Torchlight II Demo

Torchlight was a hack & slash role-playing game that came out of nowhere a few years ago, taking the industry by surprise with its boldness and attention to detail. While it was clearly a Diablo clone with a more casual theme and a cartoonish graphic style, the game featured enough originality and fun to be worth the purchase, especially if you do not mind breaking a mouse every other day.

Torchlight II is the obvious answer to the first part, since it brings the improvements everyone was asking for. The underlying formula is kind of the same, and every fan of the first part should feel right at home in this as well, despite all the changes that seem to have been implemented. Hence, you still get to explore vast dungeons and terminate thousands of enemies, using powerful spells and all the shiny gear you can carry.

As such, the story now includes a few more cities and villages, not just the small settlement of Torchlight. This means that a variety of environments and settings are now part of the experience, including woods and snowy places. However, the atmosphere is mostly the same as it was in the first episode, and by extent, very similar to what you may remember from the second Diablo title.

To mix things up a bit, four new classes are now available, namely the engineer, the embermage, the berserker, and the outlander. Each one of these requires different play modes and you must adapt to their style if you want to survive. However, survival can be made much easier by equipping the epic loot you get to discover along the way or even buy armors and weapons from various merchants.

Probably the most requested feature after the first episode was a multiplayer component and online play. Thankfully, this second part delivered on its promises and it features both LAN and online co-op play, which should result in a lot more fun. The graphics have been seriously improved as well, although they look very similar to the previous release.

All things considered, Torchlight II is exactly what the fans expected it to be: bigger, prettier, and much more refined. The new classes are tons of fun to play with, the maps are randomly generated, and there is enough loot to last you for years to come, which is everything a good dungeon crawler needs.