Game Review: Torchlight 2 221
A Testimonial, and a Confession
First, I have to admit some bias here. When Diablo 2 came out over a decade ago, it was my favorite game for quite some time. Its expansion pack only cemented its position as the best game of all time, for me. It's key to note here, that Diablo 2 was only the best game ever in my opinion, and eventually it aged and got to the point where it was nigh unplayable on modern computers. I even tried going back several times in the past few years, and just found it too archaic to function properly on modern hardware. It desperately needed either some patches or a successor to bring it up to date.
When Blizzard Entertainment announced Diablo 3, I couldn't have been happier. At last, an updated version of the best game ever would be available. However, something felt odd about Diablo 3 even before I ever played it. Blizzard kept reviews at bay until after release via a restrictive NDA. That's fairly common, and not enough to raise suspicion alone, but still odd that there weren't more early peeks allotted to the usual media channels. Even after its release, the demo was only available by invite. I couldn't even download the demo for Diablo 3 unless someone who had already bought the game gave me a code. Now something smelled fishy. So I held onto my sixty dollars, which while would be a small price to pay for the best game ever, it seemed like Diablo 3 wouldn't be that game. Eventually I was able to wrangle a demo code from someone who had bought the game and wanted to lure me into playing it. I didn't get very far into the demo before I got a quest just to use a waypoint. Perhaps they didn't realize that I have killed Diablo and his brothers dozens if not hundreds of times already. I know how to work a waypoint. I need monsters to kill. Out of respect for the franchise, I kept on. I even finished the demo, but by the time I did so, it was clear to me, that Diablo 3 was going to be a giant let-down for me. Whatever fun I had with Diablo 2 was done and gone, and would stay in the past.
I had had the good fortune of playing Torchlight, and like just about everyone else, my biggest complaint was that the game had no multiplayer. Other than the lack of multiplayer, I thought it was just about perfect. Given my previous love for Diablo 2, this shouldn't be any sort of surprise. So now at long last, Runic has released the multiplayer-enabled Torchlight 2. Similar to the old "Open Battle.Net" games of Diablo 2, you can play the same character in single player, LAN, and internet games. This proved to be key, as on release day, Runic's servers melted from the onslaught of players. Internet games were finally enabled a couple days later, but in the meantime, plenty of single player and LAN games were had. Through the creative usage of some VPNs, I was even able to play LAN games over the internet.
Once More Into the Fray
The game starts off in the ruins of the town of Torchlight. Wait a second, didn't I save the town from Ordrak at the bottom of the mines and whatever else was down there? Well, it turns out that I did, so long as I wasn't playing an alchemist. The alchemist, on the other hand, was corrupted by the heart of Ordrak and immediately knew that he had to burn down the town, and leave a path of death and destruction across the land as he began his new plot to destroy the world. Okay, so the plot isn't Hugo Award caliber stuff here, but neither was "Diablo lived somehow, and you have to go kill him again," nor was "Hey, why don't you just run on into this dungeon and fetch me the Amulet of Yendor." Really the plot is just a means to goad me into venturing into areas that I haven't already taken it upon myself to go explore and kill everything in.
That brings us down to what the real fun in any point-and-click ARPG is. Taking on and killing hordes of enemies at once, securing an area, and then reaping the immediate rewards in the form of experience and loot. The Torchlight series has traded in the grimdark setting of Diablo for an art style that's a bit more cartoon-like, but the core gameplay survives. This is a feature that Torchlight 2 recreates flawlessly. Combat is fast, frenetic, and visceral. Enemies have a chance to explode into a pile of gibs, leaving bloodstains on the ground. Frozen enemies can be shattered into chunks of ice. Often the action happens so fast, that creatures can be slain before I'm even aware they exist. It's exactly the opposite of the first act of Diablo 3, which comparatively felt like drudgery.
Building the Perfect Warrior
There's four classes to choose from in Torchlight 2, and while they follow some archetypes, they're also rather configurable in how they're played via skills and weapon choices. The embermage is a classic spellcaster who uses staves and wands, and can learn many different spells to put down his enemies. The outlander is a ranged class that excels at nearly every sort of ranged weapon. The berserker is a melee damage class that can gain bonuses from using two weapons of the same type. And last but not least, is the engineer, a versatile class that can use shields, two-handed weapons, and even cannons, or some combination of those, depending on skill set. It's important to note here, that every class can wield every weapon, there's just not always a bonus for doing so. You're free to make a berserker who uses shotguns, for example, there's just not many skills for the class to support it.
Skills aren't tied to any sort of tree structure like they were before. You only need to be of a skill's required level to unlock it. Active skills such as spells, will also confer a bonus after investing five, ten, or fifteen points into them. Leveling up a character also isn't the only way to gain skill points. As you gain in fame from killing bosses and random named mobs, you acquire a skill point for every level of fame you've achieved as well.
