Believe it or not, I’m not big on RPG’s and dungeon crawlers. As far as the later goes, Torchlight is actually my very first game like this that I have given a good go. So I’m not really fit to review this title from the standpoint of a fan of the genre, but I can still view it from an objective point of view.

My first impressions with this game was actually not that great. It felt like just another generic dungeon crawler in the vein of Diablo. But I persisted with it and am glad I did. Torchlight creeps up on you and before you know it you are actually enjoying yourself.

The storyline revolves around the small town of torchlight, which has been attacked by creatures unknown. The creatures have been coming from the Ember mines right next to the town. So you rock up and set yourself up to go into the mines and find out what is going on. It’s pretty standard fair but does enough to convince you that what is happening in the story is actually happening in the game world as well.

The graphics are actually pretty good. It’s fully 3D but done in a almost cartoonish styling which resembles more the art direction of earlier 2D RPG’s. There are also a lot of very nice lighting effects, especially from things like shock traps and elemental powers from your weapons. This game with it’s graphics reminds me of Trine, the side scroller and reviewed here a while ago.

Getting into the RPG side of things, there is a heap of stats and upgrades to perform both to your character and to your items. There are the usual strength, dexterity, magic, and defense stats to handle, but there are also a lot of extra skills you can enable and upgrade as your Fame goes up. At a quick guess there would be around 20 or more specialty skills you can have. And then there are the items. Most items are of course enchanted and come with bonuses anywhere from health stolen per hit to the rare ability to chance an enemy turning coat and fighting for you.

I played this game as a vanquisher which basically is a ranged hero with a pet. The bonus of the pet is that it too can be upgraded and eventually will become one of your main attacking minions, if you go down that path. My character specifically has skills that enable her to summon a horde of skeletons, blood skeletons and zombies, as well as my dog which ironically does more damage per hit that what I do.

There are also some nifty ideas floating around like the fact you can feed special items to your pet to transform them into something else. You can also wear sets of armour and/or items that when worn together offer their own unique bonus stats and advancements. On top of this there is the ability to have someone attempt to add extra enchantments onto your items, with an appropriate chance to fail or destroy the current enchantments. Plus there are other modifiers such as crystals which add specific bonuses onto an item once plugged into one of the sockets.

Overall, once you get a handle on it all, you can put together a very nice lineup with bonuses to suit your play style pretty easy. Of all the items I have found, the ‘Epic Gunslingers hat’ would have to be the best, also looks damn awesome too.

The levels change as the story progresses, first starting inside the mines and then working down through various fortresses and underworld sections, finally ending in the lair of Ordrak himself. The ruined Dwarven fortress had great atmosphere and very good detail and design, I might add. On top of this, once you have finished the main story quest, you can attack the shadow vault which is made up of unlimited randomly generated levels that get harder each level you go down.

One of the biggest things about this game though is the community support for it. There is a program called Torchleech which makes getting mods and extra content incredibly easy. Just download the program and it will display all the current published content for the game. Then just choose whichever ones you want and Torchleech will download and install it for you, no extra work needed. Very nice.

So overall, even though I didn’t think I would like Torchlight, I have found myself falling for it after a few solid hours of game play. It plays well, has a heap of different items and things to do, looks great, and bonus community support and content like few other games. I’d give it a 8.5 out of 10.

The room clearer. Skeletons, blood skeletons, zombies, my pet, two shock traps, some piercing arrows, and my weapon which when using Explosive shot, can AOE crit for up to 16K damage...no one gets out alive