Published on 14th Aug 2011 by Anthony Gibson - Reviewed on XBOX 360 - Has had 224 views
Fun and immersive | Tons of items | Plenty of content
No multiplayer | Tacked-on storyline
Torchlight is a dungeon-crawling Action-RPG game created by ex-Blizzard employees who coded up Diablo II all those years ago. Those developers have since opened shop on their own and have taken to revitalizing the dungeon-crawler and I must say I loved every moment of it.
The game sends you into a small mining town called Torchlight where the people are facing hard times due to the inability to mine for various ore's. The inhabitants of the mine have been tainted by corrupt ember and it's starting to affect townspeople, calling you in for help in these dire circumstances.
The story only really exists to have you enter the mine and for the most part can be either read or ignored. It's a shame the developer didn't hold the story in high-regard as I'd originally had high hopes for this games plotline after seeing little titbits' around the internet.
Torchlight allows you to pick from three different classes. The destroyer (fighter), the vanquisher (ranger/thief) and the alchemist (mage). The class you choose also dictates the gender of the character and the only form of immediate customization is naming your character and their pet.
With that said however, once you make your way through the game, you'll gain skill points and attribute points to power up your character based on their own important stats and their move-sets. Unfortunately there will be times when you need to add attribute points into specific statistics as much of the games gear is locked down by those values.
The game drops loot in mass amounts. You'll easily gain new items, enchant gems and so much more by just killing the monsters in the mine. You're only able to carry 50 items at a time, but you can pass items to your pet and they can go back and sell the unwanted items from their newly-filled inventory.
The combat is very simple but hellishly fun. Each class has a basic attack which does a good deal of damage, then using the moves you've learnt through the skill tree, you can bind four of those to various buttons on the controller allowing you to mix-and-match to see what combinations work best on enemies.
The inventory system has been completely revamped on the XBOX 360 to allow for easier management of items. On the PC, the player would have used the mouse to click-and-drag items around but on the console it's as easy as using the trigger buttons for a desired outcome.
While playing through, I couldn't help but think the game could have done with a multiplayer option, but unfortunately it's purely a single player experience. I think that a multiplayer aspect to the game would have made it the perfect game to get together with my mates and just cause mass havoc.
Torchlight is a really nice looking game. It's got a cartoonish style that just weeps colour out onto the screen. With eerily colourful dungeons, characters and objects, you'll truly feel like you've entered a fantasy world full of intrigue and wonder.
The soundtrack's quite good too. A few of the songs therein are quite catchy but overall I found that after I while I switched to listening to my own music.
If you're looking for a proper dungeon crawler on console, you can't go wrong with Torchlight. I found the game truly immersive and at only £10 (1200msp) you'd be hard-pressed to find another game that's as impressive and long as Torchlight.
