After hearing seen everyone raving about Torchlight for the last week I decided to give the demo a try when I saw how low the system requirements are.  My home PC is about 3 years old, but it has no trouble running the game with everything set to high. Yet, despite the low system requirements the game looks great.  Now, I should warn everyone that I don’t play a lot of PC games, and I don’t play any MMO games so a lot of this game play elements in Torchlight are pretty new to me. However, I do play a lot of RPGs on my Xbox 360 so I’m not completely new to the genre. Just this way of playing it.

The game is set in the mining town of Torchlight.  The town is directly above a large mine where people are searching for Ember. This ore is rare, but very powerful as it can enchant anything it touches. As the game starts you choose your character and begin to unravel the mystery of Torchlight.

Unlike many role playing games where you create a character and model him, or her, after your preferences Torchlight has three premade characters classes to choose from; the Destroyer, Vanquisher, and Alchemist.  The Destroyer is a melee focused and loves some dual wielding swords, maces, axes, spears and the like.  He likes to get up close and in the action of battle.  The Vanquisher uses primarily ranged weapons including bow, crossbow, pistol, and rifles. She is an expert marksman and can sit back and pick off enemies while staying out of harms way. The Alchemist is the mage class who uses his powers to summon creatures to help and take down enemies with spells.  While each character class has a primary attack type they can use any weapon in the game as long as the have the stats handle it. So, your Destroyer can easily handle a gun or your Alchemist can use that great spear you found.  It just probably is not the best use of their talents.  Each character class has three skill trees you can unlock as you level up. You can mix and match between skill trees as you progress, assuming you have the experience points to unlock what you want. I found the variety of skills and spells available to unlock to be quite impressive.

When you start the game in addition to your character you also choose your pet.  You have the option of a Dog or a Cat, but they really server the same purpose. Your pet helps you in battle and can carry extra loot that you find but don’t need.  Plus, if you fill your inventory you can send your pet back to the surface to sell everything they are carrying back to a merchant.  They will find their way automatically and bring you back the gold.  It is a mice option when you don’t need to restock on anything, but your inventory is getting full. It allows you to keep playing without unneeded trips back to town just to clear inventory.

I really like how the levels of the mine are visible below each other as you progress.  If you come to an area with a cliff or hole in the ground you can see the next level of the mine below you and get a preview of what you’ll be getting into as you get lower.  The levels are all randomly generated so each time you play the game everything is different. I played through the demo three times, once with each character class, and each time the level structure was quite different.

The developers have some nice options that really encourage multiple playthroughs and characters even though it is a single player game.  In the town you can leave loot you find in a chest for other your other characters to have access to. Also, you retire highly level characters and pass some of their attributes to a new character. Yet, with all this depth they do an excellent job of making the game easy enough to get into for new players.  Despite not knowing what I was doing I had no trouble quickly getting into the action.

Graphically the game has a really nicely done.  It has a cartoony element that really works well and keeps things fun and entertaining.  The sound and voice acting are also nicely done.  I tend to find the voice acting in RPG, especially for non-playable characters, to be really annoying, but in Torchlight that was not the case at all.  Each character’s voice seemed to fit them well and fit the overall atmosphere of the game.

The one issue I did have playing the demo might just be because I’m not use to playing games like this on the PC.  I was constantly clicking on enemies or items only to just barely miss and walk to that new area without taking an action. For my Destroyer that was not that big a deal because I would just click again and he would attack, but for the other two character classes it would walk me right up next to an enemy and completely defeat using a ranged attack.  For picking up loot, and there is a whole lot of loot, it was the same thing. I would click and think I was picking up an item only to walk on and see that it was still lying there on the ground. If the game just has a little more of a grace area in recognizing you’re trying to attack or pick up it would be really nice. As it is your mouse can get near an enemy/item so it highlights that thing, but then when you click it might be just off it even though it was highlighted.  Hopefully this is something that can be addressed.  It was not a major annoyance but it was frustrating.  If they would give an option to auto pickup loot you walk over that would probably take care of the issue as well.  You already auto pick up gold you walk over so if weapons, armor, and scrolls were the same it would make it a non-issue.

The demo is quite lengthy. I did not time it exactly, but I think my first character took a couple hours to reach the end of the demo. The other two characters were probably at least 90 minutes each. I have every intention to buy Torchlight, especially since it is just $20 once I finish Borderlands.  I try to keep my character leveling to one game at a time. Plus, if I wait a little while there should be some really great mods for Torchlight available.   To give you an idea of how much fun I was having in Torchlight’s demo, I intended to write this post a few days ago but instead played through the demo again.