Although it could use a tutorial or two, Torchlight delivers hours of action-packed dungeon crawling for a low price.
Torchlight can be a bit difficult for new players to pick up and play. Most new games do the decency of explaining each element as it comes along, and (perhaps more importantly) providing an archive of these tips for the player to review if they accidentally skipped them, forgot them, or just picked up the game after a long hiatus. Torchlight doesn't really deliver on these things. It teaches you the basics - how to move and attack, how to learn spells and level up - but even some essential things such as hotbar management and ability usage are left a little unexplained. What sucks more is that some of the controls make no sense - left clicking the icon on a toolbar traditionally performs the action, but in Torchlight it brings up the menu to assign an ability to it. Right-clicking is the medium for using an ability, something that is easy to forget. Certain terms in the enchanting menu, or other player-NPC interactions seem a bit odd and unexplained. And sure, you could read through the manual, but in an age where most games walk you through the controls and solidify them in place before letting you loose, this shouldn't be a necessity.
Still, once you get a firm grasp on the basic skills, the game immediately throws the action right at you. The combat is as simple as it is beautiful. Right-left click spams are certainly one method of getting past encounters, but on the tougher or larger encounters you will find a use for every single ability in your arsenal. Enemies may at first seem to be minor in number, but as you engage your foe you'll find more lurking nearby, and before you know it you and your pet are drawn into a massive mosh-pit. Every time that you come out alive, you are left with a treasury of loot and a satisfied grin on your metaphorical face, making sure to collect everything before tossing yourself into the next group.
I guess my biggest complaint about Torchlight, once you get used to the controls, is that it can get too easy too fast. What's more, you can't alter the difficulty, so when you're ten levels in and find yourself breezing through enemies, the challenge in the game is limited to side-levels. And the side-levels, though challenging, fun, and adding loads of hours onto the game, kind of ruin the main quest. You run a few side dungeons, each of which are a good length, and you'll find yourself catapulted levels above your progress in the main quest, wearing far superior gear. If you spend several levels in the main dungeon, the enemies will eventually catch up to you, but where's the point in these side dungeons if doing them will suck out the challenge in the main quest.
This could have been easily avoided by scaling the main quest dungeons to your character, perhaps based on your character's level when he enters. Rather, the level of the enemies corresponds with how physically far you have gone into the dungeon, taking lots of difficulty out for people who want to side quest. You're left with a difficult choice - focus on the main quest and get it done fast, or do some side quests for extra hours of gameplay but sacrifice your entertainment when you get back into the main cave. Most RPGs offer sidequests as a mean to gain a slight advantage - some better gear and a bit of experience - over your enemies, but Torchlight's just put you on a power pedestal.
I love Torchlight's levelling system. It is both classic and new. I've never been a fan of statistics, as I always find them more about restricting you to a certain class (and, if you place a few points wrong, punishing you for the rest of the game). But Torchlight, being limited to four very basic skills, offers a statistics/attributes system that actually seems to let you forge your own character. That, combined with the very WoW-esque three-specialization talent tree, allows for a good number of working class combinations. As proof, I can comfortably play as an alchemist - the character designated primarily for casting, mostly from afar - wielding a mace and a shield. I'm able to use his powerful melee magic and large mana pool while at the same time bashing away at my opponents with my mace. It's a great combination, and one of dozens you could think up.
The inventory system is handled very well also. When your inventory gets full, you can give a load to your pet and have it run to town to sell it - at the expense of a period of time without their assistance in combat, which increases as you get further down the dungeon. This means you don't have to pick and choose what you want to keep or toss, you can pick up everything and just toss it to your pet for some fast cash. But this doesn't mean that you'll become a multi-millionaire and ruin the game economy - the basic items like identification scrolls and potions are a decent price, but the big things like permanent enchantments cost a good chunk of money. The amount of money you spend and the amount of money you make work well together, ensuring that all of your money can be converted into better gear in one way or another without breaking the game. The game forces you to stick with your item choices and sometimes punishes you for being too eager. For example, gems can not be removed from sockets without destroying either the gem or the item, and enchanting a piece of equipment can potentially remove all enchantments from it, wasting all of the money you've spent on it. It's a refreshing step from modern games where a bad choice can be rectified by constant quick-saving, or where there isn't a mess that you can't easily get yourself out of.
As I stated, so long ago, in the opening paragraph, Torchlight isn't spectacular in non-gameplay elements. The music provides decent ambience, but there aren't any heart-wrenching chords or intense moments. The story provides a reason for your path of destruction to the bowels of the earth, but isn't incredibly urgent or compelling. The graphics aren't eyesores, but cartoonish and nothing quite impressive.
In the end, Torchlight is a lightweight Diablo-type game that I would recommend to anyone interested in the genre. It won't cost you more than a few days of gas would, and should provide hours of entertainment if you like action-packed RPGs. I fully intend to buy the upcoming sequel.