Keep Going Back For More
It took me a little over 20 hours to save the world, on my first trip through on normal difficulty. Normal difficulty was still rather easy, and I think my next trip through the world will be at the veteran level. There are however, still a number of activities for my first character to do. Completing the game unlocks the Mapworks, a robot-run area where you can load custom maps to complete. It's also possible to create a new world that begins at your current level, so I could start a new game with that character where the first monsters would be around level 50. Because the dungeons and open areas outside towns are randomly generated, a second playthrough manages to still feel somewhat fresh. Combine that with a character class that you haven't played before, or a new set of skills for one that you have, and there's lots of reasons to keep replaying.
But is this the new best game ever?
In short, yes. I've spent time reading people's meager, whiny complaints about this gift of the gods that has been put on sale for a mere twenty dollars. Sure, you can only reallocate the last three skill points you've spent, and you can't redo all your stats and skills once you're leveled up. That's so that you learn from your mistakes and go back and play the game again. There's no one to hold your hand to find the area where the quest is at. There's a marker on your map for you to aim for, and that's more than any player deserves. The quests are still rather simplistic, and of the form to go kill someone or a group of someones, or to collect a thing, or a group of things. Again, the quests are merely a vehicle to get you into new areas. If you happen to kill the guy that advances the plot, that's a bonus. If you stop to talk to an NPC, the world does not stop for you. Enemies will continue to attack you as you choose your quest reward, because you were too stupid to clear out the area of any possible threats before sitting down to talk. I think I've now sufficiently debunked any negative points I've read in other reviews. If you don't like point-and-click ARPG games, you're not going to like this one. No one is going to change the entire genre to enable someone's crazy ideas. Well, unless it's Diablo 3, and look how that turned out. Sure it sold well, but I would now have to waterboard my friends into admitting that they fell for purchasing it.
My biggest complaint about this most perfect game, is that there's no Mac or Linux versions, yet. I say yet, because three years after the first game was released, we even have a Linux version now. You can pick it up, DRM-free, right now for a limited time, for the price of whatever-you-want, as part of the Humble Indie Bundle 6. You can donate some or all of the price to the EFF as well. Shameless plugs aside, it may take a few years but eventually Torchlight 2 should make the rounds as well. Runic Games has a lot in store for the game yet, such as console versions, as well as Steam Workshop integration, which will enable easy mod installation. Mod support will presumably let players redo their skills and stats, and cheat if they want to.
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Since Diablo 3 is a DRM'd monstrosity, I'll give this a try, just to help show blizzard why they aren't getting money.
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I'm looking forward to giving the game a shot, though after about 1.5 playthroughs of the original Torchlight I started to find th
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Your complaint is illogical.
It's like complaining to the front desk at a hotel that you didn't get your wake up call...after you unplugged the phone.
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I think it's more like complaining that the alarm clock in the room didn't go off after you unplugged the phone, and them explaining how even though one might think an alarm clock doesn't need a phone connection, automatically updating the time on the clock does require the phone connection, and while sure one could theoretically have designed the alarm to function normally in the absence of a phone connection only minus the features the connection enables rather than disable it completely, but they didn't
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Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
If you or anybody else wants to buy Torchlight because of their issues with D3, send a message to Activision/Blizzard by emailing or sending them your receipt for your purchase of Torchlight (or whatever else you spent your money on).
Not buying their product is one thing (they might just attribute it as a loss to piracy). Showing them that you had the money *and* inclination to buy something but instead bought a competitors product is a whole other thing.
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
If you or anybody else wants to buy Torchlight because of their issues with D3, send a message to Activision/Blizzard by emailing or sending them your receipt for your purchase of Torchlight (or whatever else you spent your money on).
Not buying their product is one thing (they might just attribute it as a loss to piracy). Showing them that you had the money *and* inclination to buy something but instead bought a competitors product is a whole other thing.
Too bad you posted that anonymously... I will do this when I get home tonight because it will also indicate that not only did I have the money for their game, I got *four* copies of their competitor's game for the same price as their own. Bonus points for "their competitor" being developers that were originally a part of Blizzard [wikipedia.org].
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That's a good move i think.
I've just downloaded the pirate version to check it out. Fell in love with it after 5 mins (and i'm not such a fan of ARPG games), but I'll be definitely buying a 4 pack of licences very soon to cover me and the kids, they deserve my money. Great work Runic!
