Torchlight 2 Release Date set

[Taem]

I can say this game is truly great! I can't believe how much like Diablo 2 it is. The music is almost a direct rip-off, as well as the play-style and HUD interface! And it's not nearly as cartoonish as people say it looks. Considering the games moddability, I'd consider this game a contender for the Lounge, however I have yet to reach the end of the game, and I heard it's short on content. Anyways, well worth the $20 investment; my two sons purchased it and so did I, so all three of us can play together via LAN. All this game needs now is more content and closed servers . I hope mods can actually add more content, like the Never Winter Nights mods did.

[MonTy]

I enjoyed about 75% of the game. Started on elite difficulty but had to tone it down to veteran near the end as I just wanted to finish it. My Two-handed Engineer with decent gear was getting beat up quite a bit- think I chugged nearly two thousand potions. Enemies tracked your character a bit too much, they would wait until I stood still to cast their spells/attacks. Since I wielded a slow attacking two-hander, this meant if I attacked right away that I would get hit back, so on elite difficulty the game became about waiting for them to attack, and then slam down with my two-hander.

All in all I did enjoy TL2 and certainly got my money's worth. The game was a massive loot pinata, I enjoyed the steady stream of unique and set items.

[Chesspiece_face]

I enjoyed about 75% of the game. Started on elite difficulty but had to tone it down to veteran near the end as I just wanted to finish it. My Two-handed Engineer with decent gear was getting beat up quite a bit- think I chugged nearly two thousand potions. Enemies tracked your character a bit too much, they would wait until I stood still to cast their spells/attacks. Since I wielded a slow attacking two-hander, this meant if I attacked right away that I would get hit back, so on elite difficulty the game became about waiting for them to attack, and then slam down with my two-hander.

All in all I did enjoy TL2 and certainly got my money's worth. The game was a massive loot pinata, I enjoyed the steady stream of unique and set items.

I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I sprung for this game and after increasing frustration I've actually come down with buyers remorse.

It became apparent rather quickly that I would not spend anywhere near as much time as I have with any of the Diablo games or even Torchlight 1 on this sequel. That's ok though, Diablo 3 is serving as my brainless slaughter-fest at the moment, I don't need another game to fill that slot. Frankly I'm not even able to find enough enjoyment in this to finish the story however.

The frustrations I found in the demo pretty much carry throughout the game (at least up until act III where I've put the game down). You are constantly put in challenge arenas which consist of a small area with a sea of respawning minions and one boss that needs to be killed to pass it. Running around in circles for 30 minutes hoping against hope that some minor damage is passing on to the boss is not my idea of fun.

As an aside (and not to get too hyperbolic); I've also, after playing this far, come down with a visceral hatred for Max Schaefer. It takes some serious balls to talk shit about another development team for the new stuff they tried (some good, some bad) when your new game is literally nothing more than a cut and paste of the things you did before. I know apologists will cry out "Torchlight II is an homage to Diablo II!!!". No, it's not. An homage is the minor throw-outs they have sprinkled throughout the game ala Chester Copperpot and One-Eyed Willy. Torchlight II is nothing more than a copy of D2 with a Torchlight skin.

I never thought I would say this but I fear Runic may be my new Bethesda. A game company that hasn't come up with a new interesting idea in 15 years and yet somehow everyone still sucks them off while in, what I can only assume is a nostalgia induced haze.

[FoxBat]

As an aside (and not to get too hyperbolic); I've also, after playing this far, come down with a visceral hatred for Max Schaefer. It takes some serious balls to talk shit about another development team for the new stuff they tried (some good, some bad) when your new game is literally nothing more than a cut and paste of the things you did before.

I thought David Brevik was the one "talking shit." Schaefer's criticisms that I've seen were phrased pretty mildly.

[Chesspiece_face]

I thought David Brevik was the one "talking shit." Schaefer's criticisms that I've seen were phrased pretty mildly.

Brevik was definitely "talking shit". The interviews I've seen from Schaefer seemed to be your normal boilerplate commentary when Diablo 3 originally came out ("They made choices I wouldn't have but we are all playing it and having fun") but as time went on they seemed to become much more underhanded. There was the big blow-up when Jay Wilson said "fuck off loser" on his facebook and I've seen differing statements that the comment was directed towards Brevik or Schaefer.

