It lacks the physics engine other games in the genre have so you’ll never get to send enemies flying in all directions but seeing them all explode into a red mist is almost as satisfying. You’ll be covering a lot of ground quickly and killing enemies rarely feels dull, whether they’re exploding at the strike of your sword or they’re collapsing as your whirlwind tears through them, Torchlight 2 does an excellent job of making you feel powerful.

What the game does best is gameplay it’s fast-paced and unreasonably entertaining. The hunt takes you across various environments throughout 4 acts (if you’ve played any aRPG that does similar you can probably guess the main environments). Set years after the first game, T2 has you chasing the Alchemist (one of the classes in the first game), who has become corrupted by the Ember Blight coming from the heart of Ordrak (the final boss in the first game) after he destroys the town of Torchlight. It is the evolution everyone wanted – it’s a Diablo-like in a modern format and, as such, it’s genuinely difficult to fault in and of itself. Torchlight 2 is almost perfect as a classic-styled aRPG.

With that kind of pedigree it was difficult to think that Torchlight 2 wouldn’t be good, and with good reason. Add to that the creator of Fate, another aRPG, and Flagship Studios (which was made up of largely Blizzard North employees that worked on the Diablo games), and you’ve got a line-up of experienced developers who have all worked on something big in the genre. That is a lot of pressure for one relatively small developer to withstand but then again Runic Games is staffed by the co-founders of Blizzard North – ie, they created Diablo and Diablo 2. Then Diablo 3 was released and those who were disappointed turned to Torchlight 2 to bridge the gap they felt Diablo 3 failed to fill. Torchlight 2 aims to fix that and, as such, had the hopes of many on its shoulders. The first game was very good mechanically, but when it came to its storyline, it fell short of its influences by a rather wide margin. There was a lot of hype for Torchlight 2.

Torchlight 2 review