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Re:Can you change the keybindings? (Score:5, Informative)
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One note... I got a friend together to play online and as I was arranging stuff, I accidently clicked this little green magnifying glass icon just to the bottom right of the health globe... it turns off your "loot bubbles" and no manner of going into options to figure out why there were turned off will help. All the "show items" are checked. It was frustrating until my Google fu turned up a link (which wasn't the easiest to find yet as it's not popular enough of a request).
Hopefully that helps others.
BTW,
Re:Can you change the keybindings? (Score:5, Informative)
But seriously, if company's can start pushing $20 games this good, I hope it sends a message to game developers everywhere.
This, one thousand times.
I bought a 4-pack of this for $60 from steam and gifted 3 of them to friends of mine. I haven't gotten this amount of enjoyment (including my friends' enjoyment) from $60 in a very long time, if ever.
Re:Can you change the keybindings? (Score:4, Informative)
Torchlight 1 does not allow you to change keybindings.
Actually, it does [lmgtfy.com]. For some reason, there's no UI for doing so though.
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While being passive-aggressive and using lmgtfy.com is fine when you're having a personal conversation with one other person, but it's kind of rude to use it when other people who did nothing wrong might want to click your link. I was curious if the key binding change was done at the console or if it required editing configuration files somewhere. Sadly, all I learned is that people on the internet can be needlessly condescending.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Yes, yes you can. And you can add modifiers. So MB4,MB5,Shift-MB4,Shift-MB5,Ctl-MB4,CtlMB5 etc... can use the 2 side buttons for all needed spells
Re:Can you change the keybindings? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, who's evil? And why?
Think he meant Activision/Blizzard. And the fact that Diablo 3 requires you to always be connected to Blizzard's servers even while playing single player, while maybe not pure evil, is the reason I will never buy Diablo 3.
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I'm not sure people who carry netbooks should be allowed to raise kids.
How about laptops? Tablets? Smartphones? Liuggable suitcase 286s with 4 inch screens?
I am keen to know the exact level at which portable computing hardware should lead to sterilisation and/or removal to an internment camp.
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Neverwinter nights DLC was what changed my feelings on DRM that phones home from "Philosophically opposed" to "screw that - never again"
And I loved that game (At least after the first, please let me kill myself this is so depressing, campaign - {G}).
Pug
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Can I play the game if the company that is putting up street lights and drills thru my internet connection and takes me off the web for a week when I am at home? If not, then yes, they are evil.
And yes, three blocks over a company did exactly that. I was off the web unless I went to a cafe or was at work. If a company cannot be bothered to let a person play a single player game without being connected to the web, then they do not deserve my money.
And I own d1, d2, sc1, and all the warcrafts that didn't requ
No Crafting (Score:4, Interesting)
I think my biggest complaint is the same as Borderlands 2 .. no crafting to break up the slay-collect-sell rinse-repeat. I guess if you like slay-collect-sell that much, this game is perfect for you. If you want to set your own goals for finding rare components and crafting powerful gear, you're SOL, but that's not everyone's cup of tea.
On the other hand, TorchED is promised, and moddable games are good, which is what sold me. Hopefully someone can add to the gameplay!
Re:No Crafting (Score:5, Interesting)
You can at least merge set items and various types of equipment into new random pieces in Torchlight 2.
Not nearly as much of a crafting system as I would like to see, but better than the usual "this item is not for my class, vendor trash..."
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The whole point of this particular game is that it's a "feature-scrape" of the original Diablo titles, to a large extent.
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Or MINECRAFT!!! That has all the crafting you should ever need.
Make it extra hard by loading on survival mode.
Re:No Crafting (Score:4)
Just because the game has an easy exploit in its stat system doesn't mean that you have to actually exploit it, you know. No-one is forcing you to craft those Potions of Fortify Smithing/Echanting 1000000%, and doing so requires deliberate work, so just don't do it?
Granted, regular crafting in Skyrim is still somewhat overpowered. But then you still have to waste skill points to unlock enough of the tree to let you craft the really powerful stuff (glass/ebony/daedric/dragon) - which, if you dungeon crawl, you might as well invest into some combat or magic skills instead.
Besides, Elder Scrolls games were always hilariously unbalanced, crafting or not. For example, if you knew where to go and had just the right character build, you could get a full set of daedric armor before hitting level 3 in Morrowind - though it required quite a bit more of an effort compared to stacking potions in Skyrim. Still, the choice always was and remains to simply not do it.
A video flick with included masturbation button. (Score:2, Interesting)
Torchlight 2 still didn't manage to give me anything that Dungeon Siege 2 did...
