Diablo-lite

Although Torchlight has grown on me quite a bit from my first couple of tries when I thought of it as a simplistic Diablo-clone that doesn't bring anything interesting into the formula, ultimately my opinion has not changed.

It inherits a lot from Travis Baldree's previous project, Fate (itself a Diablo-clone). And, despite the involvement of the Schaefer brothers this time around, it still very much feels like a sequel to Fate, rather than a spiritual successor to Diablo.

The biggest difference here is of course the pet that is dumped on you regardless of whether you like playing with a companion or not (or whether you love or hate animals; I, for one, cannot stand dogs and cats). Your pet can be temporarily transformed into other animals by eating certain foods and, most importantly, can run to the town and sell your shit for you. The former I truly don't care for cause it's essentially just a modifier, whereas the latter ends up being a half-measure. Sure, on one hand it cuts down on the time of actually running up to the vendor. On the other hand, you're still forced to sort through your items, use identify scrolls and choose what to sell, except now you're doing that standing in the middle of wilderness and don't have the ability to purchase things. You still end up running to the town about the same amount of times.

The one issue they could've actually improved upon is the very need to be running back to the town and selling shit because your inventory gets filled very quickly. And of course this is something that wasn't really addressed. They let you stack potions and scrolls, but the stacks still have limits...

Overall though, it's not like there's anything wrong with Torchlight per se. It's a competent Diablo-clone. The problem is that it's got less of everything. Only three classes and about the same amount of skills, except they unlock quicker. There's much less replayability because fewer build options. The level-design is also much more linear and claustrophobic. It kinda ends up becoming very repetitive, which was already a problem in Diablo 2, but it's much worse here. It's an okay experience to jump into every now and then for like half an hour, but it's much more disappointing if you look at it as a serious game.

One thing I feel really bad about is that the amazing soundtrack by Matt Uelmen is wasted on this game. It doesn't match the Warcraft-esque, cartoony visual style. Still, I sunk about 9 hours into it, and the entire time I was dreaming of playing Diablo 2 instead. I thought perhaps Torchlight would eventually capture me with some unique quality of its own, but it just never did.