Torchlight II Review

The first review for Runic's sequel to Torchlight is now live, courtesy of The Controller Online. The writer was quite obviously enthused with the game, given that they awarded it a perfect score of 10/10.

Here are a couple of excerpts:
The first thing you'll notice after starting a game is that the environments are much larger, more detailed and more alive than before. There are over six times as many areas with 44 of them and almost three times as many room pieces with over 5664 that make up the 1200 different room layouts that you may see. Each area and dungeon are randomized every time you load your game so you're not going to be exploring the same layout very often. Size and scope is the name of the game in Torchlight 2 with everything from the number of areas and dungeons to enemies and weapons increasing substantially. It's a lot easier to look at the picture on the left which compares the numbers between the two games to really get a sense of just how much bigger this game is. All for the same price too, which is the icing on the cake.

I'm not saying that other developers don't play games, but Torchlight 2 has so many awesome little features that you can tell Runic play a lot of games and wanted to include as many things that they've wanted in games as they could. Some of my favorite examples of this are how you can send your pet to town to sell your unwanted items just like in the original, but now they can also bring back items such as Health Potions and Identity Scrolls. How awesome is that? I also really liked the one button sorting of your inventory and one button to open and close all of your panels, instead of multiple buttons for each one. Torchlight 2 is a very accessible game and Runic must have been just as tired as these trivial tasks in games as we are and aimed to make this a much more user-friendly experience. Also improving the experience is a brand new user interface which is divided into two panels with tabs on each for your Pet, Stats, Skills, Inventory and Character progression. It's so much easier to use compared to the clunky interface in Torchlight and it's another example of Runic listening to feedback and making changes that the fans wanted.

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When it comes to Action-RPG's, Torchlight 2 is as good as it gets, with its massive amount of content, online co-op, new skill system, new and easy to use interface, beautifully created areas to explore and four great character classes to mold. Runic were on to something special with the original Torchlight and have managed to update what was so great about it and create a truly complete experience with so few flaws that it's as close to perfect as you can get in my opinion. The best part of all is that you only have to pay $20 to experience it.