The WoW-esque graphics are such an extreme turn-off, and the fact that anyone from Blizzard had so major an influence on the game is just as much a boner-kill. Torchlight 2 had promise, but didn't deliver any more than Diablo 3 did. Mashing a single button and watching random numbers float by isn't fun, and is definitely not all that an ARPG can accomplish, but Torchlight 2 has literally nothing else. There's no choices or compl
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You sound like you're the kind of person who doesn't enjoy the original Diablo games or lookalikes. If that's the case, why did you even bother with Torchlight? Its whole reason for existence is to cater to that segment of players.
Linux support (Score:4, Insightful)
I had hoped that the Linux release of the original meant that the sequel would have it from the beginning. Unfortunately, this is not the case, which means I won't be purchasing this game now, I don't want more Windows software. Hopefully they'll do a Linux port of this game before it becomes irrelevant. Too bad they don't have one now, or they could have my twenty bucks, too.
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A good Linux port is needed. Torchilght 1 as it is right now is a piece of crap on Linux, unfortunately.
Re:Linux support (Score:4, Insightful)
It probably would have cost more than twenty bucks to make a Linux port.
I know you think you're funny, but most people spend more than I do on the humble bundles (well, most linux users) so clearly there's a paying linux games market out there, and given that most people are willing to spend more than I am, if I'm willing to buy this game, there's probably a bunch of other people willing to do the same. The engine probably didn't have to change dramatically between games (though what do I know?) and if it didn't then there's no excuse for there not being a Linux version right now.
Re:Linux support (Score:5, Insightful)
then there's no excuse for there not being a Linux version right now.
That statement is a little naive. They will release the Linux version when it is ready. They aren't going to sit on the Windows version once it's done just so that they can also finish the Linux version before starting to sell either one. And there's no reason to split the team into 2 versions doing simultaneous development when they should focus the entire team on making the game great and polished, on whatever platform they want first (turns out they picked the one with the biggest market share), and then refocus the entire team into porting to other platforms. They can be making money on sales while they're working on the platforms with smaller market shares. It makes perfect sense to do that if they happen to be one of those companies that is working with finite resources.
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No, a number of people make large donations to the Humble Bundle in the name of Linux to skew the average.
Well, perhaps when/if Torchlight 2 comes out for Linux, maybe those people can buy multiple copies and send them to people :p
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I also suspect prior to the Humble Bundle very few copies of the Linux version were sold.
I'm pretty sure that the HB marked the debut of the Linux version of Torchlight, in fact.
My sentiments exactly... (Score:3)
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"Normal" difficulty seemed like Easy Mode
Yeah, that seems to be about right. I can't even imagine what Casual mode must be like. I started my first character on Normal, got through a few dungeons, hit level 12 and realized I had never invested a single skill point. I was still playing an outlander with the original one point in that throwing skill, doing just fine. On top of that, everything short of boss battles couldn't even injure my pet. I'd watch my ferret run around, on fire, taking hits from all so
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Indeed, Normal is much too easy if you've played a game like this before.
Veteran is still fairly easy in the first area (act?) but it does ramp up later on.
Pedigree (Score:4, Interesting)
The review forgot to mention that the creators of Diablo 2 left Blizzard North and Diablo 3 was made by a whole new crew. Granted those guys have some pedigree too, but not in the ARPG genre (Fallout, Total Annihilation, etc.). Several of the Blizzard North guys eventually worked their way around to Runic games, and TL 1 and 2 are both products of the guys who made Diablo 2.
There's a reason TL 2 plays so well and is so friendly to players the way D2 was. I've often thought but never had proof of it until now: video games are an art and are about vision of the team leads. Programming is important, graphics are important, but those are technical aspects; gameplay is an art form and very dependent upon who is making the game, not what studio, or what graphics or technical aspects it has. No set of games have illustrated this point more clearly than the recent launches of D3 and TL2.
Re:Pedigree (Score:5, Interesting)
Who can ever forget the reverberating guitar chord that welcomed you first into the world of Diablo?
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I admit, I also like it a lot. Some of the Act 2 music from D2 was really good, as well.
Re:Pedigree (Score:4, Informative)
You can get the entire TL2 soundtrack for free here [joystiq.com]. I though that was a nice gift from the guys at Runic (makes me feel a bit better about the lifetime Hellgate subscription).
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(makes me feel a bit better about the lifetime Hellgate subscription).
=(
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His name is Matt Uelman [wikipedia.org]. He also did the music for Starcraft 1 and Broodwar. Who can ever forget that class Terran theme? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V9wMRuJuYw [youtube.com]
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If D3 had not been billed as the sequel to D2, I think a lot of the hate would have been held back. Had they called it "World of Diablo" (or whatever), people may have realized that they were different types of game. For example, the skill system a
Good deal for $20 (Score:3, Informative)
I haven't played D3, but I've played TL1 and D2, and I've now played through TL2.
