Story
Not normal for an RPG, the story of Torchlight is a bit weak. Here's the except from the Torchlight Wiki:
"The game is set in the small mining town of Torchlight. In the nearby mine, a mysterious mineral known as Ember attracts miners, adventurers, and monsters alike. The town is troubled by the recent corruption of the mineral, which can mutate anyone unfortunate enough to come across a corrupt piece. The prime example of this is seen by the corruption of the alchemist Alric, who turns on his companions and attempts to revive the legendary Ember colossus, Ordrak. The main storyline focuses around the player, teaming with Syl the sage, to stop the source of corruption within the dungeon. You will fight many monsters and champions along the way, while collecting epic loot and hoards of gold. "
That's the story in a nutshell. There's no grand evil, no worldwide plot, etc. It's all concentrated in one little town, where not much goes on, and there's not much character (more on this in a bit).
Setting
The setting of Torchlight is it's biggest strength, yet it's also it's biggest weakness. You first arrive in the namesake town, and it's just recently come under attack from creatures from the town's mine. After clearing out the beasts, the town returns to it's normal state of activity. Since the evil entities came from the mine, you waltz right in to whoop them a new one.
When you enter the mine, you've entered a dark, dank collection of caves, with the remnants of the town's mining operation in shambles. After clearing the mines, you enter an ancient set of tombs, filled to the brim with the walking dead, and covered with cobwebs and bookshelves filled with equally ancient scrolls & tomes. Once the tombs were cleaned, you come across the water-filled ruins of a magical civilization, with their power still active & apparent. After the ruins, you enter a giant cavern filled with a civilization of angry lizard folk, who don't take too kindly to you wandering around their home. From the lizard cavern, you enter an abandoned prison standing above molten lava, with remnants of the previous occupants still around. After clearing the prison, you arrive in the ruins of the ancient forges of the dwarves, who were wiped out by their misuse of Ember, and were brought back as undead savages. Once you slaughtered the dwarves, you enter the Black Palace, the home of Ordrak, the big baddie of the game.
The variety of environments adds a lot of flavor to Torchlight. Each of the dungeons have their own feel, and are completely separate from one another, making them their own world. However, a lot of things repeat in these environments in terms of static objects, and level formations when the dungeons are generated. That's not to say it's the same every time: it's just that it's the same a majority of the time, and makes thing feel repetitive (the quests are repetitive as well, but that a little later).
Characters
Another weakness in the game are the characters. Sorta taking a page from Borderlands, the classes have little character, and the NPCs have no character. The reason why I say sorta is that while Borderlands had some character, Torchlight has next to no character. What's worse is that what little character Torchlight has, there's not too much character. Alric, the primary villain, feels too much like a standard villain from the 1980s: his plan is obvious, he appears at obviously convenient plot points, and he's defeated too easily. Syl has even less character: she acts as a weak guide, but apart from that, there's nothing to her.
Gameplay
Here's where Torchlight succeeds. Harkening back to Diablo 1 & 2, this game is a balls-to-the-wall, grinding (in the entertaining way), and entertaining RPG. To start off, there's the classes, each of which fit the standard archetype. We have the:
Alchemist (Spellcaster)
Destroyer (Melee)
Vanquisher (Ranged)
Each class fits their respective role to a T, and have skills that suit their roles. For the most part, the characters are separate from one another in regards to their abilities (Each class has 3 skill trees with 11 skills each), but the one kink in the armor is that each of the classes share certain skills, and that ruins the otherwise uniqueness of the 3 classes.
However, you don't wander the world of Torchlight alone. You also have an animal companion (cat or dog) that follows you around, and fights with you. The pet has it's own inventory, and can pick up items just like you. In addition to that, the pet can be sent back to town to sell everything in it's inventory, can learn & use spells like the player (spells are separate from class abilities, and all classes can learn them), and can even be fed fish that will change it into various creatures with greater strengths & abilities than in it's normal form. Speaking of creatures...
Torchlight is filled with various baddies for you to slay, ranging from bat-like people, to oozes, to the undead, and finally to walking dragonfolk that breath swaths of flame. Just like D1 & D2, the monsters are ordered according to dungeon & difficulty, although there are certain exceptions in the form of the "hunt down & kill" side quests. Speaking of side quests...
In addition to the main quest to stop Alric, there's a small handful of side quests, organized mainly into hunting down unique monsters & retrieving specific items. The big problem with the side quests is that once they're exhausted, they're exhausted. Luckily, the side quests do provide extra XP, gold & magic items, and extra fame (sorta like a subset of experience, which gets you extra skill points when you reach a certain number after you've killed a bunch of unique monsters).
That's another plus for Torchlight. The game is practically floating in an ocean of items. You have magic arms & armor, magic rings & amulets, health & mana potions, town portal & identify scrolls, spells (you can only know 4 at a time, but you can learn/unlearn them as often as you want), and the earlier mentioned pet augmenting fish. There's even a variety of rarities in regards to the weapons, armor, rings, and amulets, just like Diablo 1 & Diablo 2.
The one final thing I'll point out about the gameplay mechanics, and that's the stash. Much like Diablo 2, the player has a stash in which he or she can deposit items if their isn't enough room in their normal inventory. Unlike Diablo 2, the stash can hold far more items than the incredibly small space that the D2 stash provided. On top of that, there's also a shared stash that all of your characters can access, letting them put in items, and take items out. This makes creating spare characters just for the sake of getting item space that much more pointless.
Graphics & Sound
Graphically, Torchlight is rather interesting. It looks charming, colorful, and dare I say this, cartooney. I know I mentioned cartooney looks back in my Serious Sam 2 review, but it wasn't completely noticeable in that game. In regards to Torchlight, the cartoon looks is very obvious, and the colors are very bright, much more so than Diablo 3 (check out that review's graphics & sound section for details). Where-in the greater use of color in D3 seemed unnecessary, the color usage & cartoon looks in Torchlight seems...appropriate. Torchlight is more lighthearted than D3, and seems less dark & disturbing. Dare I say this, Torchlight could even viewed & played by kids, and they might not even flinch!
The sound quality in Torchlight is definitely not cartooney. Despite the environment, the sound effects sound as gritty & full of depth as any other gothic RPG. Even the voice acting, little of it as there is, doesn't sound amateurish, although it does at times feel a little week.
Overall & Rating
I really liked the original Torchlight. Although it can get boring somewhat quickly, it makes it up by being incredibly entertaining before it gets to that boring state. The gameplay & graphics, not to mention the sound quality, also make up for this. Hell, even kids, with perhaps a little supervision, can enjoy the game.
Torchlight gets a 7.5 to 7.8 out of 10.
See you all next week. Until then, stay Otaku!
* Full blown Zombie trailer...Woot!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH_9GzaUW40
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