One of my biggest gaming regrets is the fact that I got this game free from Humble Trove, but put off playing it before trading for these three games and realizing I don’t like the genre. Had I played this game before, I could’ve traded for different games, but oh well.
And yet, this CRPG manages to be even worse than those games (except Forced, maybe). Not only is there no controller support, but left-clicking both moves your character to where you clicked and also attacks the clicked enemy (right-clicking uses your equipped spell, so it’s not like they didn’t know). It’s extremely easy to mis-click and end up moving instead of attacking, especially since you have to click on an enemy’s base to attack, not the enemies themselves. How was this not changed after a single playtest??
Plus, as you might expect, enemies and level design are so barebones that the game barely even qualifies as a game. For the vast majority of the game, all rooms are just halls or marginally open areas, and all enemies just either run straight at you and attack or run away and shoot at you (not even bosses are different; they just have more ATK and HP). Likewise, your own attacks prevent you from moving until the animation is finished, so the vast, vast majority of attacks cannot be dodged, only tanked (to compensate, you’re showered with potions, and there’s even equipment that gives you HP regen). There’s exactly one enemy type that shoots a slow-moving, three way shot that you can actually avoid, but only if you’re using ranged attacks and your animation finishes in time; besides that, the closest you’ll get to challenge is when enemies abruptly run around you and you have to move the mouse to continue attacking them. Near the end of the game, traps are introduced: a grate that’ll shoot fire up every now and then, and some holes in the floor that produce spikes a second after you step on them. However, they make almost no difference to the gameplay because they’re never designed around the enemies; they just kinda sit there.
The final twist of the knife is that this game is another example of RPG-mechanics killing a game’s balance. It already starts off boring, but after a few floors, I did a sidequest that got me a weapon with 193 damage per second and could kill basically any enemy in one hit. Between me sinking most of my level-up points into attack and one or two times where I got a more powerful weapon, this lasted until the lava area (near the end of the game), where killing enemies took about as long as it did at the very beginning. Not long afterward, in the final area (the dark castle), the–again, and I cannot stress this enough–unavoidable enemy attacks started to kill my character very quickly, often before I could do anything to the aforementioned enemies (or even pause the game to take a potion). You could say it’s my fault for not putting many points into defense, but if the game gives me the option, why is there a wrong choice for what kind of character I want to make? Isn’t that the whole point of a Role-Playing Game? Still, at least the enemies die fast enough, but then we get to the final boss, who not only has that same high attack power, but is also a massive damage sponge (and can abruptly summon a swarm of regular enemies, as well as abruptly kill all of them at once to heal itself). A solid minute of attacking barely got a sliver of its health down, and even though I was super careful using health potions as quick as I could, I ended up dying so many times that the boss reset back to full HP. I did have a weapon that had around 200 higher damage per second than the one I had equipped, but since I had started putting my points into defense, I didn’t nearly have enough Magic to equip it, and the game won’t let you respec. I had to download a mod to respec, and even then, I barely qualified (because even that mod only lets you respec skill points, not stat upgrades). Now, I was dealing a sliver of damage per attack instead of per minute! Still, I was able to beat the final boss and see the game’s extremely lackluster “ending.”
Not recommended. If this and Hob were the only kind of games this company was going to make, it deserved to be dissolved.
You probably didn’t like Diablo II, then, as Torchlight was (to my mind) one of the best “Diablo clones” of its era. Like Torchlight, Diablo II (as you probably know) didn’t have controller support (not many PC-centric games did back then), left click to attack/move, right click to use loaded ability, featured single- or multi-player hack-and-slash dungeon crawl gameplay, stat allocation, a skill tree, no respecs, frequent potion quaffing, etc. In both games, you can hold shift to stay rooted while attacking (melee or ranged). They didn’t change it after playtesting because it used the same mechanic as the extremely popular Diablo franchise. I’m not sure what you mean by how you “[couldn’t] even pause the game to take a potion.” You generally use a hotkey for potions. And yes, it is possible to make a build that doesn’t hold up over the course of the game. It sounds like your “paper tiger” build eventually started dying before it could dish out sufficient damage. I agree that the lack of respecs is a pain. It’s something other dungeon crawlers eventually addressed.
But as you say, you don’t like the genre. I’m not sure that means it “barely even qualifies as a game,” but to each his own.
A lot of the things you say sound more like a description than a defense.
I haven’t played Diablo (though I’ve suspected it’s as bland as these other CRPGs), so I have to ask: does Diablo have the same issue where you have to click on the base of an enemy to attack (i.e. clicking on the upper part of the enemy means you walk around it)? I don’t see how the Torchlight devs couldn’t have been like “I like Diablo, but this part of the game could be improved.” Honestly, I wouldn’t mind the controls so much if they’d just let me set my regular attack as my loaded ability, but they don’t.
I also don’t remember Torchlight telling me I could hold the shift key to stay still and attack, but maybe I just missed it.
I meant that my health went from full to zero so quickly, I didn’t have enough time to push any key. Besides, I prefer pausing since it helps me take stock of what’s going on (on top of being able to use potions by right-clicking them).
Plus, the hotkeys are mapped to the number keys. My right hand has to be on the mouse since that’s how I move and attack, so how am I supposed to keep my left hand over the hotkeys and the spacebar and the shift key and the tab key? Everything’s so spread out; I keep hitting CAPS LOCK by accident. Why couldn’t core mechanics be mapped to QWER and/or ASDF?
I say that specifically because level design and enemy variety are nonexistent. Even if it weren’t for all the other issues, every battle is the same; there may be a bunch of stuff you can do, but the enemies only ever do one of two things: melee-attack you and shoot at you (three things if you count “summon more enemies”). Therefore, the same strategy will get you through most (if not all) of the game. If you start losing, you change your strategy from “attack” to “attack and use healing potions.” If you screw up your build and enemies start killing you too quickly (especially ranged enemies), you can’t “get good” using skill and reflexes to progress because the attacks are unavoidable; you can only grind. The game (dare I say the entire genre) is only one or two steps above a clicker.
The more I learn about CRPGs, the more I don’t understand their popularity (though after seeing Diablo 2 described as a “hack-and-slash,” I understand why “souls-like” had to be coined).