Cons: In my opinion, the storytelling of TL2 is somewhat less compelling and expansive than was that of D2. Also, the D2 had good cinematics, and most (all?) of its narration was recorded voices, rather than just text that you have to read.
Pros: Lots of fun, low hardware requirements, good randomization of maps. Fun approach to playing random maps after you beat the game (I'm not going to spoil it.) No DRM.
And last but not least, it's a great entertainment value for $20. Money very well in my case. From the reviews, I don't think I would have considered $60 for D3 to be a worthwhile purchase.
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Cons: In my opinion, the storytelling of TL2 is somewhat less compelling and expansive than was that of D2.
Agree, the bar has been set pretty low on the story, I'm only vaguely paying any attention to it myself. But at least you can tell they put their focus in on the game play. With where it's at, I'd almost prefer the story to be scaled back even more, with just some brief hand waving about go forth and strike down evil.
Most rogue-likes never even bothered with it at all. And if you didn't dig through the readme files or hear it from someone, the only obvious thing was "we need to go deeper" and yet peopl
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Conversely the story in Diablo 3 is terrible. The fact that you're beaten over the head with it on each play through only makes it more annoying. Diablo 3 would be a much better game if the bad story wasn't always in your way.
Azmodan is Baghdad Bob.
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I agree. Diablo3 would've been much better with randomized maps + free roam, not the story mode restriction that they force on you. The story mode really ruined multiplayer aswell, it's one of the main reasons why no one plays d3 multiplayer.
Diablo 3 got it wrong in every department, and Torchlight 2 got it right. Torchlight 2 has randomized maps, free roam, and a multiplayer lobby system with named games! Pretty much everything that Diablo 2 had that Diablo3 should've had...
Same player in local and multiplayer: cheating? (Score:2)
What is gonna prevent my neighbor's kid from hacking the sandworm-slaying-axe-of-madness and bringing it online to cut me in
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I'm hoping TL2 will develop a community more like Neverwinter Nights where just because you can play with a modded character doesn't mean it'll be a hackfest. With the engine being so open we should see some interesting mods come out over the next year or two. The Steam version having a mod manager will probably help some in that regard.
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> wasn't the biggest complain about Diablo 2 the fact that it was wide open to cheating/hacking due to the fact that you could bring online the stuff you acquired offline?
Only the hackers played open b.net -- that lets you import your offline characters
Most of the people played closed b.net -- the servers and game are 100% on Blizzard's server. It was more hack-resistant, but nothing is ever 100% hack-proof (due to lag).
There was a bad bug where you could "fuse" items in closed b.net but that was fixed
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but nothing is ever 100% hack-proof (due to lag).
Why would lag enable (item-related) hacks? I know Blizzard games have had some duping hacks involving induced lag over the years, but that's just crappy code. As long as you don't trust your clients, there's just no opening for item-related hacks.
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> Why would lag enable (item-related) hacks? I know Blizzard games have had some duping hacks involving induced lag over the years, but that's just crappy code.
Agreed; but it did. Duping in Diablo 1 was trivial -- just by dropping items on the ground and picking them up fast.
> As long as you don't trust your clients, there's just no opening for item-related hacks.
In theory yes, in practice no. If you don't trust the client for anything you
a) overload your servers
b) introduce > 100 ms responses th
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Diablo 3 is fine. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you check your played time and it's over 100 hours, maybe you should stop whining about how crappy you think it is, because clearly your bitchy brain and your gaming brain are having an argument.
Actually, the old man in me wishes the entire gaming community would benefit from a complete media blackout when it comes to video games. Then they can buy a game without expectations, enjoy it without absorbing the negative crap from other gamers, and be satisfied.
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I totally agree with you. I played the demo of Torchlight 2 and while it's fun, the intensity of the battles is no match for what you find on Diablo 3. Matt Uelmen on the other hand is Torchlight's biggest asset IMHO.
In any case, I think you can enjoy both games. Maybe Diablo 3 isn't what people expected of a Diablo 2 successor but it still is a great game on its own. It's not like the Diablo series were the greatest game ever for me since I'm more of an RTS fan and I would take a Dark Reign sequel over Dia
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Are you serious? The boss fights in Diablo 3 were a joke. The only one that was half decent was Belial. The boss fights in TL2 are far more intricate, and if you play on Veteran or Elite difficulty the bosses are extremely challenging.
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I agree that the boss fights are a joke, but I hope you agree with me that the general hack and slash is way better in Diablo 3 than it is in Torchlight. Case in point: Barbarian vs. Engineer.
I would end up paying for Torchlight just to support those guys, since they are the original team. But the graphics style reminds me a lot of Battlefield Heroes which I don't find too appealing. The most cartoony I can go is with WoW, and after playing Guild Wars 2 even that pales in comparison. So I truly mean it when
Re:Diablo 3 is fine. (Score:4, Insightful)
$500? After how many total hours of D3 gaming? Is this more than minimum wage where you live?
