Torchlight 2 is a MASSIVE incline

[ohWOW]

I hate that white/green/blue etc. item gradation from god damned wow. It's everywhere.

 

[Grunker]

I hate that white/green/blue etc. item gradation

why

it's nothing more than an upgrade of d2's common - magic - legendary color scheme

it's basically been with us always

god the stuff people complaint about

 

[Metro]

tried demo and it seemed pretty fun if extremly cheesy.. whatever bought game. prob gonna regret as always

It's basically Diablo 2 repackaged under a new IP.

 

[ohWOW]

I hate that white/green/blue etc. item gradation

why

Because it's in an every game novadays, even boredomlands and Tera mmo.

 

[Metro]

So are trolls and orcs and goblins. Anyways, pushing through on a berserker on veteran just to see the entirety of the content. I'm guessing I'm halfway through Act 2 and the first outdoor map is huge -- probably twice the size of Frosted Hills and there's a good five or six dungeons in it and some overworld quests. Unfortunately I didn't pick a very engaging build -- it's basically just auto attack and no active abilities.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Typed this out at Shit Forum (TM) and figured I'd slap it in here for some official Codex ridicule. TLDR summary: Seems really damn good to me so far. Fortunately Borderlands 2 is enough of a different beast I don't feel that strongly to play one over the other.

Will require more playing but I'm cautiously optimistic this may be my favorite Diablo-like, dethroning Diablo 2.

Playing on veteran the difficulty has been just about right, HP bloat on enemies hasn't been much of an issue and enemies do enough damage I have to pay attention but I haven't hit a brick wall yet.
Loot seems handled well with uniques dropping just often enough to seem reasonable and greens and rares keeping me (Mostly) up to snuff. Slightly wish sets were their own color since I always want to make sure I can packrat them in my stash, but I understand why they're not. Weapon types behave differently and items can have interesting stats and effects (The weapons you can improve by getting a few kills are a neat touch too), absolutely destroys Diablo 3 here. Possibly better at the loot game than Titan Quest which is as big a compliment I can give it.
Enchanting is handled much, MUCH better than Torchlight 1, as is fishing.
Area tilesets are changing at a very decent pace, have yet to feel like a part of the game is dragging ass.
Enemies have varied combat behaviors, not just different health and damage. Requires at least some prioritization on what you'll tackle first in each fight. Speaking of enemies they seem reasonably paced like the tilesets, haven't gotten completely sick fighting an enemy type yet.
Character stats are all useful for all classes/builds, makes choosing how you want to spend your stats more interesting than any other Diablo-like I can think of.
Haven't played enough to judge all the classes (Only done engineer so far) but the skill trees for the engineer at least seem well done. Multiple obvious builds available and likely a fair number of non-obvious ones. The tiers for skill improvement on top of the normal flat increases is a nice touch, as is having the impact of most/many skills based on character level as well as skill level. Rank 1 heal bot is still useful while pushing level 20, even though I could make him even more useful with more points. Not as much variety as the skill system in Titan Quest but it doesn't really need it.
Fishing's definitely improved over Torchlight 1 as well. Finite unique fishing hole use is great, and dynamite is excellent if you want to opt out of the fishing minigame entirely.
The random map generation is great, can definitely give Torchlight 2 the crown for that.
Sound and graphics are great/good. Pretty small niggles like still noticing enemy pop in at the borders of the screen and thus far the soundtrack isn't as good as some other Uelmen soundtracks. Small issues though since I still like the look of the game and the soundtrack is still far better than in most games.
The little challenge rooms the phase beasts portal you to are a great addition. Thus far they've all boiled down to murdering monsters, but the twists are a fun change of pace every once in a while.

So yeah, unless the game suddenly drives off a cliff later it's looking pretty good. I enjoyed the original Torchlight but the loot wasn't on par with Titan Quest and the gameplay wasn't up there with Diablo 2, so I played through once and had a good time and was done. Torchlight 2's looking like it's up there.
Still early on with the game so swearing "I'm going to replay this!" is kinda hasty, but yeah. Judging by all the systems and gameplay behaviors I've seen I'll probably play again.
Apologies for the eye-watering wall of text, it's horribly late and I just finished playing and wanted to do a quick writeup.

 

[ohWOW]

So are trolls and orcs and goblins.

I just don't like it aesthetically.

Btw. funny but I don't like goblins and orcs too. A lot of random shit I hate.

