![]() ![]() Equipment tends to be compared on a fairly linear scale: stats are boiled down to a simple Strength/Dexterity/Intellect/Vitality system – you won’t ever need to weigh up the opportunity cost of sacrificing attack speed and accuracy for a bigger damage number, for example. I’ve also never really needed to stop and think at any point in the game. This makes ranged classes particularly cumbersome to play since there’s no way to kite enemies confidently (you can rotate your character in place by clicking down the left-stick though) but there are also very few enemies which require this level of complex movement. There is no way to manually lock onto enemies, by the way – the right-stick is used for camera control. ![]() The game has a very weak, contextual lock-on based on the direction your character is facing when you hit the attack button. Targeting is also hampered by the control setup. It is a slight reduction in the amount of active skill slots compared to the PC version, but it’s more than enough to get by. The game maps quite faithfully to the Switch’s controls – Movement is handled with the left stick, autoattacks with A, health and mana potions mapped to the shoulders and the rest of the face buttons and triggers open for active skills. I’m not always in the mood for that conversation though – and when I’m able to shut off that voice, that is when I really, really appreciate what this game is trying to do.Ĭombat is fast and fun, owing to a simple control scheme and some very juicy animations. Overall, there’s a useful conversation to have about what games are valuable uses of time, and what ultimately can be gained from the act of play. It’s like saying the carrot is dangling the perfect distance away from my mouth – far enough that I’ll never reach it, but close enough that I’ll always want to keep trying. And, because of this nature, reviewing the game does feel a little silly – like I’m praising the carrot for being aesthetically tantalising (knowing full well that I’ll never actually get to eat it that’s the whole point) or the fishing line it’s hanging on for being particularly transparent and noticeable. Its speed and ease of access just make the compulsive gameplay loop a lot more apparent, and a lot more compelling, than most other RPGs of its kind. ![]() This is to say that Torchlight II, in every sense of its design, is a carrot on a stick. It wants to keep the player locked into the power fantasy of killing monsters, getting stronger, and pushing forward – and it’s discarded anything which does not directly contribute to this end. There are a lot of things missing from Torchlight (namely a deep story, advanced skills, a complex player stats system, overworld puzzles, etc.) but each of these things is in its own way inessential to the experience this game wants to be. Polish simplifies things, it removes the chaff of the experience and keeps the remaining package laser-focused. When I say that Torchlight II’s design is polished, its design philosophy is really a double-edged sword. It’s just plain and simple: kill, loot, upgrade, repeat. You’ll never need to figure out where to go, or solve any tedious puzzles, or do any fetch quests. The game is extremely kinetic – you’ll receive a very small amount of quests and all of them have simple objectives and clear waypoint markers. It’s modeled after Blizzard’s Diablo II and WildTangent’s PC game Fate (anyone remember that one?), in that it offers a rapidly looping cycle of killing monsters, picking up loot, upgrading characters and then killing stronger monsters. Torchlight II is, mechanically, a simple action RPG. It’s a fantastic port too – this is a game which greatly benefits from portability, and being able to share the experience. None of us expected Panic Button to take the game to current-generation consoles, much less the Nintendo Switch. The studio’s two action RPG titles were examples of impeccable polish – immensely playable, worked well in short bursts or long sessions, solo or in a party, and were compulsive like nothing else on the market. When Runic Games sadly closed its doors in 2017, we all thought we’d seen the end of the Torchlight franchise. ![]()
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