Torchlight II PC Review

The story in Torchlight II isn’t exactly it’s main focus, this much is clear from fairly early on as the game starts with a animated storybook style cutscene. It’s typical RPG fair throughout as far as any plot goes, evil thing tries to take good thing, heroes step up to stop him. To save some trouble, here is the main story from Torchlights homepage:

“Years ago, the Heroes of Torchlight saved the world from the ancient evil, Ordrak. Now someone has stolen the essence of his power, and is using it to siphon off the power of the world’s elemental Guardians. After witnessing the destruction wrought by this terrible artifact, the players begin a quest to stop the villain’s insane plan and restore balance to the six elements. The trail leads from the beleaguered Estherian Steppes, through the war-torn Mana Wastes, and finally the haunted ruins of an ancient dwarven civilization, before descending to a realm where no mortal has set foot for thousands of years—and where an even more terrible evil struggles to unleash itself upon the world.” – http://www.torchlight2game.com

Rather than blow you away with a deep story about good vs evil, the world and the plot within it played out subtlety. The purpose of any story here is to give you a half decent reason to walk around the vast lands, hacking and slashing at what every tries to kill you.

The real focus of this game is simple, loot! and lots of it. Just about everything you hit and open throws out a few bits of armour, coin, a weapon or something along those lines. The same again can be said about EXP as you happily grind through the levels and apply stat boosts to your characters. While in many ways the game isn’t anything like the original Borderlands game, it does share a lot of its general mindset. Simple plot, followed by entertaining combat, looting and level grinding. If that’s not your idea of fun, then this game really isn’t for you.

The main characters play bit of a weak role too. Much like the overall story in the game, they have little (if any) impact on the overall game and serve more a purpose of picking the one you think looks cool. Now I’m fine with that as a concept and the plus side is that you do at least have a robust skill set for each character throughout the game.

The mysterious Outlander – A gunslinger with some secret weapons

The academy trained Embermage – The Empire’s front-line spellcaster

The savage Berserker – A two-fisted barbarian from the frozen north

The resourceful Engineer – The ironclad powerhouse of the Imperial frontier

Some classic classes to choose from, with a soldier, mage, melee and engineer to choose from to suit your style. The only real difference though (other than visual appearance) is their skill trees. Any characters can wield any weapon as far as I can tell, so you can still be a mage and run around with a shotgun if you wish.