0. General Information
1. Graphics
2. Combat System
3. Items/Looting System
4. Extra Thoughts
5. Final Score----------------------------------------------------------------------------
:General Information: StorylineWord of Ember blazed across the land, and the town of Torchlight flared to life.
Ember is the essence of magic and the keystone of alchemy; it lures the restless with promises of power and riches. Miners burrowed deep beneath the dirt streets of Torchlight, discovering veins of the ore richer than any found in living memory- but they were not the first to covet these mines. The miners broke through into the buried past, a dangerous labyrinth of caverns and ruined civilizations, twisted creatures and the bones of those who came before. Evil bubbles up from the depths and threatens to overrun this town as it has so many others. The heart of a villain has infused the Ember, and his darkness seeps through the veins. To survive, the townspeople must break the cycle of destruction; they need a champion who can destroy the evil at its root. Removing the source of the rot may purify the Ember, but it is a long and perilous journey. The champion must battle through rock and fire, through lost cities and ancient tombs, into the palace of the villain himself.
Developers: Runic Games
Publishers: Perfect World Entertainment
Designers: Trvis Baldree
Composers: Matt Uelmen
Engine: OGRE
Platforms: Microsoft Windows
Mac OS X (Will be Release in 2010)
Release Date: October 27 2009 (download)
January 5, 2010 (retail)
Genres: Action RPG
Modes: Single-player
System Requirements: Windows,Windows 2000 or later, x86-compatible 800MHz processor, 512MB RAM, 400MB drive space, DirectX-compatible video card with at least 64MB of addressable memory (such as an ATI Radeon 7200, NVIDIA GeForce 2, or Intel GMA 950)
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:Graphics: (screenshot at bottom of post)
Overall GraphicsNow the graphics in this game are amazing for this kind of game, I was very surprised at how well this game looked, and even the spell and attacks in this game looks amazing, I found they did a very good job on the graphics and the look of this game, now the dungeons also look awesome, most of the game looks amazing zoomed out, you do have the choice to zoom in if you wish but I enjoyed it zoomed out and I found it looked much better. But the way the dungeons are mapped out, even though they look amazing they're are a lot of dead ends and for me, it was hard to find the path that you need to take, eventually I would stumble upon it, and I know its a dungeon and its not supposed to be one direct path but atleast give me a arrow or something so I know the general direction, but a good key feature of this game that would make people play it over and maybe restart would be that every time you start a new character the dungeon is randomly mapped so you don't feel like your playing the exact same thing again.
(I had settings on High the whole time, and zoomed out fully)
Interface/UIOkay well, the interface and its overall design looks good too, nothing to crazy that catches you eye, just the basic old bar on the bottom and map in the corner, don't get me wrong it looks good but it is just the basic RPG Interface. They're is also your pets health and mana and its inventory in the top right corner.
Final ThoughtsI very much liked the graphics, they took the time and made it very appealing to the eye, I never found myself disliking any graphic parts in this game, the scenery looks quite good also, considering your in a cave most of the game, also the characters look awesome while zoomed out fully, I found the game the most enjoyable zoomed out fully for the best looking graphics. Although the dungeons make it easy to get lost.
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:Combat System: Creatures/Bosses Well, I was very disappointed throughout this game, now I'm not saying its a terrible game but you usually find yourself one shotting these creatures for hours and hours until you finally reach the ending, now they're are quests in this game, they mostly are chains from the same people, anyways back to the creatures and bosses, now as I said you mostly find yourself running through countless floors of dungeons killing the same creatures over and over until you reach a mini-boss or two, which also are very easy to kill, then you venture on again into another floor and kill some more creatures, when I say some more creatures I mean around 100 creatures per floor, and sometimes you have to go down 2-3 floors. Then eventually you find the first real boss The Overseer which you guessed it, an very easy fight. They're is no strategy nor skill needed to defeat this boss, all you need to do is button mash and have you health potion ready, now I know the game isn't really meant for that but common atleast add a few phases for bosses or something to make it seem like your actually fighting a boss. Now another annoying thing that happened often in this game is that if your say, behind a wall and click a monster around the corner, rather then you're character running in sight and then attacking they insist on attempting of either being superman or curving bullets and try to attack the monster through the wall, now this isn't that much of a deal, but I found this very annoying.. Not sure why.
