We analyze Torchlight 3 on PC, the next installment in a saga that adds little depth to its story, but manages to maintain the essence of its genre.
The Torchlight saga began in 2009 with a team of veterans from the Blizzard Entertainment company, who wanted to create an ARPG series modeled after the Diablo. Echtra Games managed to make these new games a niche in the action role-playing genre, but something new was already missing. And it is that eight years have passed since the launch of Torchlight 2 and the path to Torchlight 3 has been a bit problematic. It originally began to be developed as Torchlight Frontiers, an RPG destined for a Free to Play shared world, but it was not very convincing and the team decided to change gears. Its evolution has continued and initially remained for a long period in early access, and starting on October 13, players were able to experience the latest and long-awaited installment.
Torchlight 3, an empty story
Torchlight 3 takes place a century after the conclusion of Torchlight 2, the empire of Ember is in decline and thankfully Nosvastria needs our help. We will once again face the threat of an invasion, face future challenges and defeat all the enemies that stand in our way in a matter of minutes. The story was never the main attraction of this adventure, it presents a not very enthusiastic narration and vaguely captures that essence of the story of the last game, you may even sometimes not understand why the plot development. Of course, in Torchlight 3 we will have a wide repertoire of difficulty levels, which will allow us to challenge ourselves and adjust to our experience. The most difficult modes will be turned into complicated challenges, although the rewards are better. However, the normal mode will remain the ‘easy’ mode in boss fights, as long as we keep our reflexes fast and adapt to their combat pace.
The initial challenge: create your character
In this installment we are given the opportunity to choose between four types of characters with very basic and simple customization options. They will be totally different classes and some of them may become the strangest thing you can find, these are: Precision Shooter, Twilight Mage, Forged and Master Machinist (their names in English sound more attractive). Each class has its own unique aesthetic and skills that will really identify and illustrate it quite well, and we can also find the one that best suits our needs. For example, the precision shooter will attack with a combination of ranged weapons and magical gadgets that release powerful spirits or, on the other hand, the forged will become a true mechanical marvel with the soul of a hero, where we can attack with a cannon that carries equipped, as well as having a host of powerful melee attacks.
Each class has two skill trees that are unique and that will allow us to create different builds providing a more rewarding class system, however, our character will improve more through the selection of relics. These relics, of which we can only choose one, will grant us ten abilities, both passive and active. Each relic will act as a subclass that changes the way we can play with our character and focuses on a type of weapon for additional bonuses. For example, the Flaming Destruction revolves around the invocation of fire helping us to burn the enemies, or the Scourge, which will summon a group of spiders and release deadly poison blasts. Despite giving value within the game, obtaining the relics would have caused more interest if it were not a permanent choice, but could be unlocked throughout history as with legendary abilities, since it would have added greater depth and mechanics to the development of the game.
But we are not alone in our adventure and we will have a companion who will help us as much as possible, our pet. At the beginning they will give us the opportunity to choose between a dog, an owl and an alpaca, but throughout history we will be able to unlock more variety and we will get a large number of them. These will have two functions, the ability to return to the city to sell items from our inventory, and to fight by our side in each battle, although their AI is somewhat weak which means that when we need them most they will have just died.
However, the most innovative component that Torchlight 3 brings will be our strength. It will be an area enabled for us that will serve as a base of operations, where we can build structures and feed a lucky tree to obtain a bonus on falling objects. This area is fully customizable and gives you an option to make your own design, as well as being able to decorate it completely to your liking. However, it is a fairly basic place and its development is not as exciting as it might have to, since the changes we make will rarely affect the game enough to be satisfactory.
Explore and fight, but don’t get lost
Torchlight 3 is developed over three acts that correspond to places with different themes and that will allow us to level up. Without going into too much detail of the facts, we can say that we will go from the Goblin Forest to continue through environments such as the Infested Forest and the Echonok Mountains. The exploration and the gameplay will be extremely linear, despite ending up lost, it will continually “force” us to take endless walks and without guidance to discover the next portal of our next mission. The missions are not complicated, ‘go somewhere, get this or kill this boss’, but reaching them can become a very tedious and repetitive adventure when we have to discover the maps again and again.
As soon as we reach an area, our path will begin to flood with enemies that will appear mercilessly and we will manage to run into a large number of them, sometimes preventing us from moving without allowing a quick response with our attacks. As we move forward we will discover enemies with a colored area at their feet, this will mean that they are elites, so it will be more tedious to kill, but they will not become a great challenge. The bosses, in addition to being visually interesting, if they will have mechanics that will vary throughout the fight, they will want to keep us on our toes, but again they will not be very challenging. Once we have explored the maps several times we will realize that the enemies are almost all the same and that the bosses do not have much personality.
It is true that throughout these levels we will have a variety of places to go to continue our battles and encounter more and more enemies: underground sewers, dungeons and ancient ruined sacred places. Even so, regardless of where we are, our character will have to adapt to the level of the area and will get equipment to become a true hero and transform into a walking engine of destruction. Like our abilities, the statistics offered by our varied equipment will be essential to achieve a good ending in our story. Even our pet can also obtain various equipment items that can grant us some passives.
Share your adventure with a friend
When creating your character, think carefully if it is to be used in multiplayer or in single player, since each character will be used in their own way and you will not be able to use them in both. Once we have decided that this adventure will be multiplayer, we will have the opportunity to share this adventure with a total of four people. This mode has been improving with the different patches that Torchlight 3 has suffered, since the instability of the servers did not allow a good experience. However, it has managed to become fluid and quite fun, increasing the difficulty of the fights a bit and rewarding all participants with their own loot.
Despite being a main option for some players, the multiplayer mode is not complete and it lacks some details such as the user interface. For example, being able to see the missions of another member of the group and thus being able to help him more easily or also being able to go to your fort when you are in a group, without having to leave previously.
A solid and attractive atmosphere
Torchlight 3 shows attractive, solid and graphically well-stylized designs with dark environments, which helps the images stand out and invade us more their atmosphere when playing games. The art style is simple, colorful, and displays a variety of elements and details in every corner of its maps. The enemy animations and their sound effect are good and our own characters, despite having a very basic customization, show a pleasant aesthetic with very different identities. Regarding the sound, the voices will be in English and there will be no dubbing. Even so, the translation is puzzling on many occasions because we will not have subtitles in cinematics and it will fail to find only certain information in English such as the team, skills, missions or even dialogues with an NPC.
CONCLUSION
Torchlight 3 is a step behind what was expected and seen previously in the saga, with a gameplay that feels a step back. Despite the overall game being solid and fun for hours of battles and loot gathering, it fails to demonstrate much diversity on its maps, making it repetitive and tedious. In addition, it contains various flaws throughout its adventure that sometimes make the experience suffer. If you like the Torchlight setup or are looking for a new ARPG, Torchlight 3 is a good game, but not expected. With more content and a few patches, several of your problems could be fixed.
THE BEST
- An attractive and solid atmosphere.
- Innovation with our strength.
- Very varied skill system.
WORST
- It ends up being a very repetitive and linear game.
- Very little varied enemies and bosses without customization.
- The translation into Spanish.
Right
It is not the latest or the most original, it does not have the best execution either, but it can be fun if you like the genre. Good, but room for improvement.
