Torchlight Review (XBOX Live Arcade)

Released in October of 2009, Runic Games' Torchlight is a popular dungeon-crawling action role-playing game, which is being released on XBOX Live Arcade this week. It is one of the major releases in Microsoft's XBOX Live Arcade House Party promotion, and they are acting as the publisher for this outing. I know that many people were very happy when this version of the game was announced, as it's been speculated since the PC version was originally released - I know I was. Is this version worth its fifteen dollar price tag after being ported from the confines of the computer gaming world?

The game takes place within a mythical world, in a popular mining town known as Torchlight. The mines below the town are full of a highly popular material known as ember, which has attracted many adventurers to the town, who are seeking fame and fortune. The character you play as has been invited to the town, where he has been enlisted as help by a mage known as Syl, whose master Alric has disappeared into the mine's depths. After his disappearance, her peer Brink went in to look for their master and has yet to come back from his dangerous quest. You see, the mines within Torchlight are not only full of ember, but they're also full of dangerous monsters.

As it turns out, the highly sought after ember is not just popular - it's also dangerous in an elemental fashion. Its effects are the reason why past civilizations fell and its allure is what has driven Master Alric into the mines, as he is in search of something that will make him more powerful - something that will allow him to rule with his dark master. Said dark master is hidden on the thirty-fifth floor of the mine, where he has been slumbering for many years. It is your responsibility to try to stop the master from making his return to the world of humans, by defeating all of the heinous creatures that stand in your way. It's you and your pet against the horde.

At the beginning of the experience, players are asked to choose the class of adventurer that best suits their play style and personality. The choices include: the Destroyer (a warrior, skilled in melee combat and the summoning of ancestral spirits,) the Alchemist (a mage, who is fluent in using magical elements for combat such as electricity,) and the Vanquisher (an elite city guard, who uses her knowledge of traps and ranged weapons to her advantage.) Each class allows for a new take on combat specialties, abilities and the overall style of gameplay. Since I've always been someone who enjoys hacking and slashing my way through enemies with melee weapons in video games, I opted for the trusty Destroyer. He served me well and fit my play style perfectly.

It is at this time that you also get to choose a pet, which will be your ally, extra storage and potential spellcaster throughout the game. There are three preset pet types, including a dog, cat and dinosaur. I chose the cat. This pet helped me out a lot during my experience in the dank, dark dungeons underneath Torchlight, in many ways. Not only did he constantly rush into battle with vigor, but he also learned spells which helped maintain both of our health and assisted him in combat against the dungeon lurkers. The best part about having a pet in this game however, is the fact that he can store your unwanted items, with the ability to make a run to town for you to make sales, whenever need be. Granted, there's a short wait of about a minute and a half and some limitations are levied upon this ability, such as the fact that he can't be sent out while you're in certain sub-portals. Those limitations are rarely ever levied upon you though. Fishing holes are available in some locations, allowing you to catch different types of the slippery creatures, which can then be fed to your pet to alter its appearance, skills, and weaknesses. Who doesn't want to temporarily have a huge spider or a flaming beast as an ally? At least, within the confines of a virtual environment.

For those who are still wondering, Torchlight is a single player only experience on the 360, just like it was when it was released for PC and Mac. The campaign is a very solitary experience, but I found that that dynamic lent itself well to the game's story and campaign. I didn't pine for another adventurer at my side, although I'm sure it would've been fun. Perhaps we'll see that in Torchlight 2, which has been rumored to be in development. I know that a lot of people have been asking about this, so I wanted to make sure I made mention of it. Runic Games did incorporate a new gifting ability into the game, which allows you to send a gift message to a friend, granting them with a spell that will let them re-assign skill points. You can earn it for your own character, by sending the message out. This is exclusive to this XBOX Live Arcade port of the game.

As your chosen character, you must fight your way through the dungeons using either melee combat, spells, traps or ranged attacks. Hundreds of times throughout the campaign, you will come across different weapons, armor, jewelery and gems, which can be used to add elemental skills or stat-related bonuses to your equipped items. If I must say so myself, Torchlight is a loot-lover's dream. Each item you find can be equipped or sold, with visual changes appearing to your character when you upgrade or change his equipment. Sometimes you will be faced with a tough decision as to whether you keep a lower ranked weapon with great elemental enchantments/skills or whether you go with a more basic, but higher ranked item. There are a lot of options which allow players to customize their characters through their equipment. You spend a lot of time in the game's menus, but they were quite easy to navigate for the most part, so I didn't find that to be much of a problem.