Either way I'm left with an overall negative impression of the way Runic has presented themselves. This wouldn't be a major issue, but when you are talking crap about the choices other development teams are making when your game has nothing new to offer the genre and is little more than cut and paste I'm left with an even greater sour taste in my mouth. There are development teams out there right now (ala Blizzard with Diablo 3 and Grinding Gear Games with Path of Exile) that are taking serious risks looking for new ways to expand the genre and for the leads on the Runic team to essentially sit on the sidelines and point and laugh reeks of shamefulness. It's low.

Torchlight I came at a time when there was a dearth of options in the action RPG genre and it came in at a budget price point so you could overlook all of it's faults. Torchlight II doesn't have those benefits. There are more than enough options to pick from and the price point is no longer as budget as it once was with Path of Exile pushing free to play.

If it weren't for all the interviews and comments made towards other teams (specifically D3) I probably could have just breezed through Torchlight II and been satisfied with it as a small distraction. As it is I was completely unable to play through the game and ignore all of the items that felt like they were directly cribbed from other games.

Final thoughts on Torchlight II: It wins the prize for total amount of times during play that I said or thought "You douche bags".

[NotSoDarklord]

Chesspiece it seems as though a fair amount of your gripes with TL2 are outside of and removed from the actual gameplay itself. I'm reminded of the anti-EA fallout that games like BF3 and Sim City are subjected to.

[Taem]

I thought David Brevik was the one "talking shit." Schaefer's criticisms that I've seen were phrased pretty mildly.

Brevik was definitely "talking shit". The interviews I've seen from Schaefer seemed to be your normal boilerplate commentary when Diablo 3 originally came out ("They made choices I wouldn't have but we are all playing it and having fun") but as time went on they seemed to become much more underhanded. There was the big blow-up when Jay Wilson said "fuck off loser" on his facebook and I've seen differing statements that the comment was directed towards Brevik or Schaefer.

Either way I'm left with an overall negative impression of the way Runic has presented themselves. This wouldn't be a major issue, but when you are talking crap about the choices other development teams are making when your game has nothing new to offer the genre and is little more than cut and paste I'm left with an even greater sour taste in my mouth. There are development teams out there right now (ala Blizzard with Diablo 3 and Grinding Gear Games with Path of Exile) that are taking serious risks looking for new ways to expand the genre and for the leads on the Runic team to essentially sit on the sidelines and point and laugh reeks of shamefulness. It's low.

Torchlight I came at a time when there was a dearth of options in the action RPG genre and it came in at a budget price point so you could overlook all of it's faults. Torchlight II doesn't have those benefits. There are more than enough options to pick from and the price point is no longer as budget as it once was with Path of Exile pushing free to play.

If it weren't for all the interviews and comments made towards other teams (specifically D3) I probably could have just breezed through Torchlight II and been satisfied with it as a small distraction. As it is I was completely unable to play through the game and ignore all of the items that felt like they were directly cribbed from other games.

Final thoughts on Torchlight II: It wins the prize for total amount of times during play that I said or thought "You douche bags".

Would you like to hear something funny? I almost posted a link to the Reddit page, Facebook fallout, and Blizzard blow-up for you D3 fanboys (not used as a derogatory term in this instance), but chose to let it go. Unlike you, I had quite the opposite experience from having read everything I read; I felt Brevik was being very polite and just giving his opinion as a player, outside of his company's stance. And then Blizzard had to make it official by posting comments on their official Facebook page by Blizzard employees. So subtle... so lame. I felt Blizzard was very unprofessional in this instance and now loathe them even more than I did when they became Activision-Blizzard. This, before the fallout a few months back when the fired the lead art designer (article was in Game Informer). I'm at the point now where I won't even support Blizzard with a single penny of my money.

[MonTy]

Schaefer's criticisms that I've seen were phrased pretty mildly.

I have to agree, I've read so many interviews and even met Shaefer in person. He comes across as a pretty humble guy. Runic advertised it would be more of the same, just bigger, fine-tuned, and presented better. Path of Exiles is not out yet, and if you want to play it now you'd have to pay $10, wait for an open beta, or get lucky with their random cd key giveaway.

