Torchlight 2 Review

Torchlight 2 was rather famously pushed back to avoid competing with Diablo III. As it turned out, D3 was a huge seller but a bit of a long-term dud, and hack'n'slash fans were left wanting more. T2 fits that void very nicely with huge areas, tons of sidequests, exciting boss fights and oceans of loot. It basically takes everything that was good about the first torchlight, expands on it with overworlds and a better item customizing system, and loses the really bad elements such as continual linear dungeons, dodgy environmental collision detection, and the first game's rapidly declining difficulty. Torchlight 2 is everything a sequel should be- similar to the first game, but BETTER. Runic has also trotted out the graphic bells and whistles if your PC can handle them, but the game still scales nicely and has the original's "fantasy RPG in the Team Fortress 2 universe" look.

There are some nitpicks- skills are rather poorly explained, and it's hard to respec if you screw up a build because of this. Bosses have huge collision areas while the hitboxes on the small fry are tiny, meaning you can easily mis-click when you attack regular enemies and generally end up always attacking bosses in packs. These are small complaints- the core game is tremendously solid with responsive controls and immense stability. If you were let down by Diablo III or even Torchlight 1, give this a shot and you probably won't be disappointed.

PROS:
-More classes, better enchanting/socketing, nicer graphics, bigger areas than Torchlight 1
-Unlike certain other ARPGS, cannot be beaten in 2 hours by a sneaky player ;)
-Immense build customization encourages repeated playthroughs
-Multiplayer comes to Torchlight!
-Cheap! (Unless you import the German DVD release, heh)

CONS:
-Unclear skill descriptions + limited respecs = frustration
-Builds dependent on high-level skills can be VERY frustrating at first
-Randomly rolled spellbooks and enchanters can make the early game very hard or easy based on luck

Verdict: 75/100