Difficulty:

Very Easy

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Don't believe the hype"

When I first started playing Torchlight 2 (after quitting D3), I was quite excited. There is a LOT more variety in this game than there is in D3. There are many skills to choose from, you get tons of legendary and set items (even vendors sell some), you can enchant your items, there are epic gems, and different ways to play each class. Unfortunately, Torchlight 2 appears to be amazing at first glance, but once you play it for a while you start to uncover some major faults.

1: The skill system. Now most people say that being able to spend points, up to 15 skill points per skill, is a good thing. It allows for more customization. I strongly disagree. Being allowed to spend multiple points in ability simply discourages you from using any other abilities. For example, on my outlander, once I had 5 points in Glaive Throw there was absolutely ZERO reason to use any other ability. Why put 5 more points in something else just to make it as strong as glaive throw? This "extra customization" actually makes the game simpler. It pigeonholes you into spamming the same spell over and over again. The passives just make this worse. For example, embermages have THREE passives (that you can put 15 points into each) that make one of their abilities much stronger. So you can literally be level 60 and use one ability the entire game. This makes the game dreadfully, dreadfully boring. In Diablo 3, at least you have to use different abilities, and if you get tired of one, you can switch. In torchlight 2 you're forced to reroll. Some of the skills are so horribly balanced that it's BAD to level them up past a certain point (i'm looking at you, level 5 glaive throw). So the best way to be strong in this game is to sink all your points into one ability, and then sink the rest of your points into passives to make that ability stronger. That makes the game horribly, horribly repetitive, and is a massive design failure. Sure, you can gimp yourself and use weaker abilities, but why should we have to gimp ourselves just to use two abilities? Also, the skill trees just don't make sense. For example, in the "caster" tree for outlanders, there is a passive that only works if you kill something with your attack. Ok? Another ability slows them and lowers their physical armor. It's like they designed 60 abilities and then threw 20 randomly into each column.

2: The lack of difficulty. Even on elite hardcore, the game is a joke. On my glaive outlander, I simply spam one button over and over again.

3: The game lacks fluidity. Most of the cast / attack animations are far too long, and it just feels like it takes too long to "do" anything, especially on elite.

4: Fishing is dreadfully boring. It's just as easy and simple as in the first game. I mean, come on, Legend of Zelda had a MUCH better fishing system and that was what, 15 years ago?

5: The story is garbage. I thought Diablo 3's story was pretty bad, but at least it's memorable and you kind of understand what's going on. The secondary characters, like the templar and scoundrel, are easily memorable and say entertaining things. Not so in this game. Every character is a horribly acted train wreck. I can't remember a single name of any character in the game, actually.

6: The classes are horribly balanced. Surprise: the outlander actually sucks if you dual wield guns. The best way to play (a "hunter class"?) is with wands and spamming spells.

7: Most of the legendaries and set pieces are boring. They have random stats just tacked on, and the set bonuses are usually boring as well (whoopee, 3% more attack speed).

8: Too many skills can't be used with different types of weapons. Want to use a cool cannon you just found? Too bad, the skill you specialized in is only usable while dual wielding pistols. Like, seriously?

It's obvoius that Runic Games really tried to make this a great game. Some parts of it are very fun. But they really, REALLY need to hire a professional game designer to help them fix some of the glaring issues, especially with the skill system. I'm sorry, but encouraging your players to spam one ability over and over again is just not fun, and if you're playing in elite mode (many players want to be challenged), most of the time you're pigeonholed into doing just that. It's glaive throw spam for outlanders, prismatic missles for embermages. And it's dreadfully boring to invest half of your skill points into passives that don't really do anything. Even WoW doesn't have any passive talent points anymore. isn't it time to change it up?