[FoxBat]

There was the big blow-up when Jay Wilson said "fuck off loser" on his facebook and I've seen differing statements that the comment was directed towards Brevik or Schaefer.

http://www.gameranx.com/img/12-Aug/diablo3hate.png

I find it really hard to imagine how that isn't talking about Brevik, with the interview being linked and all.

And no I don't think Brevik's comments are defensible as polite. You might have to be working on the project to read it, but what he basically said was that D3 was doomed from the start because there was something wrong with the people working on it. I.E. the problem isnt' that Jay and co. made some bad choices, it's that Jay was working on it at all. Whether true or not that's the definition of a personal attack.

Either way I'm left with an overall negative impression of the way Runic has presented themselves.

Brevik works for "Gazillion" or whoever on the upcoming Marvel Heroes, not Runic. If you got whatever impression purely from Schaefer's comments then that's your perogotive, but all I recall him critiquing were things there were hard to disagree with. For me I agree that the core gameplay experience is so much better with D3, but that doesn't erase the non-random overworld, limited incentive to re-level without skill commitment, online requirements, effect of AH on the item hunt, and so forth.

[Hammerskjold]

There was the big blow-up when Jay Wilson said "fuck off loser" on his facebook and I've seen differing statements that the comment was directed towards Brevik or Schaefer.

If it wasn't for the whole social media thingamajig, to me it sounds like any run of the mill interoffice\rival company trash talking.

Or something like a soap opera set in the exciting world of vidya game companies.

If you want to talk about getting cheesed off by a video game company behaviour, I still think this classic is pretty hard to top.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana

Nothing wins over customers by saying you will be made into 'their bitch', or telling them to 'suck it down'.

There are development teams out there right now (ala Blizzard with Diablo 3 and Grinding Gear Games with Path of Exile) that are taking serious risks looking for new ways to expand the genre and for the leads on the Runic team to essentially sit on the sidelines and point and laugh reeks of shamefulness. It's low.

I dunno, personally I think the genre of ARPG, (which IMO D1 if not invented, at least brought it mainstream) is now in the same boat as 'X-COM: UFO Defense'. Great game. Possibly one of the greatest game in it's genre. I hear many fans and players wants another X-COM. You know the 2 complaints I often read about whenever a someone makes an X-COM type game?

1) It's too much like X-COM. It needs something more than just a rehash.

2) It's not enough like X-COM. It needs to keep the elements that makes X-COM so good.

And sometimes people can be talking about the exact same game.

[Chesspiece_face]

Brevik works for "Gazillion" or whoever on the upcoming Marvel Heroes, not Runic. If you got whatever impression purely from Schaefer's comments then that's your perogotive...

True.

I think whenever one comes away disappointed with a game that they had expected to be enjoyable there is a level of cognitive dissonance that settles in. Like any instance of cognitive dissonance the individual can respond to it in multiple ways. Buyer's remorse is by definition, post-decision dissonance. I've gotten into many arguments over the last few months with individuals related to their disappointment over Diablo III. I'm sure many of them would love to rationalize me as "just a Blizzard fanboy", but the reality is I'm just extremely interested in getting to the core of where the the dissonance these people are feeling is and in turn figuring out what real problems exist with these games and what can be done to amend them. It progresses nothing to say "I hate Diablo III because you are forced to use the RMAH to progress" when that is a patently false statement. The only purpose it serves is masturbatory self congratulation and an easing of your own personal dissonance. Let's dig deeper and try to find the real underlying cause creating our dissatisfaction.

I find myself in a similar situation now with Torchlight II. Why is it that this game has left me with such a negative feeling? I think in part that my inherent feelings towards the game are amplified having, on some level, been neck deep in rampant fanboyism related to Diablo III the last few months. This murky sea of negativity looks for any evidence to support and reaffirm their beliefs and this has resulted in a great level of generalization regarding the "original Blizzard North people" and their great hatred of everything Diablo III. It's possible that I've conflated statements or interviews and miss-attributed them to the wrong persons.

