This just came out and is available on Steam for $20. I've had quite a bit of fun playing it this weekend and can't recommend it enough - especially for twenty bucks! Game play is smooth, weapons are fun, lots of shiny items always popping up (definitely not like D3 in that regard ...) that are pretty diverse, useful and most importantly fun to play around with.

Anyone else been playing?

 

Yeah. I haven't been playing as much as I usually would because of the closeness of the release between this and Borderlands 2, but it's definitely a solid action RPG in the vein of the older Diablos and a significant improvement on the original Torchlight. I've had way more fun than I did with Diablo 3 that's for sure. Probably because it's designed around actually having fun as opposed to gear farming, so you can choose a challenging difficulty straight away and things actually have cool enchants right from the start.

I didn't realise how much that stuff actually annoyed me until I played this and saw how much wasted potential Diablo 3 was. But we have this now so who cares I guess.

 

I love that this game is just... fun to play.

Although I will admit that I half enjoyed Diablo 3 when I had no idea what I was doing, because the difficulty wasn't that bad. until Inferno where it was just rage worthy. On second play through it was far to easy and I was itching for some sort of difficulty settings(like the command they are adding in now)

Diablo 3 has the same kind of concept that WoW released with. Leveling that anyone with half a brain could do. Incredibly boring, no decisions required leveling and an endgame that requires repetitive game play to get gear to progress through.

I guess they figured it worked once, so why not again?

Torchlight is very similar to D2, and that's exactly what I was hoping for.

Shit, if they released D2 again with a completely different set of skills trees, I'd be all over it.

Best thing they did was add a difficulty settings. I've already made a shit ton of characters because I refuse to not play on Elite(Started on Elite Hardcore, but gave up for now) and I really don't mind it. Most of my D2 gameplay was testing builds, failing, restarting, and I loved it. Why? Because the game play was awesome.

I can barely get a character through normal in D3 without wanting to shoot myself at how easy it is.

I was browsing the forums the other day and found a post by Travis Baldree(One of the higher ups) he was commenting on people asking for private servers.

I guess they can get away with saying that Torchlight 2 is just never going to have these things because it was a $20 buy, but I love the idea of a game company making games they find fun instead of trying to please everyone with that they think they want.

Runic Games found a new fan boy. It's a good thing too, because I was lost after Blizzard.

 

Torchlight 2 keeps distracting me from Borderlands 2 which keeps distracting me from Guild Wars 2. My life is SO HARD. D:

But yeah, Torchlight 2 is awesome. I rolled a hammer/bot engineer for my first playthrough, and I've been happily smashing my way through everything since. That healing bot is the best thing since sliced bread.

 

Playing a shotgun Outlander at the moment, and loving it, great game!

 

I can't wait for this to come out for the Mac.

 

Picked this up yesterday, what a game. My only complaint is that we should be able to change more skills, and not just the last three choices.

 

Great thing about Torchlight 2 is that if something bothers you that much, you can usually make it happen.

For example, you can open up the console and give yourself a full respec and just limit yourself to a change or two.

I forgot to respec out of the first auto skill and used it to give me that 1 skill point back. I'm anal like that.

 

I believe the reason for that is to encourage multiple play-throughs of the game. I personally wait to spend too many points until I've tested new skills and am sure I will want to keep them.

I've been playing an embermage that focuses on ice and lightning, teleporting around and hitting shit with my staff.

 

You know what this game needs? Pet DLC. Seriously. I would pay for some pet DLC.

Pets I would like to have:

Unicorn, Unicorns are awesome.

Fairy (Irritating 'Hey, listen!' optional).

Tuna fish, a shark would be alright too.

Spider, you can already turn your pet into one using an item, but I'd still like to have one all the time.

Panda.

Flamingo.

Alternatively, a mod would also be good.

Edit: Also what Darje said.

 

Something I would love included in this proposed pet DLC would be some more in-depth pet stats similar to how you spend stat points every level.

 

If the modding community goes anything like the first Torchlight people will have all the fancy pets you can think of and you wouldn't need to pay for it.

 

I haven't picked this up yet (ended up choosing to grab Borderlands 2 first instead), but is there not still permanent fish? To change your pet permanently to a spider that is. Either way, that should be pretty easy to mod, as the files and data are already there; assuming the toolkit is out.

I do remember pets being one of the easier things to mod in TL1, in any case.

 

There are permanent spiders, yes, but I believe if you change it to something else for even 5 minutes it'll lose that form. Could be wrong though.

 

If you mean fish of the "giant" quality that permanently change your pet until you feed it another fish, then yes TL2 has them. Also, TL1 had them, but they were far-rarer.

EDIT: Kai has it right that transforming your pet again, even temporarily, will remove the perma-fish.

 

Ah, so it's still there. In TL1 there were mods to make getting giant fish easier, introducing things like a vendor and transmutations. I imagine something similar will be made eventually.

Affecting a more permanent change was a fairly simple task in the old tools, and I remember reading that TL2's tools were supposed to be much improved (by virtue of the changes in the game engine). Truly custom models/skins, of course, take more effort, but it should be pretty simple to either edit your pet's values, or create a new pet selection using existing data/files. It looked modular enough for that, when I played during alpha and beta.

I agree that some cosmetic DLC from runic could be nice option though, for professional-level "official" mods, and the like. I remember the community being pretty torn on the issue with Torchlight 1, though. But with the exception of a couple of free official mods, I don't recall the devs, or more accurately, Travis, really chiming in on the idea.

If you have a concept you'd really like to run with though, I'd recommend giving modding it yourself a try. I found their tools easier to use than Bethesda's (for example); it only getting really complicated once you stepped into the custom levels and scripts area.

Neither would work ideally with multi-player, because of the way (from what I understand) modding is set up for that, though.

 

I can't find the link now, but I'm sure I remember an interview where Runic said all updates would be free, because a $20 game with a bunch of paid DLC isn't actually $20 anymore.

 

I cant see Runic doing paid DLC, that's not them. Besides, the modding community for TL1 was just fucking retarded massive.