Torchlight II Previews

A pair of new PAX-based previews for Runic Games' Torchlight sequel are demanding our attention this afternoon, starting with this brief piece on ZAM:
Back to the Embermage, the gameplay and controls in Torchlight II felt just about running compared to the controls of the original title, and you can definitely tell that only a few minor tweaks were necessary to get everything just right. Although there weren't many pets on display, the Runic Games developers promised that more were on the way, and they were going to be (awesome.)

Other items of note:

'¢ The size of the zones have been greatly increased, so you can actually fight in the same zone as someone online and not be in there group.
'¢ Graphics still look great and are enhanced beyond what Torchlight demonstrated.
'¢ The Embermage was definitely fun; felt very classic.
'¢ Being able to play online makes the $20 seem even more appealing.
'¢ Definitely an easy purchase when the game is launched.

And then we stop by Destructoid for what amounts to an even shorter article:
Those familiar with the first title in the series will have no trouble with the new content. This really just is Torchlight with tighter graphics a MUCH bigger world, spells, items, talents, and content. And that's definitely not a bad thing.

I started my playtime with the Outlander, having a natural inclination for rogues. I had access to about a dozen different abilities that had some nice variation and gorgeous animations. Within a few minutes, I set off to challenge a boss in the area and had relatively little trouble. I don't know what difficulty I was on, but I could see the game being a bit too easy, especially if baddies don't scale with the number of players. The Embermage was fairly intuitive as well, and I had a lot of fun with rudimentary adventuring.