Torchlight first impressions

Back in November, Carolina told me about Runic Games' dungeon-crawling hack & slash game Torchlight. I looked around, and found some screenshots and some info, and it looked pretty good, though the screenshots weren't large enough for me to see how cartoony the graphical style is. From what I could tell, it looked like a nicely-made game that resembled the Diablo 3 demo footage I'd been watching around that time. But, I was deeply immersed in Dragon Age, and so I didn't try the demo or investigate it any further. Now that I have some more free time, and she reminded me of it again, I took another look. This time I looked at some gameplay videos, and the appealing graphical style became much clearer to me. Reviews were generally positive. Yahtzee hated it, but Yahtzee hates everything. ;) To me, someone who was looking forward to Diablo 3, it looked great, so I downloaded the demo and tried it out.

The demo was surprisingly lightweight for a modern game, where anything under 1GB feels small. Of the three character choices, I was torn between the only female (the Vanquisher, a kind of rogue), or the only magic-user (the Alchemist). I ended up picking the Alchemist.

Since the demo was time-limited to 2 hours, I felt a little rushed and didn't explore the areas as carefully as I usually would, or investigate what all the merchants and town service providers did. Consequently, I made a few mistakes that caused me to accidentally destroy some useful items.

In the 2 hours I played, the procedurally-generated dungeons did not feel dull as I was expecting, and things felt cohesive and logical, for a mine. And of course, since the game comes with modding tools, if I get tired of random dungeons, the modding community can provide some planned-out dungeons and locations. I've found there are indeed some available currently, as well as some additional playable characters and classes.

Speaking of Diablo 3 demo videos as I was above, I found this amusing fan-made video, where someone made a mod for Torchlight that resembles the beginning of the Diablo 3 demo.

Purchasing experience

I bought Torchlight off Direct2Drive because it was the cheapest option available, and I'm sort of sorry I did. If I'd known what a hassle it would be to buy off of D2D, I probably would have paid a little extra for a hassle-free and less invasive buying experience. It's hard to see myself buying anything from D2D again. I should have bought it on Steam -- not just for the ease of buying, but the activation would have been more convenient as well, I suspect. My copy has an annoying DRM with a limited number of activations before it'll stop working.

I wish GoG carried games as current as this, and not just "old games", because GoG's purchasing experience is smooth sailing all the way, like Amazon.

Talent Trees

Actually more like talent bushes, since you aren't required to pick up a talent you don't want just to obtain a talent in front of it that you do want. The only limiting factor for taking a talent deeper in the tree is that there are some level requirements.

There are three talent trees for your character, called Arcane, Lore, and Battle, each with its own kind of specialisation. Since I've only played the Alchemist so far, that's what I'll talk about.

So far, I've invested the most points into the Lore tree, because that's the one that focuses on summoned minions. All character types get a dog or cat, of course, but a weak magic user needs help to distract the huge waves of mobs that come to attack! You can pick up spell scrolls throughout the game which let you summon temporary additional minions, but the ones you learn from the talent tree stay with you until they die (at which point you can summon new ones).

I have a fair number of points invested in the Arcane tree as well, which provides you with magical attacks and skill buffs as any magic user should have. The Battle tree, however, has talents in it that seem to aim to turn the alchemist into more of a warrior, with physical damage buffs, shielding, and expertise added into non-mage weapons like clubs, axes, etc. I haven't invested any points into the Battle tree.

These talents have multiple ranks, like other games I've played, but these go up to rank 10, which is much higher than I've experienced before.

Look and feel

The levels feel really huge, with high ceilings and sublevels that you can see below the floors you're standing on. Improbably huge, really, making me wonder who could have carved out such large spaces underground and filled them with such nicely carved stone buildings and decorations. But overall, it appeals to my sense of wonder and exploration, seeing these awe-inspiring ruins that go on forever.

Controls

As polished as it is, there are some things that I think could stand improving. Primarily the number of quick slots. Since this is a realtime game, quick slots are at a premium, and I only have numbers 0-9 to assign to spells and abilities.

The isometric-only view I can handle, since I've had to get used to it in games like Baldur's Gate, though in a 3D game like this I always feel like I should be able to rotate the view around to see where I'm running, if I happen to be heading toward the lower side of the screen. Camera controls are limited to zooming in and out, though if you hit Enter to pause the game, it rotates the camera slowly around your character. So rotation is possible in the game, but they present it in an isometric format anyway.

The click-to-move control scheme was irritating to me for the first few hours of play, but I finally noticed that you don't actually have to click over and over. You can click once, and hold the mouse button down, and the character will follow the cursor wherever you move it, without stopping. By keeping the cursor near the character (very close) and just moving it around when I want him to change direction, I have good control over when he stops moving, because I can just release the mouse button and he'll stop. No more accidentally running into a crowd of enemies because I clicked too far into the distance!

Holding down the button also works for attacks. If you're hitting something over and over with the same attack, all you have to do is click and hold, and your character will even turn around to face the enemy you're attacking, if it moves behind you.

The pet

This is the most useful pet I've ever seen. I've played warlocks and hunters with pets that fight with/for you before, but this pet has several additional abilities that make it an extra-useful part of the game.

Most people already know that the pet acts as a pack animal, holding extra items for you, and running back to town to sell them off if you want it to, while you're deep in a dungeon. That alone is a fantastic feature, really encouraging the kind of treasure-amassing tomb-raiding that other games seek to limit with small inventory space or weight limits.

More amazingly, this pet can wear up to 3 magic trinkets (2 rings and 1 necklace), and learn up to 2 spells, which it will cast periodically at all times! When I found a "heal all" spell scroll, I promptly gave it to my dog, turning him into an even more valuable support character. Extremely useful!

I'll have more to say about this game as I level up and try out new abilities.