Torchlight Review (Riot)
I haven't been quite so torn about how to assess a video game quite in the way that Torchlight gives me an overwhelming desire to explain. On one hand, it isn't a terrible game; it's actually not bad at all. On the other hand, I feel I would likely have had more fun scraping my skull against concrete than I did playing Torchlight.
Torchlight is, for all intents and purposes, a starter dungeon-crawler. Between its cartoon design aesthetic, its simplistic plot, its very rudimentary class/skill system, and the bombardment of mostly useless item drops, the game is, at its core, perfectly designed for somebody who hasn't played this style of game but wants a palatable experience that consists entirely of empty calories. Regardless of how you approach this title, it really doesn't leave much of a lasting impression outside of the fact that its plot is silly and the game-play is incredibly repetitive. That isn't really a bad thing though.
The entire story takes place in the titular town of Torchlight, or more accurately in a nonsensical sprawling dungeon beneath said titular town. You, the player, and your trusty pet are tasked with following a generic and forgettable NPC into some mines that lead to a plethora of seemingly unrelated but somehow interconnected dungeon floors to stop some sort of corruption from an otherwise generic bad guy whose name escapes me because it really isn't important. It's simple, very bland, and mostly there to give some sort of narration where none would have sufficed and still remained cohesive.
Now, my biggest complaint about this title is that it made 13 hours feel like it went on way longer than it had any right to. For such a relatively simple game, I felt as though the repetitive nature of the game turned into a slog about an hour in. Be that a result of faulty difficulty tweaking, the fact that most of the enemies are just reskinned versions of the same enemies you face on floors above, or that I don't have the stamina to repeatedly slap myself in the face with a keyboard to produce the same affect that could be had by not playing this title, I honestly couldn't tell you. Either way I'm dealt the dilemma of establishing whether I'd recommend this title, and for some twisted reason I feel like I should, if only to offer an easy entry into this particular game style. Perhaps I just need more sleep. Or perhaps Steam needs a neutral option instead of forcing me to choose whether or not I'd recommend a title.