

The meh: Initially, I automatically kept trying to improve the view orientation, which frustrated me to no end that I couldn’t change it. Once I got used to the overhead camera, it wasn’t as evil as I initially thought, but I still wish it were different.

The levels were a one-way slash fest through hordes of enemies. Being able to display a map across the screen made it easier to see areas I’d missed, but you pretty much covered the entire map to get to the end. This wouldn’t have bothered me, apart from the fact that each level felt really long.

Although the ability to customize your character’s skills and abilities adds a lot to the overall game play, it became very restrictive toward the end when allocating skill points to strength, magic, dexterity or defence. I tried to increase each category somewhat unbiasedly to progress each category together, which brought me to a point where I couldn’t use any of my new weapons because I did not have the correct amount of points in a specific category. I’m sure you hardcore gamers will be spitting at me through your computers for this comment but just telling it how I see it, and I think it takes away from the enjoyment of the general gaming population.

The main story line lacked…end of sentence. The opportunity to do extra quests for the townspeople provided a bit of variety, but ultimately you were doing the exact same thing as the main story and probably would be better off ignoring the requests of these lazy people.

The sh*te: If I had to describe this game in one word it would be “repetitive”. Two successive levels had what I perceived to be the exact same layout. The attack sequence was initiate battle, smash the crap out of buttons while watching your health, and repeat. Also, the sheer number of enemies you had to fight at once made it very difficult to have any kind of strategy, often losing sight your player amongst a swarm of enemies. The only thing that really changed as you got deeper into the mine was the time it took to kill something. It was fun at first, but after a while I really just wanted to finish it.

Worst of all, after I finished with the final boss I continued on to a room with about 100 hard- to- kill enemies. I struggled my way through them for the good part of an hour only to have the game glitch out on me, having saved after I defeated the final enemy — but nonetheless, my post-win slaughter was in vane.

Overall Impression: Having finished the main storyline and a few extra-curricular quests, playing for 6 hours 3 minutes and 39 seconds, defeating 5000 monsters and dying 41 times, overall I quite enjoyed myself. It was completely repetitive but as an arcade game I didn’t expect much else, and the game itself doesn’t pretend to be anything apart from a button smashing kill-fest. In saying that, I didn’t feel the need to continue playing through the “endless dungeon” promised in the game’s overview, and if I ever did I would probably only last a short amount of time before I remembered why I hadn’t.

I score this game a 7 out of 10 and highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys this genre or this carnage style of game play. There is a preview in the marketplace for those who are unsure.

What I’d Change: Apart from everything I’ve already mentioned, I would love to see the sequel have co-op capabilities. Torchlight would be perfect to play with a friend, and I don’t understand why this wasn’t an option in the first place.