Gaming because it's fun is one thing, but as a way to make money it's not at all impressive, at least in most places.
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Someone who would rather work (payment amount / earnings per hour) number of hours and have fun blowing stuff up for an hour instead of grinding for greater than random_number*(payment amount / earnings per hour) hours to get to the same place that would allow them to blow up stuff for an hour?
Diablo style games are a random number generator grind through near infinite swarms of mobs and countless repetitive dungeons. The grind is the game. If you enjoy the endless mindless clickfest with the swathe of corp
Re:Diablo 3 is fine. (Score:5, Insightful)
What? Where did money and hours of gameplay come into this? Sure, you spent $60 (not to mention it used to be $30 for a decent game) and you expect $60 worth of gameplay. But I don't think that was ever the gripe about Diablo 3.
Diablo 3 cannot be played offline.
Diablo 3 cannot be played without a Battle.net account.
Diablo 3 cannot be played without Blizzard's nod each time.
Diablo 3 will stop working mid-way through playing if your connection to Blizzard's servers fail.
What does hours of gameplay have to do with anything when the gripe is about purchasing a product and not be able to play with it whenever, wherever, and however.
As far as we're concerned, that's not what we define as buying a game, at least not to us pre-MMO generation gamers.
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I agree with some of what you mention, but my biggest gripe about D3 is that it wasn't fun. It seemed more like a job than a game. The AH is so heavily integrated that I was spending way too much time in the AH trying to get a good item because the drops generally sucked.
I've only played a couple hours of TL2 so far and I like it for the price. It is fun so far. I like the D2/D3 atmosphere better. D2/D3 had better storytelling and voice acting. It made the game more immersive. TL2 has some of these,
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Diablo 3 will become unplayable if your internet connection to those servers is too laggy.
I tried the open beta, through my ISP it was a slideshow where I didn't know if I was alive or dead. Admittedly a few tweaks to their QOS rules probably sorted everything all out for the games release, but why should I have to risk dieing due to lag in a single player game?
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The problem Blizzard faced with Diablo 3 is that you cant have the real money auction house with a game playable offline.
Of course you can. If that was your concern, then you could make items acquired during offline play wouldn't be auctionable.
A lot of people say blizzard took away offline play because of DRM, but thats not the case.
They started down this path with Starcraft II, and it's rather naive to think DRM wasn't their #1 motivation.
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There's definitely a lot of unfounded hate for Diablo 3. It's certainly not Diablo 2, but I got my money's worth out of it.
The main problem with Diablo 3 is the auction house. Not even the RMAH - just the auction house in general. The main draw to an ARPG, and pretty much the entire endgame, is farming for better loot. In Diablo 2, you had to find all the good gear yourself, or make an effort to seek out other people to trade with. There was an entire rune-based economy that facilitated the trades, but
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I just wish there was some way to not go out and read reviews of games that I want to buy...
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I don't know where anybody got this idea that their one-time payment should give them hundreds of hours of entertainment.
I think they probably got that idea from past experiences where their one-time payment got them hundreds of hours of entertainment. I could be wrong though.
I can't even guess how many hundreds of hours I've put into Fallout, Fallout 2, Diablo, Diablo 2, etc. Shit, I have over 400 hours in Skyrim, and that's been out for less than a year. Last night I was playing through a heavily-modded Fallout: New Vegas again. I've played through both Fallout 3 and Borderlands with at least 3 characters each. I've in
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To add to the above, that list barely scratches the surface. I didn't even mention Doom, Doom 2, Doom 3 (played that a couple months ago again), Far Cry, Far Cry 2, Crysis, Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Team Fortress, Counter-Strike, Descent, Freespace 1 and 2, Freelancer, the X-series, etc etc etc etc. I've spent hundreds of hours in each of those games over several playthroughs (where applicable) over an extended period. I am a nerd. And I have no girlfriend. But I sure as hell get my money's worth out of
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And then there's this: Sure, you can only reallocate the last three skill points you've spent, and you can't redo all your stats and skills once you're leveled up. That's so that you learn from your
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respec console command. shows online that you used it, but doesnt ban you
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Easier: Create a throwaway character and spawn the RESPECPOTION item. Put the item in the shared stash and delete the flagged throwaway. You get your respec, and no flag.
The flag was, as someone else on the Runic forums put it, a "well-intentioned mistake."
Next to WoW (Score:2)
This is the most addictive RPG I have played in my life. I really love the rapid fire pace of the gear and specialization point systems and I only have one real complaint with the combat: it can be pretty hard to actually get your character moving somewhere instead of attacking once you are mostly-surrounded. Cheap deaths are pretty frustrating and the game mechanics are solid but not perfect.
