Torchlight III Review (PS4)

The first Torchlight was a very cute ARPG, that managed to become a fan favorite thanks to its colorful world combined with a simple, yet rewarding gameplay, but also because it did not take itself seriously. Two years after its initial announcement, after changing developers, and abandoning the idea of a free to play MMO, the third installment was finally launched. Is it worthy of its predecessors or did the development limbo leave its marks on the project? Read on to find out.

After all the fuss that was made around Torchlight Frontier, no one expected that the free to play MMO concept would end up in smoke. Torchlight III tries to salvage the remains and adapt them to the path carved by the first two episodes. Still, at the beginning of the year when Torchlight III was announced to be released this year, there was some worry that the launch date is a bit unrealistic. But io and behold, Torchlight has arrived, though not without hiccups. After spending dozens of hours with it, we have to admit that the fears of the fans are proven right.

Torchlight III picks things up roughly a hundred years after the events of the second part. From the very first moment, it's obvious that the new iteration does not want to revolutionize, but rather refine the fan-favorite elements. The cliché heavy story will take players to the lands of Novastraia, where a dark menace emerges from the depths of the wilds.

The pending doom involves the usual scary monsters, and the mastermind hidden behind it all, in a narrative that is more of an excuse to go out to hack and slash everything that comes in your way. Unfortunately, you will not be able to enjoy even this thin story, because Torchlight III resembles more of a beta version riddled with bugs, rather than a full game.

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One of the many absolutely and completely annoying bugs you will encounter is related to the way the story is presented: cutscenes relying on hand-drawn artwork, without any subtitles. This would not be such a problem if the audio part would be working as expected, but since many of the important cutscenes are as mute as a Benedictine monk, there is a big issue of understanding what exactly is going on.

The bug itself is very annoying, but at the design level, it is unacceptable to release a modern game without subtitles, especially that the game does not have thousands and thousands of lines of script. But Torchlight III is an ARPG, so you can live without the story if the gameplay is good enough. As you would expect the first step of your journey is to personalize the hero you want to lead against the army of dark creatures.

You can choose from four classes, each one representing a different playstyle: the Railmaster is the muscle, relying on heavy two-handed weapons and being accompanied by an actual train full of weapons, the Sharpshooter prefers to decimate it’s enemies from afar, while the Forged is a robot that tries to excel both at closed and ranged combat. The Dusk Mage wields magic and as it stands right now is the most boring class to have been depicted in the history of the game. Those who loved mages in Torchlight II will be utterly disappointed.

The equipment is less important when it comes to choosing your preferred character since the Railmaster can use guns just as easily as a Sharpshooter can equip a two-handed mace. Torchlight III puts much bigger importance on the abilities of the different classes, trying to add a new mechanism right from the beginning. When you create your hero, next to his or her visual details, you will also have to choose one of the five available relics: Bane, Blood Drinker, Coldheart, Electrode, and Flaming Destroyer. What each of these do is to add a third skill tree to your chosen hero, next to the class-specific ones. Focusing on primal effects such as fire or ice, the relics offer a mix and match approach to create your perfect hero, that plays the way you want it to.

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As a result, the character system in the game has some depth, but as is usually the case, there a few combos that are efficient enough to make you forget about the rest of the possible builds. After you figured out who will represent you best in the game world, Torchlight III turns out to be an apple not far from the tree: you will eliminate everything that moves in the environment, from an isometric perspective, while gathering XP and loot, so you can face ever-growing challenges.

The game itself would be quite immersive, with simple, but engaging mechanisms, if not for the never-ending bug invasion. The aiming system is a joke, the abilities tend to get stuck in the surrounding objects, enemies fail to spawn or the loot boxes fail to open. The game is plagued by countless small and big issues that just make you want to throw the controller at the screen. Even worse are some design choices that do not really make sense. Such is the shared bank account for all your characters. We can only assume that the 20.000 gold cap is tied to the attempt of the developers to simplify the economy of the game. That's why you cannot buy equipment from the gear vendor since he only sells basic free stuff.

On the other hand, all the items have the same value based on their rarity. Every green item for example is worth 30 gold, while every grey one you can sell for eight shiny coins. As such, there is no justification for having four vendors in each town. The gear vendor is utterly and completely useless, just as is the pet trader, who only sells the same basic varieties. The potion vendors are the only ones with real value, while the gamblers are the only reason to spend some money on mystery items. Maybe you hit the jackpot and turn up part of an armor set or a legendary weapon.

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There is also your own personal fort, that you can personalize by acquiring cosmetic and functional items. The fort, just like your in-game wallet and storage chest, is shared among your characters. At first glance, this is a cool new gimmick, that adds flavor and an extra reason to explore the game. In reality, it will prove too small and too limited as far as variety goes to be a real hook for players. After placing some useful storage equipment, and a few items that offer various bonuses you will forget about the customization process. The fort’s most important function is to host Fazeer’s Dun’djinn, which allows access to the end game content.

After finishing the story you can place this tent and chose from random dungeons, growing in difficulty and reward. The challenges are split into a set of four levels, the last one always being a boss fight. For each level, you can choose from three random dungeons, each with positive and negative modifiers. After clearing all four levels, you will move on to the next tier and face even more difficult challenges. The problem with this part is the lack of variety: both the environments and the enemies will be overly familiar with these stages since you have already seen them recycled on several occasions during the story.

And the second big problem is, again, the bugs. On many occasions the game will remain stuck during the loading process, forcing you to restart the game. Other times your pet companion will mysteriously vanish, leaving you to face alone the dangers. Interestingly enough your pet tends to become shy only in the case of a few dungeons, always the same ones. Due to the limited inventory space, this would be a problem, if the game’s economic system wouldn’t be a joke.

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Quite often the game will not spawn enough monsters or special loot so you can meet the requirements of the mission, to progress further. And let’s not forget about the mysterious death occurring out of the blue, just when you set foot in a dungeon. These are just a few examples of the many, many, many bugs waiting for you, even after several patches have been released.

But Torchlight III fails to rise to the expectations, not just because of the technical errors, but also due to some highly questionable design decisions. Torchlight III is thorn among its legacies: every step you take furthers the feeling that this was an MMO, that was scrapped and repurposed into a classic single-player/multiplayer combo, the developers doing only the bare minimum. The multiplayer is optional, it is just bug-ridden as a single player part, but at least it is much more fun going through the very same environments killing the very same monsters while in the company of your friends.

Visually the game is full of color and loveable critters, some of them perhaps too childish. Torchlight III is borderline cheesy, a real cuteness overload on every level. Performance-wise there are some infuriating frame rate drops, the engine not handling well at all a screen full of monsters and special effects. The worst moments are when an opponent charges you or your pet returns from town and the game freezes for a second. But this is just enough for you to find your untimely demise because you could not notice an attack or did not manage to heal in time.

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The Good

The Bad

Conclusion