Well this will be the first time that I will be making a review that is not a PSP game, but this game deserves to be known, so here we go...
Everybody loves playing Diablo, even after 5 or so years, it's still popular to players veterans and newbies. As it's success is all thanks to it's winning formula: verge deeper into levels of dungeon crawling action, eliminate millions of undeads, zombies and demons and collect all of the most powerful equipments. And now, from the developers of Diablo, Fate and the short-lived Mythos comes a new action packed and addicting RPG that follows the same formula of Diablo.
Welcome to Torchlight, the very first game of Runic Games which composed of the former development team of Mythos. For a small file game (the size is just less than 1 Gigabyte) the game packs a big punch, some players even thought that this can take Diablo 3 toe-to-toe.
So let's get it on...
For the gameplay, it really follows the formula of Diablo; go to a dungeon, kill a horde of monsters, take the loots, level up, return to town and repeat step 1. Although it sounds or looks rebundant, the thrill of hacking and slashing what makes it exciting. You gain levels by killing mobs and completing quests, this gives you bonus points for your stats and skills, Reputation gives bonus points for stats and you can level your Reputation by killing mini bosses and bosses and also by completing quests.
Torchlight has three class jobs, each has their own specialty (Destroyers are Melee types, Vanquishers are Range types and Alchemists are Magic types) although the number of job class is very few, hoping they've added more unique classes. A new addition in the game is that you can learn new spells from scrolls that you found from dungeons, but you can only learn a limited number of spells as you'll be forced to unlearn one spell to replace with a new one. You will also receive a pet as your trusty ally in the game, your pet can assist you in battle by attacking , casting spells (yes, you read it right), additional inventory storage and being able to carry your loots to town and sell it without interrupting your killing spree.
And similar to Diablo, the dungeons are random generated, meaning the structure of the dungeon you last visited will be different the second time you go back. The equipments also have random stats aside from having rare, unique, set type equips, so not all items are the same, making treasure hunting your top priority.
There's also a mini-game where you catch fish by timing your press when the outer ring reaches the inner ring, these fishes can be consumed to heal your character or even transform your pet into a different kind of creature (some have limited duration while other can become permanent).
The graphics in Torchlight has this cartoonish feel, that can be similar to the canceled MMO Mythos and also World of Warcraft. The characters are well animated, from standing pose to running and attacking. And the best part, the game can run on low spec computers and even on netbooks.
As for the sounds, the sound effects are top notch every object in the dungeon have their own unqiue sounds from the dropping of equipments to the shrieks of fallen monster up to the errie atmoshpere of caverns, it's really best when playing with a surround sound system to maximize the game's potential. The musical score will remind you of Diablo, from the music of the town to the epic battle song in the final boss.
One of the sad part with Torchlight is that there's no multiplayer option; one of the best parts when playing Diablo, although there are news that Runic Games will release a MMO version of the game in the future, but it would be still nice to able to play even in just on your LAN.
Overall, Torchlight is one great RPG, it may not be better than Diablo 2 or 3, but players will still enjoy 20+ hours of non-stop epic gaming, and best of all, it only cost around $20.
So if you're a Diablo fan or even an RPG freak, Torchlight won't disappoint you
Game Rating: 8 out of 10You can also visit their official website for more info
http://torchlightgame.com/
