Comments on: Torchlight II: Better than Diablo III

By: Lee

Lee — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 00:06:43 +0000

Then Diablo III is even blander than I thought.

By: Strider

Strider — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 00:03:05 +0000

Torchlight 1 had DPS indicators too, actually; Walking-over-gold to grab it, too. Trendsetters!

- HC

By: Lee

Lee — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 22:10:50 +0000

Torchlight II came out after Diablo III, so it had time to incorporate its useful touches (damage per second indicators on weapons, picking up gold automatically while walking over it) and ignore the bad decisions (oversimplification of skills, mostly unrandomized dungeons). Torchlight II is also too easy, but it doesn't force you to go through a normal mode before moving on to a real challenge. There's no unlocking of higher difficulty levels; they are available immediately, as they should be. Transferring items between your characters is much easier. I could probably think of more if I had played Diablo III past the beta. The two are similar games for obvious reasons, but Torchlight II is the only one crafted by a caring hand. If Diablo III is the lifeless overproduced corporate pop-rock, Torchlight II is the hard-working garage band that actually appreciates its fans. The secret ingredient... was love.

By: Strider

Strider — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 20:01:37 +0000

The bit about gems is actually a callback to the original Torchlight- there was a dude in town who would combine two similar gems into a better one. I assume that this was taken out because it encouraged players to hoard gems rather than use them; I recall that most of my stash was filled with Ember fragments awaiting fusion.

My big complaint with the first Torhlight was the binary nature of combat- it felt like yu were demolishing enemies effortlessly or you we’re dying in combat frequently, without much inbetween (granted, some classes were better on this front than others). Torchlight 2 feels similar so far, although I’ve only done the first few areas.

How does it compare specifically to Diablo III? I won’t touch te game withs 10–foot pole due to the DRM on it, but I’m curious to know what TOrchlight does differently/better.

- HC

By: Lee

Lee — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 17:13:12 +0000

I didn’t know most of that. Thanks for the info.

By: Your friendly neighborhood Negro.

Your friendly neighborhood Negro. — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 17:06:45 +0000

A few supplemental things you may be interested in. Torchlight’s existence is caused by a confluence of a couple of elements. The game is very Diablo-like because the game essentially *is* Diablo. When Blizzard North (Diablo’s developers) folded in the early 2000′s, the team split off into 3 directions: ArenaNet (Guild Wars), Flagship Studios (Hellgate London), and Runic Games (Torchlight). The majority of the team, including the creative leads (The Schaefer brothers, who were founders of Condor games, which were eventually purchased by Blizzard and renamed Blizzard North) founded Runic. Runic’s other founder, Travis Baldtree worked at Wild Tangent games, and created a game called “Fate”, which was essentially one of the myriad Diablo clones that were released in the 2000′s. It was a Diablo derivative in every sense of the word, but had a few unique ideas: a pet, fishing, a fame level, and dealing with death, all which was incorporated into Torchlight. Essentially Torchlight is the result of a fan of Diablo working with its creators. Matt Uelmen is Torchlight’s composer, who surprise surprise, also composed the Diablos’ tunes. The result of all this is that Torchlight 2 is actually more Diablo than Diablo 3.

I obviously like the game, but I will say that the loot system is nowhere near as good as Diablo 2′s…really, no game has been able to match its breadth and variety yet. Can’t win them all, I guess.