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Great tip! I need to check out all the keys I haven't looked at; thank you!
Torchlight 2 is the better Diablo. (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been playing Torchlight 2 for a few days now, and right away I knew this was the better game. The art style is not better because its cartoony, its better because its designed by better artists, who really understand appeal, quality of animation, and design. This game not only looks better, its just more fun. Diablo 3 was a huge let down. Diablo 3 had 1 interesting boss battle and it wasnt the final Diablo battle, which was a complete fucking disaster artistically. I mean Blizzard should redo the end of the game so that there actually is a climax and a resolve. Diablo 3 is so uneventful, and so poorly designed artistically. I'll give Blizzard a nod for a good item system, auction house, and decent shading and lighting but overall Torchilight 2 makes blizzard look like amateurs.
Even the spells, and abilities all look better, more colorful, better particles, better everything. Torchlight 2 just feels right. And hey its 6 player!
Torchlight 2 is the best $20s you can spend on games right now. Torchlight 2 is so good, you will feel ripped off by Diablo 3.
Mac version (Score:2)
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+1
I recently bought Humble Bundle VI (Score:5, Informative)
The first game I've tried was the original Torch Light. I like it so much so far it's the only game I've played out of the bundle, despite some of the others looking quite appealing.
I've been playing it on my quite powerful desktop - but I noticed it had a "netbook mode" which for some reason was checked by default. I decided to put it on my netbook. For some reason it was NOT checked by default, but after clunking around with the graphics it is actually playable on my dual core Atom using Intel graphics on Kubuntu. I wouldn't exactly call it optimal and smooth, but it's still quite playable.
I loved the original Diablo back in the day, I even bought the expansion pack for it. Then Diablo II came out and I enjoyed it for a while. Not too long, shortly afterwards Blizzard pissed me off by dragging a personal friend into a lawsuit over BNetD, they started suing a bunch of Unreal modders they had previously helped, and I quite dual-booting Windows as I found it to be a waste of hard drive space.
In short Torchlight has offered me everything I liked about Diablo, it works on Linux, and I don't have the guilty sick to my stomach feeling that dealing with Blizzard products gives me.
I can't tell you enough - buy the thing. Go get the bundle, and as soon as a Linux version of Torchlight 2 is released I'll go get it. My only complaint about the original Torchlight - it sometimes crashes when a new area gets loaded up. No big deal, I start the program and I'm standing exactly where I should have been without the crash so - yeah, it's great. Also gem hunting isn't quite as frustrating as it was in Diablo 2.
Fate (Score:2)
Demo was ok... but since I've recently purchased Civ V expansion, Diablo 3 and Borderlands 2, I don't see the need for this game.
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I'm sorry if I have melted you, you beautiful and delicious and adorable and absolutely fabulous unique snowflake. Still love ya.
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Not sure if trolling or just uninformed...
Giving you the benefit of the doubt: The "need" for this game is that it's the game that Fate could have been, had WT not shat all over it.
You see, "Fate's" designer, Travis Baldree, is one of the three people who formed Runic.
Re:4-pack on Steam is only $60 (Score:5, Funny)
If you have 4 friends(I know that's a stretch) you can buy a 4-pack on Steam
And then pick the one friend you like the least and tell them they can't play with you. That's brilliant!
Re:D3 was rushed, but is aging well. (Score:5, Insightful)
Early criticism of D3 are valid, but those are a thing of the past.
No they aren't.
The core game design is fucking retarded. The gear upgrade path is market based. In some sense its much more efficient to gear up in D3 by playing "auction house trader" than "hack and slash dungeon crawler".
That's fine if you -want- to play a trading game. But if that's what you want, play EVE or something that actually does a good job of it.
D3 is a lousy ARPG.
Its a half decent part time job though.
larger .... trading market than TL2 ever will
Well yeah, that's true, but you say it like its a good thing. I don't crawl dungeons so that I can sell things over the internet, to fund buying other things over the internet so that I can crawl dungeons more efficiently in order to sell even more things over the internet.
I'm happy TL2 will never be that.
Enjoy your part time job.
And the new changes around the corner in 1.05 are a vast step in the right direction.
D3 can't be fixed. They need to start over from scratch.
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The core game design is fucking retarded. The gear upgrade path is market based. In some sense its much more efficient to gear up in D3 by playing "auction house trader" than "hack and slash dungeon crawler".
One thing that I haven't seen too many reviews cover is that auction houses ruin the sense of discovery or surprise when you find a new item, particularly unique items. In TL2, when I find a unique drop, it's like opening a Christmas present. With D3, it's like they showed me everyone's presents before putting them into the boxes. Sure, I don't know which present is in which box, but the surprise isn't quite the same, you know?