Each new floor of the game's deep, thirty-five level mine/dungeon presents new puzzles, enemies and tasks for you to concur - not to mention the occasional big boss battle. The game is constantly introducing new baddies into its randomly generated dungeons for you to slaughter with your blades, staffs, guns or spells. This helps keep the experience fresh, as each enemy has a different weakness and its own set of abilities. Runic took it upon themselves to not only name each of these creatures, but to add a list of these skills under each one's health bar, which I thought was a nice touch. That way, you always know what you're up against in each encounter. Although, even though you know the enemies' abilities, it doesn't make you invincible against them.

Although the dungeon's depths are all randomly generated, the game does a great job of creating its content. Reason being is that it has a lot of variety to work with. After every few floors, the look of the dungeon and its environments change drastically, ranging from a traditional gray mine, to a library, jungle, prison and what looks like the inside of Hell itself. Each of the aforementioned environments adds subtle changes to the experience, such as user-controlled bridges (which usually lead to secret stashes of gold) or portals that will send you to a brand new section of the floor. This variety was welcomed.

As I previously mentioned, Runic did a great job by throwing everything but the kitchen sink into this game, when it comes to enemy designs. There are so many different enemies and variations that it's hard to even make a list of them all. Some of my favourites included large dragon spawn, spiders of varying sizes and little demons. Almost every enemy featured its own unique identity and skillset, but there were several different incarnations of some types. These different incarnations of enemy types would always look different on each of the different floors however. For example, some of the little demon henchmen on the jungle floors wore loin cloths and had spears. As I progressed further and further into the abyss, I discovered tougher enemies who would even kamikaze me. Unfortunately, despite the creative boss designs, their mechanics were quite similar and they didn't require a lot of skill or added technique to take down.

The town of Torchlight serves as the game's main hub. Within its confines are many different vendors, such as those who specialize in certain things, gamblers (who charge for unknown weapons,) and an enchanter who will place magical spells on your weapons to grant them new abilities...for a high price, of course. Additionally, this is where you go to find villagers who are offering side quests. These quests range from separate portals containing a specific desired item, a robot who wants to blog about the mini-bosses you've slain and a couple of townsfolk who need specific types of jewels. These side quests add variety to the campaign, allowing for some extra content, exploration and rewards. Although they don't change the core dynamic of the game very much.

Once you've completed a section of the game's main dungeon, you will be presented with a waypoint portal that will send you back to the main town hub. These portals act as checkpoints, and can always be used from the main portal within the town of Torchlight. You are not able to pick exact floor numbers, but these checkpoints are spread out well throughout the cave. There are several of them, in fact. However, being able to warp back to town is never a problem, as it is easy to find town portal scrolls (whether they're dropped by enemies you've slain, found on tables or discovered in chests,) which will allow you to create a travel vortex at any point during your travels. You can return to the exact same location via that portal, once you're finished in town.

This is a game that constantly rewards players for their efforts - primarily through loot, but also through experience and fame. You always feel like you're accomplishing something when you play this game. Exploration is rewarded by hidden troves of gold and treasure chests (although you must beware the mimic chests which are actually strong enemies.) On the other hand, combat is rewarded handsomely with experience points, new skill points to award through your discretion and fame points. Like with all role-playing games, you level up at certain experience intervals.

Torchlight allows you to direct the skill points you've earned (several per each new level) into the categories that best suit your play style. Additionally, this port features all of the skills that were available in the original version, allowing you to choose which ones you would like to assign points to and/or use. Some of them have been tweaked a bit from their original designs to improve their effects. The aforementioned fame points correspond to a long list of fame levels, which show how popular you are as an adventurer within Torchlight and its surrounding area. You earn different amounts of XP based on the difficulty level that you choose - ranging from very easy to very hard, and also including a hardcore mode where death is permanent (instead of the ability to respawn in town, at the start of your current floor or at the section where you died. You can lose gold, fame and experience based on where you choose.)

