Torchlight 2 character editor4/18/2023 ![]() ![]() You might kill a phase beast and enter a pocket-sized challenge stage, or stumble across a hidden side quest that stretches across the whole game. You might kill a sprite who drops a golden key, then go looking for the chest it opens. The campaign is randomised from the overworld down, remixing environments and sprinkling them with events that keep the pace up even as you go about the busywork of map clearance. In terms of features, Torchlight II has tremendous scope. Offline play, six player co-op (both online and over LAN) and full mod support are all present, and Steam Cloud support enables the game to benefit from the best bits of modern online integration. ![]() Other aspects are much more gratefully received. In a year where multiple RPGs have figured out that freedom to change your mind actually results in more interesting decisions, not less, this aspect of Torchlight II's design sticks out as an unwelcome manifestation of its early noughties influences. Certainly, it's a system where decisions have consequences: it's just that those consequences are a needless waste of time. If I want her to be perfect I either need to start again or wait for the inevitable respec mod, and both feel like a compromise. This effectively prevents shifts in direction at high levels: even though I've built a character I like, I can't change her - and my skill trees are littered with discarded investments. Unfortunately, Torchlight II limits your ability to respec to undoing the last three skill decisions you made. In the long term, however, there's a lot of scope for cleverness and creativity. The system is over reliant, as many action-RPGs are, on incrementing your power by tiny percentages every time you spend a point and each individual level up can feel inconsequential as a result. Instead, new skills open up as you level, allowing for greater dabbling as you progress. Unlike the original Torchlight, you don't need to invest points in a skill tree to unlock its late-game potential. The two are linked: attributes determine the relative power of your weapon and magic damage, for example, impacting the usefulness of the skills you may choose to invest in. ![]() Levelling grants you points to spend on attribute boosts and new skills. I arrived at the Embermage through a process of experimentation: given the game's hundred levels of character advancement, I recommend you do the same before committing. They're a varied bunch, although the game struggles to communicate precisely how different they are before you start playing. The Engineer is a tank that can specialise in heavy weapons or sword-and-shield durability, with the option of swapping out for a massive handheld cannon and an army of robotic pets. The Berserker channels spirit animals to augment melee attacks, buffing allies and debuffing foes to build an advantage. Character emerges as you settle on a playstyle: I'm a stationary death vortex now, but I could have specced differently - a teleporting, sword-wielding warrior mage, perhaps.īesides the Embermage, the other predominantly ranged character is the Outlander: a mobile weapons platform specialising in guns, glaives, and debilitating magic. You're chasing down the villainous Alchemist - one of the original game's protagonists - for reasons that nobody in the game sounds especially concerned about. Your place in Torchlight II's plot is circumstantial: you're a hero, and that's about it. By and large, though, the character I've made worked in act one and she's still working a campaign and a bit later. I think you've met.Īs the difficulty rises, it's sometimes necessary to tinker with the machinery: to invest in new skills, or alter the opening moves of my combat rotation. When this happens I summon a duplicate of myself, just because I can. Every point of damage I do fills my charge bar, which ultimately reduces the casting cost of all my spells to zero. My firestorm plants a fire vulnerability on enemies that my columns of flame capitalise on, explosively. I have a passive ability that randomly teleports attackers further away. My wands cast random spells when I kill an enemy. As an action-RPG, the worst thing about Torchlight II is the way that loot, skill choice and chance bubbles over into a fountain of light and treasure at the whiff of a right-click, in the exact same way, for as long as you can keep going.Īfter more than 20 hours I've built my Embermage into a machine for the consumption and processing of monsters. As an action-RPG, the best thing about Torchlight II is the way that loot, skill choice and chance bubbles over into a fountain of light and treasure at the whiff of a right-click, every single time, for as long as you can keep going. ![]()
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