In TL2, I don't know what the maximum weapon DPS is. I don't know what modifiers
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What exactly are you basing this opinion on? Out of about 25 people, with the exception of ONE person, everyone I know that purchased D3 has stopped playing it. Their reasons span the full spectrum of the howling you read online...but all of them stem from "it really isn't that fun." If you listen to any gaming podcasts or keep up with any non-blizzard, non-fanboi forums, you will read the exact same story time and time again.
D3 probably sold 100x the copies of T2 due to fabricated hype, WoW fanbois, and
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And the new changes around the corner in 1.05 are a vast step in the right direction.
What do you mean, they're moving all of the processing from a central server to the local PC? Because that's the only direction they can take with that game which would even make me consider looking at it to start to think about purchasing it during some sale or something. Any other step is actually a "sidestep".
Re:D3 was rushed, but is aging well. (Score:4, Informative)
1) An ARPG lives and dies by its pace and responsiveness. Having to skip cut-scenes, the sheer amount of crowd control the player character is subjected to and the slow movement speed is a complete antithesis of what an ARPG is supposed to be.
2) Even tho the original D2 devs also hated it the most popular feature of patch 1.10 of D2 was the inclusion of cross-class skills. The player loved it, the devs hated it. The D3 team permanently shut that door by including a non-mana based resource system. They can not pull this off without doing a major revamp of the game.
3) The sheer amount of handholding that's going on in D3 boggles the mind. D2 and torchlight limit you by level and stat points in what loot you can wear. D3 limits you by class. Want to play a DH with a fat 2hander for whatever inane reason you can come up with? Sorry, you can't. Want to play a completely dex based barbarian with a crossbow? Nope. 'Do as thou wilt' was replaced with 'because we say so'. You want to be a melee WD? Well, only the classic melee characters get a flat 30% melee incoming damage reduction.
4) Their reliance on a completely gold based economy is stupid. Nobody ever managed to pull off an interesting gold based economy. Either it works somewhat(as D3's does) and is completely boring or it doesn't and becomes a nuisance. This may sound like a weak point but what the gold based, AH centric economy does is it doesn't encourage bartering and trading. This was a major community builder. There were a LOT of successful websites/forums that started out as barter towns, grew into real communities and kept D2 going way beyond its due-date. D3 is an anonymous hodge-podge.
5) Character progression is non-existant in D3 or beyond frustrating. It is not unreasonable to expect to be able to finish the game on inferno difficulty with only what you picked up yourself within 100 in-game hours. That should be the yard-stick. The goal of the grind-fest should be mindles mass murder of unsuspecting demons to blow off steam or to gather loot to be even more efficient in said mass murder or to gear up twinks with a silly character concept. But at no point should you feel slow and gimped. Inferno mode is completely inaccessible.
6) At release and at the moment the game screams 'we haven't thought this through'. The 30% flat incoming damage reduction of monks and barbs say 'we haven't tuned the game properly'. The auction house ui with only 3 filters for 6 possible properties on rares made the AH next to unusable. Increased incoming damage in multi player games in an already overtuned game made grouping unattractive. The crafting system made you broke if you weren't very, very clever using it. The very rare legendaries were completely unviable on inferno mode(especially the weapons). The damage scaling in inferno is completely off. They advertised the game for PvP(god knows why) and they still haven't delivered.
7) Tying real money to gear limits what they can do to improve the game. Once real money has changed hands for loot you can't reasonably nerf or buff stuff that has been sold without getting yourself in real hot water. And I sincerely doubt their RMAH cut is enough to cover the financial, legal and PR headache that follows.
I'm sorry, but the team that made D3 didn't take a look at what made D2 the game of the decade and only added supreficial improvements. If they don't learn that their approach to D3 was completely off then they will not be able to salvage it whatsoever. The whole game feels like the core mechanics were designed by the Blizzard B-Team. Art and music is wonderful, tho. But at the moment it is a polished turd.
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Tell that to my account. Out of my home town during the battle.net hack, my account was comprimised. I come back, my account is shut down. $60, poof, gone. Fuck blizzard and the high horse they rode in on.
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that's for tl1. TL2 has a console command
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There's also a respec potion in TL2. Until the mod kit comes out, you still need to use the console to spawn it, true, but you can spawn it on a scratch character and put it in the stash.
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Oh look. Another whiny D2JSP closed-server troll getting his little bot-farming panties in a twist that TL2 wasn't designed for them to be able to spam their little "black market" crap.
At least they're hitting /. now, instead of focus-fire on the Runic forums...