 

[Zed]

It's a little annoying always being 2-3 levels behind the dungeons on Elite... Even when I'm doing optional bullshit as well.
Takes a very long time to clear a big room. Bosses has to be kited almost through the entire dungeon.

Do you get less XP from Elite? I played a bit on Veteran and was owning shit hard and out leveled everything by far, but then we started to play on Elite with my friends and now everything caught up to us on levels. Eh, shit isn't that fun on Elite anyway. Terrible HP bloat for everything.

Either I have to play on normal, because, you know, it's normal.
Or the hardest. Because if it's not the hardest, it's being a pussy. Unless it's normal because that's normal.

 

[abija]

Veteran is normal in torchlight 2. And elite is "we put more hp on their hp cause nothing is harder to beat than boredom".

 

[Multidirectional]

I can't imagine what normal and easy are like.

My gf generallly sucks at faster games like this and I watched her play melee Engineer on Normal up to level 12 at my place yesterday. Her health bar barely ever went down and eventually she admitted it was too easy even for her. So yeah, Veteran or Elite seem to be the only real options for anyone.

 

[Regvard]

Holy shit.

Spent my fortune raging at a phase beast challenge. Giant bubbles that you get at the desert. How do you kill those?

 

[Rhalle]

Veteran is normal in torchlight 2. And elite is "we put more hp on their hp cause nothing is harder to beat than boredom".

In T1 it seemed to me that the hardest level was "nothing good will ever drop ever so deal with it" mode.

Played my 60 destroyer yesterday for the first time in awhile, and blew up my 1050dps Epic Beast Axe.

Also fired up T2 beta. Does it seem like all the text-- well, graphics too-- are blurry, or is it just me?

 

[Terpsichore]

Played for a few hours yesterday.

Personal loot is indeed annoying, dumb and makes you waste time.

Caster mob damage in elite is overpowered and getting instakilled is pretty common.

 

[Jaesun]

Oh FFS! My first Bugged Quest. Rocks are conviently placed at the entrance of this path so I cannot enter this.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Beat the game. Got the loot. Time to move on and make a new character.
Infinity dungeon is in it, btw. Sort of. You have to buy dungeons from vendors and you can go explore them. The dungeons have all these crazy mutations to them, like you get 10% more MF, gold or damage (or even all the above), or that enemies explode and have life leech etc. Just crazy shit like that.

 

[abija]

Luminous Arena on elite is... interesting.
Then big bad chest at the end drops.... a green and some gold.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Me and my friend dropped Elite into Veteran at the Luminous Arena. Too much effort (read: bore) and absolutely no reward for suffering through the tedious champion and boss monsters and their ridiculous HP bloat. Should've had Elite drop better loot or even have a better chance at dropping good loot.

 

[Hobz]

Putting all my skill points in one skill to gain 2% damage boost each time feels so good ! And having only one skill + auto-attack to spam is so much fun ! Can't wait to play Torchlight III which will no doubt feature one spell book for all the classes.

 

[Terpsichore]

Its not just bosses, even regular mobs can oneshot you, i am getting hit for my whole hp bar.

 

[pakoito]

Well, Swamp Trolls in Veteran oneshot me, a 140 Vitality (~2800) WITH Overloaded Armor lvl5 (~1200). Twice. Just righ after defeating a big boss.

I have tested lvl 5 cannon barrage whtshisname and it does have a use, but very situational: you can kill creeps from other heights without them retaliating or bosses without creeps while your pet attacks him. Also, a whole barrage is a butthurt lot more damage than Cannon Overload, but you have to be at the correct distance and wish for the enemy not to come close.

 

[Grunker]

When exactly do you do you encounter Gorn and Furl? I have some gems I would like removed.

 

[Grunker]

Putting all my skill points in one skill to gain 2% damage boost each time feels so good ! And having only one skill + auto-attack to spam is so much fun ! Can't wait to play Torchlight III which will no doubt feature one spell book for all the classes.

Are you complaining that you built something boring? I'm going to end up with 4 or 5 active skills.

 

[Jaesun]

When exactly do you do you encounter Gorn and Furl? I have some gems I would like removed.

They are in town. By the return portal.

 

[pakoito]

When exactly do you do you encounter Gorn and Furl? I have some gems I would like removed.

Act 1, a couple of quests in.

 

[Gragt]

I'll have to grab it at some point for the ferret pet.