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Kim Site Admin

Who else preordered Torchlight II? I can't wait! I hear there's multiplayer now, would anyone be interested in playing together?
Kim Topic Starter Site Admin

Who else preordered Torchlight II? I can't wait! I hear there's multiplayer now, would anyone be interested in playing together?
Darth_Angelus Moderator

That could be fun.
Pre-purchased and already pre-loaded on Steam so I'm ready to go the moment it release =D
SeraphicStar

I've been very tempted to get it, alas my craputer's video card can't handle its awesomeness.
I'm gonna buy this right now, just to play with you guys.
Kim Topic Starter Site Admin

I'm finally home and able to play!!! I'm going to set it up and see how to create a world for us.

Edit: AGGGH! The runic account manager is offline for maintenance. Come back up come back up come back up! *hair pulling*
Darth_Angelus Moderator

First, we need the community manager on their site to come back online.

EDIT: I see you discovered that while I was typing it.
Ilmarinen Moderator

What is this game? Their website's down!
This is essentially the only thing that I recollect from the previous title in this series.

(It was enough to make me interested in a sequel.)
Kim Topic Starter Site Admin

Oh God yes that sword. I hope to goodness it's in two. Its stats included:

59 Emotional Damage
10% Chance that Target Flees for 3 seconds
42 Futuristicness
18 Jauntiness
1285 Resistance to Logic
2 Noodle Arms
10% Increased Gold Find
20% Increased Magic Find
5 Socks (nope, not sockets... Just socks.)
Kim Topic Starter Site Admin

I played for a few hours last night waiting for the registration for online play to come back online. Here are my initial impressions of the game:

I'm really digging Torchlight II. The game is upbeat, fun, and beautiful. The environments are a major upgrade in this version -- much of the game is played outdoors in open terrains, and it is peppered with little surprising details that keep the vast tracts of land interesting. For example, once while battling my way to the next town, I came across a fisherman's lantern. I lit it, and a few moments later a ghostly boat sailed up with a stranded spirit inside.

I liked Torchlight I for its smooth interface and ease of play. They had really focused on providing a challenge from the game, while removing the annoying and time consuming parts that kept you from getting back to the main point. In II, the interface so far has been smooth as silk. It's clear, I never spend a moment wondering what I'm supposed to do or how to do it, and they've once again put a lot of effort into correcting bits of the game which took time away from the fun. For example, instead of just taking your excess loot back to town to sell it for you and make more inventory space, your pet can now even take a shopping list back to town and come back with all the potions and scrolls you need! You don't have to stop your quest to go all the way back, click through all the shopkeep menus, etc. You just tell your dog/cat/hawk/alien to go pick up a gallon of milk. HANDLED.

For me, this "no bullcrap" stuff in the interface and design philosophy is crucial. I have very very very very very very very very little free time so I feel a lot of pressure to not waste it doing stuff that isn't awesome. Teleporting back to town to unload my junk loot every ten minutes is not awesome. Giving a dog a shopping list while I cast ever increasingly ridiculous fireball spells? Awesome.

One of the many reasons I found Diablo III unplayable was that they had put a huge amount of effort into depicting digital misery. People wept, vomited, bled to death. Monsters spewed gallons of blood, spilled their viscera, and were consumed by parasites before my eyes. No thanks! I prefer my loot to come out of bloodless pinatas -- and if that pinata is so cartoony I don't even relate it to real humans or animals, so much the better. For me, relaxing is not about imagining that I'm mindlessly inflicting misery. Torchlight's cartoon aesthetic helps me focus on the "saving the world" aspect of it rather than the "butchering everything in sight" stuff.

Torchlight II has actually moved a smidge closer to realism than its predecessor. In the past, skeletons and zombies had proportions so thoroughly ridiculous they were almost more like ape-things than they were like people. Now, the undead hordes look much more like my own avatar. Still, the pervading feeling I get from this world is that overall, it's quite pleasant, there's just an occasional hubbub. I'm relaxed playing it instead of tense. At one point they had me tense thinking I needed to save a bunch of helpless children from being torn apart by spiders -- but they quickly turned it around and made me giggle instead.

