Developer: Echtra Inc.
Publisher: Perfect World Entertainment
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Torchlight III – Review
It has been barely three months since we last played the Early Access version of Torchlight III. We noticed the game was already well underway of being finished, but still had some rough edges to smoothen out. We now dived back into our Torchlight adventure to see what had changed in this very short Early Access period. We still very much enjoyed the experience, but sometimes we didn’t know why we were actually killing monsters, and this was also combined with a small number of bugs and issues that were already present in the Beta version.
Story
As Runic Games was taken over by a massive Chinese MMO giant, it’s no surprise the story was demoted to the backseat for this dungeon crawler adventure. You arrive at Trevail Point, which is under attack by a lot of nasty critters, and that’s basically all you’ll have to make do with for the first portion of the game. There are cinematics, here and there, but they will never truly steal the show, or make you feel like the story is actually important in this game.
Graphics
Graphically the Torchlight series has always been a delight to look at. You’ll have very colorful areas, characters, enemies and even items to behold. While things can sometimes get a bit crowded and cluttered onscreen with loads of enemies swarming you, the effects of your skills and random loot dropping all around you, you truly are motivated to press on. The different classes have a few small variations when it comes to character creation, but it’s mainly the clothes that make the man (or woman), as your gear properly changes your beloved character(s). We did notice a bit of recycling when it came to actual boss battles. Even with only a few zones in-between, we already saw the same boss enemy models appear, and this actually made certain choices feel a bit lazy.
The story segments, which are hardly present, are done in a comic book-like style, which perfectly suits the overall colorful atmosphere of the game. These are quite static in nature, but do serve their purpose very well.
Sound
The sound of Torchlight III is decent, but nothing spectacular. There are a few proper background tracks, the effects do their jobs and the voice acting of the NPCs is nicely handled. It just never reaches the same cinematic quality of its competitor, Diablo III.
Gameplay
Torchlight III is very much still that Diablo-clone we came to enjoy and love. You’ll have to pick one of the four classes at the beginning of the game to start your journey. Torchlight spices things up a bit by adding a specific skill-tree per character after you choose a relic to begin with. This means that you can opt to, for example, deal continuous fire damage, shock your opponents or choose skills that can heal you over time. This creates a bit of variation in the otherwise fixed classes, who all only have two different skill branches to choose from. Nonetheless, you can still distribute skill points freely, and thus try out many different builds in the game.
The only difference with this one is that you have to choose if you want your character to be on the multiplayer servers or just want single-player characters. These cannot correspond to one another, so if you have a hefty cast of multiplayer characters, you will never be able to play them in your single-player campaign and vice versa.
In this newest installment of Torchlight, players get to build their own fort. Well, building might be an overstatement, but they get to decorate a small plot of land enclosed by castle-like walls, which are somewhat identical for every single player. In this tiny space, you can place a lot of decoration pieces, but also actual useful stalls and trinkets that can help you progress through the game. We do feel like most of these ‘useful’ items should have just been NPCs in the town, as you many different items, specific to each class, that actually all do the same thing.
As mentioned in the preview in July, the controls sometimes feel a bit dodgy. We sometimes feel like we’re not really in control when trying to click on enemies, or even when triggering skills. More than often a skill has already cooled down, becoming available again, yet still requires multiple presses before it actually triggers. This can sometimes be a bit annoying, just like actually being able to use health potions when your health is completely full.
Conclusion
Torchlight III is very much a fun entry in the series but as we said in the preview of the game, it feels close to being finished, but not quite completely yet. The game will present you with loads of hours of grinding, creating different builds, building your fort and so on, but it never truly tells you why. For a game such as this, the story value feels flimsy, and while many dungeon crawlers go without deep stories, Torchlight always gave Diablo a run for its money. While this one is fun to play in a group, the single-player value is somewhat dismissible and that’s just a shame. Nonetheless, fans of the series who love building characters will most definitely still enjoy this one.
Torchlight III – Review,
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