Spells/SkillsNow the spells system and skills system is very basic, you can learn a new spell from your talent tree, or you can sometimes buy or find a new spell, I'm quite sure any Class in this game can learn a spell, I've played both a Alchemist and a Vanquisher and they both can learn spells, I'm not sure about Destroyers, anyways the basic fighting is this game usually is killing the same creature either it being a skeleton or a giant spider and besides killing the same creature like 1000 times you also usually one shot them, which makes it even more boring, now I wouldn't complain about the easy creatures if it wasn't so damn long to get to the last boss, cause it makes it seem like they were at the last two weeks until release and they needed more content and they just decided "Lets just increase the creatures and also add a few floors and it will make the game longer", well it also made it less enjoyable. Now I'm not saying the game is absolutely terrible, but you can't sit there for hours on end playing, cause it gets boring, very boring.
Talent Tree and PointsThese attributes of game reminded me of World of Warcraft very much, well the Talent Tree because WoW has this and has it sorta the same way, every time you level up you get 1 Talent point where you can put into one skill that will usually give you a benefit for a skill as in make it do more damage or sometimes you get new skills, now first of I couldn't finish this game because I just got so tired of the same thing over and over again that I just went to bed, so I'm not sure what the max level is but most of the things on the talent tree is 0/10 and if the max level is 100 then that would maybe work but unless you wanna buff one skill but sacrifice some other skills then you're not gonna put 10/10 because your just sacrificing too much, I think 0/5 would of been a better fit and given you a better experience with more skills rather then button mash the same button. You also get a 1 point from going up in Fame level, now I'm not sure what the hell fame was for, but I think it was just another thing to make you feel like you're actually doing something rather then killing the same **** over and over again. The talent tree had three rows for each class, each one giving you a different style of play for that character, so that is a very nice attribute that would also make people play again cause they could still play they're class they love but try a new style for it. The points in this game is very basic you have Str/Dex/Magic/Def now its quite obvious what you need to put your points on for what class, you also get 5 points per level, like any other game with points, very basic.
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:Items and Looting:"I can't carry that", "My inventory is full", "My sac isn't big enough cause I'm not a man" or whatever they said got quite annoying because apparently almost every creature in the game had a leather cap or a sword, etc. My inventory got filled quite fast, now from my recent discovery apparently you can put your items in your pets inventory and then send him to town to sell it for you, rather then go back yourself, which if I had known this I would of maybe been able to enjoy the game more instead of spending half my time in town selling my junk.
The other thing that pissed me off about this game is that apparently almost every item you get is not even for your class, I would of enjoyed not picking up 10000 things then actually picking one thing up that is for my class. But I will say that when you finally pick up an item for your class its usually something beast and will help you get 1 shots and kill mini-bosses within seconds, which makes the game easier.
Now they're are a few items I questioned.....
Identify Scroll: Identifys unidentified items.
POINTLESS, seriously I'm pretty sure if you find a item you're gonna know what it is, you won't need a freaking Identify Scroll to know that its some boots with a glow to it.
But the Town Portal scrolls came very handy which I thought was an awesome addition, also I loved how you could take the portal back to where you opened the portal. which makes it easy to venture back and forth, rather then go down 10000 floors.... I would of shot myself in the face if they didn't have some way of transporting back and forth.
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:Extra Thoughts:The overall gameplay and look of this game makes it the game what it is, now the game may not be the most thrilling and won't keep you on edge, the storyline is okay but its kinda basic , but the little annoying things like identifying each item and having to kill 100000 of the same creatures over and over makes the game less playable, you can maybe play a few hours of this game then get bored of it but the next day you'll be craving to play a bit more because it is kinda fun.
Its like that smoking hot girl with a huge rack but you find out she has Herpies but you still wanna play with her because she still is quite hot and you can put aside her problems and still kill some time and have a good time.
Lmao, its kinda...... like that.
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:Overall Score:Now its time for the overall score.
I give Torchlight for the PC a solid
7.5/10Okay, well I kinda bashed the game cause I had just finished playing and was tired of doing the same thing over and over again, but the truth is that the game is well made but the game is only playable for 1 hour or so before it gets really old and you get tired of it.
Even though I bashed the game quite a bit in this review, I do recommend buying it for only 10$ right on Steam for the holiday sale, and atleast giving it a try, once you start playing it gets a bit addicting.
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Heres just one screenshot of the area I'm in.. You can find gameplay videos on Youtube, I didn't wanna make this post any longer. =]
Thanks for reading!
Starsky
Topic: [PC] Torchlight Review (Read 343 times)
November 26, 2009, 12:00:05 AM