In order to optimize the experience for console gamers, developer Runic Games changed the on-screen hub design for this version of the game. Instead of your health and mana being shown at the bottom of the screen in a large menu, each one is triggered to a shoulder button and shown in one corner. Health is in the top left-hand corner of the screen (mapped to LB for potion use,) and mana is in the top right-hand corner of the screen, mapped to RB for its potion use. In comparison to the PC version's hub, I found this one to be a lot better and easier to use. It was much easier to see how high or low my health and mana were, and it was simple to use a potion at the press of a button. The developers also went a step further in allowing spells and abilities to be mapped to four buttons: Y, B, and both trigger buttons. This made it very easy to use them as well. The left joystick controls movement, whereas the right joystick allows you to zoom the camera in and out. Additionally, the X button controls all of your combat. Overall, I was very impressed with how they optimized this port for console players' enjoyment.

Although I was quite impressed with this game, it was not without problems. Through its Diablo-like structure, Torchlight's gameplay was repetitive in its basic structure. Fans of dungeon crawlers and loot will feel right at home with this game, but it may not be for the more traditional gamer. I'm somewhat new to this type of game, having only played Diablo a bit in the past, but I enjoyed it quite a bit despite its repetition. Runic included a lot of variety and content to combat this well-known issue within the game's sub-genre. If you're not sure about this type of game, then just give the trial a chance.

The main issue with the game is its frame rate. When a lot of different enemies are on the screen, it can slow down quite a bit - sometimes even to a crawl. This seemed to happen the most when a few larger spider enemies were on the screen with their individual legs moving, or when enemies used varying elemental attacks at once. During periods of intense frame rate slowdown, the game was made difficult to play because it became tough to know which enemy I was attacking and/or exactly where I was if I was crowded around by large enemies. Things would be fine when I was fighting a large group of basic enemies, but the more complex character models (such as the large eight-legged freaks) required more from the game's engine and thus seemed to be the cause of a lot of the slowdown. I was impressed with how many enemies they could fit on the screen at once, but it's too bad that it suffered from these occasional frame rate hiccups. Granted, they weren't very prevalent.

Torchlight is never a game that will blow you away with its shiny graphics, but the game does look quite good. The art design is very well-done and the game features a great variety within its visuals. Its art style isn't as serious as other RPGs, but the art department did a good job creating a unique visual style for the game that is a nice mix between realism and a more colourful and surreal style. Its texture work looks pretty good and its enemy designs deserve to be commended. I was also quite impressed with how the look of my character changed as I switched his armor and weapons. It's just too bad that the game doesn't run as well as it looks, at all times.

In terms of audio, I was impressed for the most part, but there were some cons. The game's soundtrack (which was composed by Diablo composer and audio designer, Matt Uelman,) was subtle but powerful and worked well with the game's dark and gritty tone. The inherent sound effects were also pretty well-done, with some nice variety. However, I wasn't as impressed with the game's limited voice acting. Some characters sounded okay, but I found that their audio interpretations of what the characters sounded like were somewhat stereotypical and uninspired. Since the game doesn't feature any cutscenes, the entire storyline is told through dialogue, whether it's scrolling text shown before a major event or within a discussion with an A.I. Torchlight inhabitant. While most of the dialogue was pretty well-written, the story was quite basic and wasn't as developed as I would have hoped.

In conclusion, I must say that Torchlight lived up to some high expectations I had going into the experience. I had heard a lot of good things about it in the past, so I was glad that it lived up to that hype. Although it's somewhat repetitive in its design and has some small issues, Torchlight is an impressive game that is sure to impress those who give it a chance - granted they like this type of dungeon crawling RPG. Its wealth of content and loot is sure to impress, with hours of gameplay through its main campaign, plus the ability to continue on after completion in its never-ending dungeon or through side-quests. I played through the campaign on normal, which took several hours, but should have started on hard to make it more of a challenge and a longer experience. The new game plus mode allows you to gift one of your high-level items to a new character, which is sure to please fans of the genre. If what I wrote interests you at all, I definitely recommend giving it a chance (at least the trial version.) Torchlight is a well-made game that does a good job crafting its own identity in a genre that Diablo has made famous. It's a good deal at $15 and can provide hours of enjoyment, especially if you love collecting loot.

Rating: 8/10

Torchlight will be released on XBOX Live Arcade on March 9, 2011. It will be available for 1200 Microsoft Points, which equals out to fifteen American dollars.