Torchlight 2 is a loot-based RPG where you'll fight your way through dungeons by yourself or with up to 7 friends leveling up and killing bosses.
The action in the game starts straight after a small cutscene, dropping you outside of the town and you have to fight your way through to get in. This works well and slowly introduces the player to the controls and the combat system before they get to the town and can start getting quests and buying gear. The game plays like most other ARPG's going through the 3 Acts of the game which are based around a huge area outside a town with dungeons coming off of it in many different ways. A lot of the overworld and dungeons are randomized and this really adds to the replayability of the game, as well as giving the world a more natural feel.
There are four classes in the game, but many more can be added through the steam workshop. The default classes all have three different skill trees and are:
- Beserker: A fast-striking melee class
- Engineer: A class that can either rely on building robots to fight for them, using cannons or using a greathammer
- Mage: Your typical mage class, they can choose many paths to play down like summoner, pure wand or staff damage or doing elemental damage
- Archer: The archer class has a lot of different ranged weapons to choose from like guns, bows, crossbows and much more
These classes don't really play like your conventional classes in ARPGs, if you choose to play Engineer, and go down the 'building' tree you're not stuck to this, you can choose whatever skills for that character you want regardless of where you have put your levels previously, you can also choose to use any of the wide varieties of weapons in the game and because of this, you can make any run even with the same class feel incredibly different to the last one.
The gameplay is very fluid and you feel truly feel like a beast when you execute a few of your powers and destroy a boss. Every level up sends a golden shockwave out from your body and this makes it so satisfying to level up and makes you want to keep playing. All classes play well when you use them, there's no class that is harder to play than the other and none that are useless, they are all almost completely balanced so regardless of your play style you'll be able to play a satisfying run of the game.
The loot is what makes or breaks an ARPG in my opinion, there is so much focus into grinding up for the next suit of armour or weapon in this genre, but in Torchlight 2, the loot system is done without grinding. Not only do you find really good suits of armour from bosses and gamblers, you can also get them from random drops from the weakest of enemies, or in a secret secluded on the map, and this adds depth as well as making you want to explore every corner of all the dungeons you traverse. There is a huge variety in the armour, with them all having cosmetic differences and having randomly generated stats and enchantments.
The main story of the game is about 18 hours on a normal difficulty, but as the difficulty goes up or if you choose to play on hardcore, the game will go for almost double the time because you won't be able to just rush into battles, you'll have to think out each move you make, and once again this can make the game feel completely different to your last one.
When you're finish with the story, there is a huge end-game area to go into where you can by new 'maps' or dungeons to go and explore, or try NewGame+ through to NewGame++++ to raise the level cap and play through the game even harder.
Overall the game has very satisfying combat, and a deep loot system that will keep you playing for hours on end.
9/10