'Torchlight' Review (8/10)

I had no idea Torchlight was going to be so much fun. Then again, if we disect the game, it's really a rehash of the very tried and true Diablo formula. I bought the Steam version and so, it's got some nuances to get used to but at the end of the day, it's a hoot to play. There is, however, one absolutely unforgiveable failure of the game -- no multiplayer! For a game that so faithfully reproduces the tried and true Diablo formula (albeit with a brighter and cheery outlook on things), it's very dissapointing to not be able to fire the game up for some good old fashioned LAN partying.

The game mechanics (and the game as a whole) are, very much a retake on Diablo II. Players familiar with the franchise will recognize numerous elements from olde. For the benefit of those who were unfortunate enough not to have experienced the fun that was D2,

1. Gambling. You pay a not-insignificant (but not prohibitively expensive) fee for a random item that has not been identified. Upon purchasing said item, it becomes identified as either totally epic, a waste of money or somewhere in between.
2. Three classes (as per the original Diablo). They've been reinterpreted slightly, but the mechanics are pretty standard fare: a melee fighter, a ranged fighter and a pet summoner/caster.
3. The need to identify almost everything (although sadly there is no Deckard Cain to autoidentify stuff for you).
4. Socketing and enchanting are back however the mechanics for handling enchangement are, in my opinion, superior.

Large portions of Torchlight have a very heavy Diablo feel to them -- because it's development was led by the team in charge of Diablo/DiabloII. The 'twist' on the dark and gloomy feel of the Diablo universe comes from the infusion from the team that was responsible for Mythos. Funny enough, this was also the same group from Hellgate London. It's a small [developer] world after all.

By far and large Torchlight's strengths draw from it's tried and true roots:

• Simplicity. It is ridiculously easy to get up and going with the game. If you've ever spent any amount of time in gaming and a-RPG gaming in particular, then you probably already know all that you need to know to play the game.
• Endlessness. I've played the game now for flatout 35hours. And while I've mastered several mechanics of the games, the quests, the baddies, the exploration just goes on and on. Sure sign of a good game.
• Oddities. The inclusion of a permenant cat/dog pet that you start the game with - that can carry loot, go back to town and sell on your behalf, fight and even cast spells and transform ... an amazing addon to what could have been a really silly trivialty. The inclusion of 'fishing' as a farmable activity that is totally unnecessary but is a totally risk-free and potentially beneficial activity allows for a nice break from the hectic in-your-face hack-and-slash.
• Enchantments. The mechanics for enchanting items is awesome: you pay a fee to get something enchanted and with every successful enchantment, you the chances of a failed enchancement go up (by 2%) ... and when it fails, you lose all of the enchantments (even the ones that came with the item!) Makes for some good addition studies!

Torchlight isnt perfect though: while the click interface is relatively straightforward, you get the feeling that (even totally zoomed out at 1920x1200), every thing is just too cartoonized-big which makes it hard to click on discrete elements. The lack of a rotatable camera is kind of a sore point (it is, after all, 2010) but with the simplicity of how the game works, it's not as necessary as others. The big downer is, of course, lack of any kind of multiplayer.

For a game to spawn from the people who made Diablo/DiabloII - to not have multiplayer is a damn shame. Especially when you sit down and you play the game for a dozen hours and you realize how smooth the experience is (in general). It just feels that the lack of multiplayer totally saps what could have been an absolute blast of mayhem. There are reports that there is a free-to-play MMO in the pipes, so I guess I'll cross my fingers but it's still a major dissapointment.

Would I pay the $20 regular price for this game? Without multiplayer, not a chance. I probably would have valued it at $15 but lucky me, scored it on a $5 Steam sale. For that kind of a discount, it's a positive no brainer. Bottom line? 8/10.

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Addendum
This game has a neat "feature" of being synchronized with the Steam Cloud (SC). While I'm sure the SC is wonderfully intended and useful for certain games, there are many issues with getting the SC to "just work". I will rant about this later, with more vigor. For the time being, the issues with Torchlight and the SC fall into four general categories:

1. Problem. The SC copy is obsolete but it keeps downloading and overwriting my 'live' character. How do I update the SC copy so it doesn't keep doing this?
• Find your runic data folder (see below)
• Backup everything. Just in case.
• Navigate to the "save" subfolder (so, runic games\torchlight\save). This folder will have a sharedstash.bin file (for your shared stash) and at least one .svt file (one per character, so 0.svt, 1.svt, 2.svt etc). There may be a backup.tmp file as well.
• Find yourself a file date changing application. Here are some options: [A], [B], [C].
• Modify the 'last-modified' date for all the files you want to move to the Steam Cloud. Pick a date that is newer than the date from the files in the SC. If you don't know how to figure this out, start the game, run around for a second or two then exit. This will cause the datestamp on the SC to be updated to 'now'. Now restore the backup you made above and rename the files with a date newer than that on the SC.
• Start the game normally. You will get a popup indicating that the files you have are newer than that on the SC and whether or not you want to update the SC.
• The SC is now updated with the files from your local instance
2. Problem. I want to enable/disable the SC.
• Part 1 - Getting the game to ignore steam cloud
• Find your runic data folder (see below)
• Find the local_settings.txt file (located in runic games\torchlight\)
• Look for a value IGNORE STEAM CLOUD
• If you want to enable the SC, set this to 0. If you want to disable the SC, set this to 1.
• Part 2 - Deleting the cached copy of the steam cloud download
• Now navigate to your Steam folder.
• Inside the steam folder, navigate to the userdata subfolder. You will see some numbered folders. Each folder represents a distinct user account that has logged onto steam from your computer. You can tinker through the cfg files to try and figure out which folder goes with which users although an easier solution would be to get another computer, install steam and login once.
• Once you've found the steam folder for your account, look for a subfolder 41500. This is the game ID for Torchlight. You can make a backup of this if you'd like and then delete it. If you dont have this subfolder, then you dont have to worry!
3. Problem. I've disconnected from the internet, I'm running steam in offline mode and I've deleted my save games, but I the savegames are still being loaded from thin air!
• See part 2 of the previous problem. Steam caches the save games (for some retarded reason). If you delete these saves then you wont have to suffer from this stupidity.

Finding your 'runic games' folder.

• XP: C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Runic Games
• Vista/7: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Runic Games
  There's a simpler way to get here, open a run-console (WIN+R) and type %APPDATA%