Posts from Added to my journal.

Look at what we have here? Another development team has desired to bask in the shadow of the luminous glory of the blessed Diablo, excellent! In my useless life, I've played enough of these wonderful creations that rightfully earned the name "Diablo-clones." To avoid being completely baseless, I'll list a few (of those I remember): Fate; Silverfall; Frater; Sacred; Titan Quest; Diablo 3… oh, wait a minute… ah, no, it's correct. There were others, but I can't recall them. For this purpose (to remember everything), I typed a certain phrase into Google, which gave me a bunch of schoolboy-analytical little articles containing incredible discussions about the genre. Divinity, Gothic, Borderlands, and other games that have absolutely nothing to do with the genre are easily put on one plate with all the above by some people. Immediately, any desire to search for more on the topic vanished.
I chose this game over many others, of course, not without reason. But because a lot was said about it, it received good ratings and praise. However, some people exalted Sacred as if it were divine grace, so all of this might mean absolutely nothing. But there was a sale, I wanted something diabolical, I launched the demo version, thought "it'll do," and bought it. It's cool that there's a demo, but it's very difficult to take away anything specific for yourself from it.
At first glance, the game seems quite attractive: three skill trees, just like in some places; swords, axes, bows, pistols, shotguns, staffs; a pet capable of running into town for beer—miracles! And this is one of the main features of such projects—they seem good at first glance, only to disappoint after a couple of hours of gameplay. For example, in Sacred, the developers implemented many interesting things, such as: horses, the ability to fight while riding them, and riding skill progression; combo attacks composed of a set of regular skills, which looked very funny and played some role up to a certain point; many heroes with different (not) skills; interesting quests, diverse enemies, dungeons! How can such a game even be crap? Very simple: none of it works. In the end, horses are only needed for fast travel—to hell with that. Combo attacks make no sense at all after level 10, as do 90% of other skills, regardless of how you upgrade them. Hero skills are 70% identical; i.e., two or even three characters might have the "lightning strike" spell. Original quests are only found at the beginning—there are a few of them—and everything else is dull running back and forth across a huge empty map. This, by the way, refers to the diversity of locations: gloom, emptiness, decay, dungeons made for no apparent reason that don't even contain a golden chest. But look how the game was presented in the first few minutes! Other creations I mentioned are more or less subject to the same.

Main characters. Alchemist. Destroyer. Vanquisher.

So, let's return to Torchlight. Three skill trees, ten skills in each, but only half of them are unique. Everything else is general passives, crits, proficiency with three types of weapons, and general magic. For some reason, it seems unlikely that someone playing a warrior would want staff proficiency or, conversely, equip their mage with two swords. It turns out that a third of the skills immediately go into a box labeled "useless crap," but wait—the girl with the shotgun has a melee skill tree; is it needed? The first time I entered the game with the thought "I want to play as a rogue," I chose the girl, saw passives for own-melee weapon damage and skills for using them. I started, took swords, played for a while, and realized something was wrong here. I Googled it; indeed, there is no point in this. That is, almost an entire tree of useless skills—not bad. Diablo 2 had its "gimmick" skills; if not useless, then very highly specialized, like the Necromancer's poisoned dagger, but only a few such things across seven classes. In addition to level-up skills, there are scrolls with neutral spells that can be found or bought. It's not very clear why, for example, the same mage would use some neutral fireball when they have their own destructive abilities? Overall, the idea is not bad, but the execution is so-so.
In the first part of Diablo, it was just right, but here it isn't! And this leads smoothly to the next part concerning the general style. While all games imitating old Blizzard try their hardest to seem original, Torchlight doesn't bother at all. Right from the first minutes, it unashamedly tells us "hey guy, look, I'm just like Diablo!". We start in a small town suffering from the terror of evil from the depths, three characters to choose from, a skill system and music that is very similar to the theme of Act 1 from the second part. Subsequently, it turns out that the entire game takes place across thirty-five levels of a deep dungeon, just like in some places. That is, it's kind of a second part, but also kind of a first. Attempts to sit on both chairs simultaneously led to a rather poorly developed system; as I see it, there are many interesting ideas, but they are poorly implemented. One such idea is the pet. On one hand, it's cool—you can load it with a bunch of junk so it can run and sell everything in town, it bites a little, throws two neutral spells, and most importantly, doesn't die. On the other hand, it mostly acts as a mobile bag that occasionally tanks damage; you'd think it should be more, but its presence isn't really felt—they could have made it better.

Main villain. Master Alric.

In addition to the main quest that runs through the whole game, a couple of additional quests are offered, which improve in the same way. One is to kill a unique monster on a certain level, and the second is to find a piece of yellow mineral somewhere down there. After finding/killing, the NPC immediately gives you the next task of the same type. The plot is at the level of "monsters ancient evil traitor must kill everyone." You can, of course, read what the developers wrote, but it's not necessary; you won't lose much.
Since I deleted my first character because playing with those ridiculous swords was completely unpleasant, the second time I decided to run around as a shooter. Bows, crossbows, pistols, and shotguns are no different from each other, which is very sad. The weapon power progression by level simply stops at some point, providing the player with an incomprehensible mess of random numbers; I don't want to go into detail, basically, they did it poorly. Ding! Quick fact—auto-attacks in this game suck! This is due to overly strong skills depending on the DPS parameter, which overrides all other weapon characteristics. The first three bosses are no different; they just run around, grunt, and hit with a powered attack. In general, all other bosses are also unremarkable, weak, and dull, and the last one has more HP than all others combined. And if you, for some reason, haven't had your fill, after the story line, the developers suggest walking through a second, 100+ level dungeon just for fun.
In the end, I generally got what I wanted. Ran around and shot, looted, drank potions, ate fish (yes, there is fishing here, also implemented so-so), and when I started to get bored, the game ended. Torchlight cost 60+ rubles on sale—a fair price. But in general, how can one estimate the approximate value of a game? By the amount of work done? By personal feelings? For a good game, the desire doesn't arise to give it a rating or ponder whether it was worth the money spent. As for this game, I'll give it 6 out of 10; it'll do, not disgusting like some Sacred. Most of all, by the way, this reminded me of Frater, which also had firearms; roughly the same feeling from it remained in those distant days.
Did I want to play the second part? Yes, I did, even more than one might have assumed at first. I hope they did a proper job of learning from their mistakes, refining the good ideas and throwing out the old idiotic ones. The series has very great potential; I hope it hasn't perished in a whirlpool of cocaine parties on hot islands.
If you want Diablo but not Diablo, then feel free to taste it—not very long, but incredibly long if you want it to be. Not a bad little game, especially if you don't expect something divine and unique from it.