By Stephen Holowczyk

It’s been ten years, but there’s finally a Diablo clone that’s better then the original Diablo. That’s right, you heard me. It’s Torchlight, and it should come as no surprise. After all, two of the lead designers, Max Schaefer and Erich Schaefer worked on both Diablo I and II. The rest of the team is rounded out by many people who made Mythos, another action-RPG made by former Blizzard employees.

It’s hard for me to talk about the gameplay in much detail, as it’s literally a copy of the greatest action RPG. You make your way through randomly generated dungeons finding randomly generated items as one of three player classes: The Destroyer (the very fun but typical melee-oriented bruiser), the Vanquisher (a cross between the Amazon and Rogue, using both ranged weapons and magical traps to defeat enemies), and the Alchemist (Basically the wizard with more DOT abilities). You get points to put into your attributes like strength and mana, and one skill point each level to put into a special power, like a charge that knocks back all enemies for the Destroyer, or a ricocheting shot for the Vanquisher. There’s three skill trees for each character, each tree with it’s own purpose. You don’t have to have points in a previous skill on the same tree to get to the next skill, you only need to meet the level requirement. You could put all of your points into one tree, or have a nice sampling throughout each of them, with a point or two in each of the high-level skills.

Not everything is the same, however. In Torchlight, you choose between one of two pets, a cat or a dog, to accompany you on your quests. There’s no actual gameplay difference between the two, but cool people will take the dog. They help you during combat, and they can even be powered up for a short time by feeding them certain fish (yes, there‘s a fishing minigame). One may turn them into a giant spider for two minutes, for example. Every form that your pet can take is radically different, from giant ice-beasts that slow your enemy to the aforementioned spider that poisons them. Your pet even has it’s own inventory, and can make runs back to the town merchant for you so you don’t have to waste a Scroll of Town Portal.

Anything that was annoying in Diablo 2 has since been fixed or taken out. You automatically pick up piles of gold that you come across on the ground, saving you from that annoying two minutes you’d have to take out of your life from just randomly clicking on objects on the ground (items that take up inventory slots still need to be manually picked up, and for good reason). When you hover over an item, your current equipped item’s stats show, taking a page from World of Warcraft.

The graphics are another thing inspired by that other Blizzard game. They’re cartoon-like, with enough detail and art design that the game looks amazing even if you play on a top-of-the-line gaming rig oir a netbook. Yes, there’s even a netbook option in the settings that automatically sets nearly everything to low-res and windowed. I love it so, and I wish more games would do this. I want more in-depth games for my netbook then just reinstalling Fallout and other games I nabbed from GOG.com. But I digress.

I have to say, the one major flaw with Torchlight is the story. The story is a pretty generic “corruption has affected this town/person and you must stop it”, and it’s not told in any sort of convincing way, with poor voice acting to boot. Even the most unoriginal plotline can become engaging if it’s told well or if there’s a real sense of urgency, but it seems like even the developers had trouble caring. You’ll go for long periods of time without being updated on any sort of story to tell you what to do. Not that you’ll ever be confused, but it can feel like you’re just going from talking head to talking head.

In the end, however, Torchlight is a very good game. It’s fun, the graphics are crisp and stylish, there are a ton of different enemies to hack and blow through, and there’s enough variety in the three different player classes to keep you playing a long time. It also doesn’t have anything like Act 3 from Diablo II, which by itself earns the game about a million brownie points. Torchlight may be the best thing you get in exchange for a single Jackson in a long time.

Final Rating: 9 out of 10

This review is based on a review copy provided to Life Inside the Box by the game’s publisher.