I remember having played this game when I was a younger and wanting to try it again... I've played a lot of ARPGs in my time and this game just isn't good, not with the lots of other games there are nowadays and that were there even during its time. I didn't go into it with wanting to dislike it, but have not really found many things to like, or at the very least enough for me to like the game, enjoy my experience, and give it a positive review.
I'm not a fan of the graphics, but that's always been the least important aspect when it comes to games for me, but I can't believe this game is from 2009 judging from... well, everything. The graphics didn't age well (looks like a cheap mobile game), amount of classes (3?!), mechanics, skills and skill trees (every class has 15 active and 15 passive skills), loot (a lot of trash drops) and the controls and combat - very clunky, eg. most of the ranged attacks usually either didn't even connect or only had range of about half the screen.
I'd have expected the game to be at least 10 years older than that, everything just feels so lackluster and jank for its time. If it were, I wouldn't have been so harsh with the review but simply put, there were games that were miles ahead at the time - Titan Quest or Diablo II, which lo and behold, are still very good, playable and loved to this day, even in spite of being older. As opposed to that, I don't think I've ever seen a person saying Torchlight is a good game.
There are some nice ideas, like the pet - being able to send it back to town to sell your items. If only the inventory wasn't 3x7, while also having to carry scrolls and potions, making it at least 4 slots smaller. Other than that though, the pet is just basically a way worse and dumbed-down version of the Diablo II mercenary. The only other "good" thing about the game is that you can mod it and the mods don't disable steam achievements, at least the ones I installed. This would be good if the base game itself was good and if some mods just didn't feel mandatory to make the experience less painful.
Now if we move on to the cons, other than everything already mentioned above, there is no respec, why? Yes, there is a mod for it, but still. There were games before its time that had this mechanic, so why does this game not have it?
The game is very slow to get your character up and running, which is not actually too bad, it's expected, but this might make some newer players turn away by itself. It's also extremely repetitive.
The game didn't feel too hard at the start even on the highest difficulty setting, regardless of that, but then I'd randomly get oneshot by some traps when normal enemies could barely even more my health bar. The balance is very poor - I still remember my first death, which was to a trapped chest dealing over 50% of my health in a zone 5 levels below me, while literally every single other trap I've triggered dealt about 1/10 of the damage of this one, pretty much not even moving my health bar. I just don't get it. On top of that, the monster damage on very hard gets absurd very quickly towards the latter half of the story, even before completing the story you're gonna start getting constantly oneshot with very little counterplay, unless you're of course kiting around half the map and standing half a screen away from the mobs, or already have farmed a lot of gear previously.
Wanting to write a non-biased review, I've finished the game in all modes, but I rarely had fun playing it - I thought maybe I would start enjoying it at some point, but that didn't exactly happen. Simply put, this game didn't bring anything innovative at the time that would be meaningful and worthwhile enough to mention. And unless you're going into the game with extremely strong nostalgia, I can't recommend it. It is cheap when on sale though, so I'll at least give it that.
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