This, however, only accounts for the amplification of my feelings. What are the core issues that cause me frustration?

- Firstly, and most importantly is the level of competition. Diablo III really lifted the bar for the genre in terms of scope and grandiosity. Even the much maligned auction house is a huge step in how it incorporates massive trading networks directly into the game. If Diablo III has expanded the genre vertically, Path of Exile is putting in serious work expanding it horizontally. Succeed or fail, a lot of the stuff they are doing in that game is really the wild wild west of ARPGs. So going into Torchlight II the question was "where are they going to plant their flag?" And... they don't. Not only do they not plant a flag, but often while playing the game it felt like they didn't even bring a flag. They just pointed at other flags. "This is an interesting area it feels like Zangermarsh. Oh..." "Hey look, I'm in Silverpine. Oh..." "Hahah that enemy just cast Arcane Sentry! Oh..." In that one of Torchlight's most unique resources is entirely wasted. When they trumpeted the fact that you were going to be able to explore the world of Torchlight I really expected more from them than what seems like a mishmash of other cool ideas. (Having said that, I can say that their character animators consistently hit home runs and all accolades they receive are well deserved.)

- As for actual gameplay I think they really dropped the ball on character development. (*Disclaimer* Everything in this section is related to playing the Engineer as that is the only character I've played currently. It is entirely possible that other characters are done more successfully.) If Path of Exile has shown anything it's that there is ample room in the genre for customization and point allocating. And yet in the early stages of Torchlight II (as melee) it really feels as if there is no reason to allocate points into anything other than passives. On top of that the melee player seems to be constantly punished as every boss fight is a constant spawn of minions forcing you to spend 90% of your time running in circle waiting for summon spells to come off cool down or for an odd opportunity to whack an erstwhile minion to try to generate a bit of charge. This may not be an issue on lower difficulties, but on Veteran and Elite it is excessively punitive and really belittles anyone that chooses to play a melee character. (Like I said before, it feels like Diablo III only if every champ pack was Immune Minions.)

Add to that the issue that Frag brought up earlier in that certain classes (melee engineer included) are extremely dependent on lucky drops and you have great odds on higher difficulties that you will hit dead ends. In other ARPGs the go-to solution is to go back to earlier areas and farm levels or gear until you are ready to proceed. In Torchlight II the areas are cleared. Solution? Go outside of your single player campaign, start a LAN game, and here in the sub-options you are able to repopulate a game. All this so that you can proceed in your basic single player game.

The end result of all this is that by the end of the game I lost all care for trying to play decently and just wanted to get it over with.

Maybe I'll pick it back up here and there when I'm bored and try to tease out interest in it. Maybe it would have been better had I actually waited to play it when other games of it's like were not so fresh. I'm definitely interested in hearing other people's viewpoints as to possibly educate my perspective but all-in-all I found Torchlight II to be a frustrating experience. (I would definitely be interested in hearing more about Monty's experiences with the 2-hand Engineer as that is what I played as well.)

[Hammerskjold]

I downloaded the TL-2 demo, and it convinced me with one thing that it's a matter of when, not if I will buy the full version.

It's a fun game. It's fun at casual mode, and it's fun at elite+HC mode. It's just plain fun. It's not perfect, it will never satisfy some people's criteria. There are some cosmetic issue like some pants not showing up properly, this after Runic made the promise of 100% more pants!

But seriously, along with other things that I personally agree with and support like offline Single player, mod-ability, not having a closed server etc. It's almost amazingly retro and refreshing that there's still people that wants to make you know, a fun video game.

And it's hard to hate on a game that allows you to dress your avatar like a pirate, sword and pistol by his/her side.

[MonTy]

I personally agree with and support like offline Single player, mod-ability, not having a closed server etc.

Hear, hear! For a month I've been suffering from internet packet loss / ping spikes and my provider has no clue what's wrong. I can't play most of my regular games (I had just started really getting back into and enjoying Diablo 3), so Torchlight 2 offline (with mods) has provided some decent ARPG gaming. I tried getting back into D2 & Median XL but it's hard after playing it for so long. The recent synergy mod for TL2 felt more balanced for elite difficulty, so I'm enjoying it more than my first vanilla playthrough.

