I have recently taken a few days off my PS3 console to explore PC games, and I stumbled into Torchlight 2 which proves to be one of the best buys I have for PC games in years.

Let me explain.

For all those people who loved Diablo 2, Torchlight series hits all the sweet notes. This is not surprising as Runic Games were founded by Travis Baldree (lead developer of the MMORPG Mythos) and former high level executives of the Blizzard North team who developed Diablo: Max Schaefer, Erich Schaefer and Peter Hu.Runic Games rose from the ashes of Flagship Studios in 2008 due to financial trouble; and Flagship Studies was formed by pissed-off Blizzard North management following a dispute with the parent company.

Therefore, it is a mad rush of euphoria and nostalgia when one opens Torchlight 2 and gets into the gameplay. Held by a paper-thin storyline, the game makes it clear that it doesn’t want you to care about its story; it wants your soul and your every thought devoted into the character and its gameplay. Just seconds into the gameplay, one is thrown into the tried-and-tested formula of killing dozens of monsters emerging from everywhere. You have chests that are monsters (Mimic), urns that contains monsters, monsters flying into the fray (bats or what not), undead emerging from the ground, the list goes on and it is just pure smashing and exploding fun as your character slashes, burn, blast their way through zillions of them.

(Urghhh, back off!!!)

Graphics and sound-wise, Torchlight 2 nailed it with its bright and colourful cartoonish visuals with a touch of eeriness from the zither as background music, which is hauntingly familiar from the old Diablo 2 main character page. Beautiful as the game is, your eyes have little time to wander as you scan across the landscape for treasure chests and randomised drops that always leaves you tantalising for more and more delicious orgasmic loot. Like in Diablo, these drops are colour coded, and your heart always would skip a beat with you receive a powerful rare gold one (signifying a Unique item). These random rewards are part of gaming psychology; the prospect of winning is always out there, and one is willing to battle loads and loads of monsters to get that one little “my preccciooouuussss”

 (This is probably the expression when one receives a powerful loot…and please do not play Torchlight till one becomes like him)

That is not to say that the game is a mindless grind fest. Torchlight 2 offers a very smart world design that have different environments with different sets of monsters as a constant challenge. The monsters can be tough in Veteran and Elite difficulties, and often one must be quick in their feet to avoid dying an untimely death for their character. Champions monsters are aplenty with higher damage and hit points (usually with an unique characteristic) and bosses always present at the end of a quest to show you their dangerous and powerful moves. To add to the fun, phase beasts appear at random, opening up a portal upon killing to another area with fun optional mission objectives like  “Protect the crystal” or “Destroy the spider nests) to give a varied taste should one gets tired off slashing and bashing their way to a boss.

The character progression and levelling is a classic lovable formula, since you get to level the skill and attribute points ala’ Diablo 2 style. This allows for a great degree of customisation as one tries to create a character that suits his/her playstyle the most. There’s a very limited respect option that allows for trying out various skills though, so there’s no “Oh-shit” moments when you select the skills wrongly. This method of levelling the character is what I love about Diablo 2 the most, and its great the developers of Torchlight 2 retain the sense of replay-ability for every class allowing the player to experiment with new and radically different builds. Each build is based on a concept of focusing on a handful of skills that synergies well together to create a custom avatar with an unique way of killing enemies. Therefore, a tip for newbies playing this: Please do not spread your points into every skill in every tree.

A vast improvement over the first Torchlight, Torchlight II is built for a longer gameplay. One can play in single-player offline mode, or jump into online or LAN co-operative games where enemies scale up in difficulty as more join in. Even if the online interface isn’t as fully featured as something like Diablo III (you can’t link items through the chat field, for example), Runic still implements smart design features, like making it so every player gets unique drops, eliminating the threat of cool stuff getting stolen in case you’re playing with inconsiderate strangers.

There’s a lot of comparison between Torchlight 2 and Diablo 3, especially with the release of both games being so close to each other that Blizzard’s Diablo 3 gives the feeling of looming over Torchlight 2 completely. This is particularly true when I am doing this review, since there’s a little voice nagging in my head telling that this is the same as Diablo 3 in X way….this is different from Diablo 3 in Y way. I have invested hours in Diablo 2, Diablo 3, Torchlight and Torchlight 2; and if you liked Diablo 2, you will definitely like Torchlight 2. But if you do not like Diablo 3, as I do, you will probably still like Torchlight 2.

A word of warning to Diablo 3 fans, I am going to start my Diablo-3 bashing now and explain why it’s better to park your money ($24 on Steam) with Torchlight 2. Here goes:

Diablo 3 is a pain for the always-online requirement that Torchlight 2 doesn’t have. This means I can’t plug off my laptop and play Diablo 3 in some backwater country with no Wifi if I want to, but I can still continue my solo play in Torchlight 2. For me, a solo player, Torchlight 2 is a clear winner in this aspect. What’s more, Torchlight 2 is more balanced in its levelling and feels less of a grind fest than Diablo 3. The classes in Torchlight 2 are a lot more versatile than in Diablo 3; Diablo 3 has this sucky linear skill tree that forces to play in a certain way, while Torchlight 2 blows your mind away with its permutations in terms of skill trees with one class. And the loot can suit many classes; you can use a crossbow for the Engineer class, and then swap for an Embermage’s staff in an instant. The game doesn’t restrict to to X item belongs to Class A, Y item belongs to Class B.

Another thing I really like for Torchlight 2 are its bosses. I’ve found Torchlight 2 bosses to be more varied and interesting than the bosses in Diablo 3. Diablo’s 3 bosses are a major clickfest: all one really needs to do is to spam your skills, drink potions and hope that the boss dies.  In Torchlight 2, bosses follow varied attack patterns, use environmental tricks to trap and disorient you, summon clones and minions, and generally follow more interesting routines. It is generally a lot tougher and you have to be fast and be alert to the patterns to survive.

Lastly, Diablo 3 is completely closed and controlled by Blizzard, while Torchlight 2 invited the modding community to tweak and re-invent the game however they want. One wonders why Blizzard would want to restrict that, given the wild success of opening up mods for Warcraft 3 (spawning off all those interesting maps). Its good news for Torchlight 2 gamers though, because it means you can expect new user-generated content for many months to come.

Considering that Torchlight 2 does everything incredibly well, with so much content, gameplay, replayability, and incredible environment, you will be hard-pressed NOT to buy it at $24 on Steam (sometimes lesser than $10 if on sale). Once you start on this, I guarantee you would throw your Diablo 3 account into the toilet bowl.

This game is amazing in so many areas. I will rate it 9.5/10.