I am mildly disapointed in Torchlight II's "no blood" filter this time around. It does remove the constant sprays of red, but they think nothing of showing me putrified blood, and the undead squish out streams of green and white when I hit them. Also, when I get a critical hit some monsters still explode into chunks of flesh. This is all nit picky stuff, though. I can deal with the blood, I just enjoy not having to!

I love being able to pick my gender, I love the huge selection of pets, and I love that the costume changes are dramatic. In Torchlight I I played from beginning to end and my character's look hardly changed once. In Torchlight II I look dramatically different every half hour or so.

I'm also enjoying that my female characters are NOT forced to wear bandaids and butt floss if I don't want them to. My mage was running around in bulky armor that covered every inch of her and actually looked like it might be protective! That's a first for me in any game, and I was pretty excited about it. There are still an annoying number of female NPCs who are topless (except for hair carefully brushed to hide nipples), though.

Online registration came back up. I'll be inviting you all to play with me many times over the next few weeks! I have created a character specifically for playing with you guys, and will not be playing it at any other time. I'll ask that you please do the same! Hopefully see you all for a little bit of play tonight. :)
Oh Kim, you got me all excited now! On a related note, my Torchlight name is Ulrin. Could always just add me to steam too. Account name is Ulrin as well =D
Ilmarinen Moderator

Quote:
One of the many reasons I found Diablo III unplayable was that they had put a huge amount of effort into depicting digital misery. People wept, vomited, bled to death. Monsters spewed gallons of blood, spilled their viscera, and were consumed by parasites before my eyes.

To be fair, that's what Diablo is all about! XP

I might look into this game if Guild Wars 2 weren't my current game of choice. I don't have enough free time to split between the two!
In Diablo 3 you can even murder ponies and teddy bears!

Btw I HAVE ACQUIRED THE GAME!!!! Time to trade steam IDs!!!!!
Kim Topic Starter Site Admin

Heimdall wrote:
Quote:
One of the many reasons I found Diablo III unplayable was that they had put a huge amount of effort into depicting digital misery. People wept, vomited, bled to death. Monsters spewed gallons of blood, spilled their viscera, and were consumed by parasites before my eyes.

To be fair, that's what Diablo is all about! XP

Yeah, increasingly so with each game. 3 got to the point of detail where I could no longer tune it out to get to the gameplay I was actually interested in, so I had to jump ship... That and when I did manage to tune it out and get to the gameplay, I was frustrated and bored! It just wasn't for me anymore.

Torchlight is very very similar to Diablo, but for me, it's way more pleasant to play from every angle. That's probably not going to be true for die-hard fans of the horror genre. :)
Gotta agree with Kim on this, I got bored of d3 faster than any other Blizzard game by far. It's just really mediocre and generic
Kim wrote:
Heimdall wrote:
Quote:
One of the many reasons I found Diablo III unplayable was that they had put a huge amount of effort into depicting digital misery. People wept, vomited, bled to death. Monsters spewed gallons of blood, spilled their viscera, and were consumed by parasites before my eyes.

To be fair, that's what Diablo is all about! XP

Yeah, increasingly so with each game. 3 got to the point of detail where I could no longer tune it out to get to the gameplay I was actually interested in, so I had to jump ship... That and when I did manage to tune it out and get to the gameplay, I was frustrated and bored! It just wasn't for me anymore.
Kim Topic Starter Site Admin

Oops, I didn't mean to start a "we hate Diablo 3" conversation, I was just trying to review Torchlight by comparing it to similar games! I'm gonna go back to Torchlight and not mention other games in this thread, sorry. XD
Kim does what she wants.
Hey, hey listen! What are everybody's time zones??? We should figure out what times we'll be able to play together.

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