GB Feature: Torchlight II Review

Diablo III left our action RPG thirst unquenched in a lot of ways, so we dove head first into Runic Games' Torchlight sequel over the past couple of weeks to see if it scratched the itch more than Blizzard's offering. You'll want to check out the full review to find out of it did, but I'll at least leave you with a couple of paragraphs to get you started:
Depending on how skilled you are with action RPGs, Torchlight II offers four difficulty modes (from "casual" to "elite"), plus a hardcore mode where your character can only die once. I played on the default "normal" mode with my Berserker, which I found to be mostly easy, but then I moved up to "veteran" when I created an Outlander and an Engineer, and that was more of a challenge. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be any way to change the difficulty after creating your character, so if you find things too easy or too difficult, there isn't any way to make an adjustment.

Otherwise, what you do in Torchlight II is about the same as what you do in every other action RPG. You kill a bunch of stuff and you collect loot, over and over. Your character can wear 12 items and your pet three more, and these items range in quality from normal (white) to magical (green) to rare (blue) to set (purple) to unique (orange). There are also supposedly legendary items (according to the Steam achievements), but I never saw one so I have no idea what color they are. Set and unique items are fairly common (they even show up for sale in towns), which is nice, and it means you might actually be able to complete an item set without jumping through a lot of hoops or pestering your friends. Of course, to compensate for this, spells, which now include all of the utility skills from Torchlight (including Treasure Hunter and Weapons Expertise), have become strangely rare.