Sure, the game feels like a less serious Diablo, but with mods it's shaping into a decent ARPG game with more modern mechanics.

[Hammerskjold]

Sure, the game feels like a less serious Diablo, but with mods it's shaping into a decent ARPG game with more modern mechanics.

I bought the full version, non Steam standalone version. Yes Steam has some great sales etc, but I wanted a standalone version anyway with no other things attached, no I don't want the extended warranty\club membership\curly fries etc. (Ok I'll take the curly fries, but only that.)

It's funny reading some of the reviews now, some people hate some details that I like, and vice versa. Eg: one reviewer missed the inventory 'tetris', whereas I say goodbye, and good riddance.

Some reviewers complain about the story, I say at it's core games like these is a hack and slasher. Always was. A story is a nice to have, but not a core requirement. Replace 'Dark Wanderer' with 'The Alchemist', and theres yer story.

I like the art direction however, and how they made a virtue out of necessity because let's face it. While Runic is not some 2 person indie working out of their garage, they can't compete budget wise, with a certain 900 lbs gorilla company, owned by a bigger 9000 megatonne super saiyan simian megacorp.

So they did the smart thing, and they didn't. Instead of fully rendered 3d cutscenes that screams dolllah dollah bills, they went with a 2d styled cutscenes. Call it my bias, but I always liked this style and it's dynamic when done right*. Like this:


*I don't hate on the Starwars Clone wars 3d cartoon. But I always thought the previous one done by the creator of Samurai Jack, was awesome.

Funny enough, I don't know if it's intentional or not, the 2d cutscene is sepia toned, while the actual gameplay is lower poly with cleanly done warm and cool colours. Maybe a happy accident, or a sly response to satisfy all those players who want 'brown grit on everything' to make things extra hardcore and gritty and so dark you have to spell it with a Q. Like 'Darque'. And I'm a D1 player who still have D1: HF installed. There's gothic dark, and then there's muddy and I can't see a damn thing because everything is too damn dark. Sorry, 'darqh'.

It's not perfect, though there is no such animal. There is a technical issue that threatens to intrude too much into the gameplay. I dunno if it's a memory leak or what, I'm not a compuscientist guy. What I do know is sometimes in a long game session, framerates starts to drop to a stuttering speed.

While I don't have the latest rig, it was able to play it ok on the highest graphics settings, and noticeably faster when some stuff was turned down. I thought that was the problem, but it wasn't. I ran it on windowed version, and I thought that was the fix.

Turns out me exiting\restarting was the 'fix'. Now I hope this will be fixed in the next patch, granted it's still a fairly new game so Runic is still hunting a few loose bugs\ glitches.

But this kind of technicality can really hurt a game like this, because this is the kind of game where 'I just wanted to play for 30 minutes at 9:30pm, what the hell I looked up it's now 5 AM?!!!' is actually a compliment.

In short, hopefully some technical issues will be fixed soon. Aside from that, it's a fun game. Yeah sure, for 20$ and change or so, but would it stand up to a full retail price test? For me, I would say yes. Now I'm glad they went the digital download route to be able to offer the game for 20$, but I say I feel it was worth my money.


TL,DR version edit:

TL-2= tweaked and streamlined elements of D1&D2 + Gauntlet Legends + pets with backpacks and goggles + fun + hugs and kisses for players who wants an Offline SP option.

[Mavfin]

By the way, the promised 'soon after launch' Mac version of Torchlight II finally came out in February or March of this year. (2015)

A bit late, perhaps?

[Hammerskjold]

By the way, the promised 'soon after launch' Mac version of Torchlight II finally came out in February or March of this year. (2015)

A bit late, perhaps?

And linux, might have been what the cryptically hinted "additional delay" was about.

[Bolty]

Thread necro to announce that for today, December 30th 2020, Torchlight II is free on the Epic Games store. It will be free until 11:00 AM US eastern time on December 31st.

You can get it here. No Bolties were paid in the creation of this post.

[LennyLen]

Thanks Bolty. Installing now.

[MonTy]

Definitely worth playing through (especially for free). Still prefer it over TL3 by miles, but I'll give them some time to patch TL3 before my final verdict.