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Information

Platform PC
Coop Players 6
Developer Runic Games
Engine OGRE
Release Sep 20, 2012
Genres Action, Adventure, Role-Playing

Ratings

Grit 2.0
Synergy 8.0
Implementation 7.5
Longevity 4.0
Depth 7.0
Fun 7.0
Overall 6.44

Features

campaignCooperative Campaign
dropinDrop-In/Drop-Out Multiplayer
onlineOnline Multiplayer
modUser-Made Content

On Steam

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Launch Steam

Torchlight II

Below are some explanations for our ratings.

Grit: We did play this on normal difficulty, but I don't see how any other difficulty would be different. Once we got our builds sorted out, nothing in the game could touch us. The Engineer shield made us literally invincible at all times, and the Outlander's blind effect prevented every boss in the game from even attacking. We tried New Game+, and the same was true. Maybe we just had a really overpowered party makeup, but the game was so ridiculously easy that it's possibly the least gritty game we've ever played. The only times we died were before we figured out our builds.

Synergy: The game has standard action-adventure RPG synergy. We had a guy with a shield that made everyone invincible, a guy who did massive AoE DPS, and a guy who could stun-lock any enemy in the game. Overall, that's a pretty good balance of synergy.

Implementation: The game is fairly well implemented overall, but there were a few things that were quite annoying. Most of them can be fixed by mods, but we should not have to rely on mod-hunting in order to make a game worth playing. First of all, the fact that you have to go create an account on some external website is very annoying. In a way, it's understandable, but that doesn't change the fact that it added unnecessary inconvenience to the game. Second, the fact that you can't respec by default is very bad design. Games that follow this action-adventure RPG skill tree design absolutely need a way to respec and allow you to experiment with different builds. We would not have played this game at all if there wasn't a way to add respecs. Also, the game's idea that all drops should have a extra-high level requirement in favor of forcing you to go by the stat requirements instead is annoying. A system like that sounds cool at first, but gets annoying really fast when your level 20 quest drops level 29 items. There were a few more annoying things, but the game had some good to balance it out. Being able to send your pet to buy and sell stuff is a great feature. The general ease of customizing items with sockets and enchantments is also a plus.

Longevity: Our time with the game lasted under 20 hours. Granted, we only did one playthrough, but the game really isn't interesting enough to warrant more than that. We tried New Game+, but it wasn't any more challenging. Running around invincible while the enemies get massacred doesn't stay fun for very long. Not to mention every boss getting owned by blindness to the point of not being able to attack us at all.

Depth: The game has pretty standard depth for a game with levels and a skill tree. However, I'm not sure different builds are worth using over other builds. The builds we had were literally unstoppable, so it's hard to imagine there are more powerful builds than that. It also didn't take us much time at all to figure out these builds. We only respeced a couple times each, and only early on in the game.

Fun: The fun depends on what character you are playing and what build you are using. In general, the game is pretty fun if you've got a decent build. I was unfortunately playing a build that did nothing but make the entire party invincible, so it wasn't that fun for me.

Posted by Nick on Jul 5, 2013.