it seems torchlight 3 has endured a lot of rough criticisms since its steam early access reveal.
i wished the players/testers would have more patience. torchlight series have suffered a lot of hiatus and failed experimentations into the mmorpg market (remember torchlight mobile?), not to mention how runic’s employees are scattered and a new studio had to be formed with of new employees. torchlight 3 deserved supports more rather than high expectations.
Various early impressions of TIII posted on gamebanshee:
https://www.gamebanshee.com/news/123936-torchlight-iii-early-access-impressions.html
there it is, those reviewers have seen that torchlight 3 is promising. but like they said, at this moment, its not that special. it needs more help and patience from testers and constructive feedback.
so torchlight fans need to lower their expectations, and actively try to help the devs if they want this franchise to stay alive.
I wish them luck. Hopefully, they will improve the game before the final release.
Launch date announced: 13 October.
here’s to hoping they would have a successful launch & good frequent responses to community feedbacks.
I hope too, but tbh i’m quite happy already that i finally can dig into this Game. I mean i played a few hours in Early Access, but nowdays i hardly can motivate myself to dig into EA Games anymore and wait for the full release.
From what I read on the steam forum, the game is still shallow. There will be an offline mode, but that will come after the release. But from a few of the posts I seen, this isn’t TL, or anyway near as good as 2.
In the end, I will watch it, but I’m not going to get my hopes up.
Edit,
Offline mode will come with release. Still, I’m still going to wait and see how well it does.
Edit 2
nothing about modding support, if there is none, then expect this game to be very short and short lived.
But so far, nothing from the devs on this. (at least from what I seen)
Edit 3
fairly recent video on relics,
Man, the skill trees are bad. really small. I’m not hyped for this game at all now. I just see a downgraded game that is still a simple mobile game. And still is a mobile game. Unless the devs add in modding suppport, this game will die real quick. Not impressed to say the least.
I also suspect like some of the comments in under the video, this is just a cash grab, as Frontiers didn’t work out, and the devs are going to wash their hands on this game. The game is still seems to be influenced by its older MMO state. I suspect the reason for the rush, would be Perfect World, and they are the ones that have green lit the game for release, even though its far from ready.
Expect this to have a bad launch and a quick death.
welp.
i can now safely say torchlight 2 is the final true game in this series.
damn mmorpg publisher… it all begins with runic games’ overeager ambition to turn torchlight 2 into mmorpg… and it all goes downhill from there.
perhaps if they change the name into torchlight frontier instead of torchlight 3, they will at least have excuse that this game’s rule of play is not the same as its predecessors. turning this game into a spin-off is the better route rather than giving the ‘OVERHYPED SEQUEL’ treatment. i’ll just watch let’s plays & reviews then.
Perfect world seems to be a pretty bad publisher. Their eagerness to turn TL3 into a MMO backfired and now we seeing that is left. I seen this kind of thing before, A quick turn around by not much of a game, as its a hybrid, jack of all trades. and ends up failing.
Everything that I seen from that linked video makes me cringe. So yeah, T2 was good, and better with mods. 3 is just a rush job to rake in some cash. Sad really, If this is a flop, and probably is, expect PE to dump the name and move on.
But that publisher has a lot to answer for.
This game is so bad, its unsalvageable! It reeks of mobile game everywhere, they did their best to hide by naming it “3” but they cannot hide the stench of it at all.
Dumbed down mechanics thats definetly catered for 5 year olds! Wolcen is even better than this dogpile, yes! And let both of these games rot in hell!
well at least wolcen brings new ideas. & kinda pretty with its graphics. i dunno, i’m the type of player who prefer lores and world building over minmaxing gameplay numbers.
My favorite Let’s-Player tried it out. Although it is a sponsored video, he did not go out of his way to sound more cheerful than usual - this is his normal self (on YT).
I think its over priced for what it is. I might get it on sale and try it out. But seems from the steam forums, nothing really has been added apart from an offline mode. Otherwise, the content seems to be the same.
Yeah, sorry… no camera rotation. Already a major buzzkill. GD has spoiled me. The robot looks fun, and the game looks nice appearance wise. Not a fan of that PoE style totem AoE buff shit though. I don’t know. Definitely modeled to a younger target audience. I think for a kid, new to ARPGs, it will probably be an awesome introduction to the genre… but for people who have been playing ARPGs since the first Diablo, or Secret of Mana, it doesnt appear to be anything to write home about.
Im curious, what made Torchlight 2 so good? I own it and have played a little, and honestly I was not impressed. What sets 2 apart from 3 so much? Single player/offline capable?
Not sure about the camera rotation. I guess the question is will your game become better from it, and what impact does it have on your level design? I think you can have a compelling gameplay both ways.
I’m inclined to agree with you on the overall atmosphere. This playful design could use humor and self-irony, which I have not observed during this three-quarters of an hour.
decent let’s play, it could be better. but the player chosing the robot and dawg added greatly to its first impression charm imo. maybe its just that i want to play as the robot too. kinda feeling nostalgic with claptrap gameplay in borderlands 1.5.
there’s not much feature shown in the early game it seems. and its darkish element of netherim from torchlight 1 & 2 was reduced to increase the appeal to younger audience. but i still want to play it, if only to pay respects to torchlight series and runic/echtra team.
i get the impression of steampunk & colonization (or imperialism…) with a magical steambot and its fluffy pet from that let’s play. might wanna replicate that.
What made Torchlight 2 so good in your opinion?
elite difficulty mobs are dangerous in torchlight 2 from early game to late game, until you got ~50% all damage reduction & good chunks of hp with smart timing of shield switching technique with good block stats. also the combat are very fast paced with lots of fxs filling the screen, especially when facing major bosses. if all that sound too hard, players can switch difficulty freely in lan mode for easier farming times.
thats what makes torchlight 2 interesting for me. the steampunk cartoon artstyle mixed with slightly dark tone are also pleasing to look at.
Going from TL2 to Grim Dawn has certainly spoiled me in a number of ways and I’d struggle to go back but some of the things I enjoyed about it are:
Like with Grim Dawn, variety within the character classes. Without going into their viability in the later levels/difficulties - Beserkers have some caster skills (including a channelled shapeshift) alongside the melee ones you’d expect, Embermages have some melee-style or close-up shotgun spells alongside their others, Engineers can be played as heavy hitter melee or ranged, go shield tank or even pure minion with your robots, Outlanders can make for ranged users, casters or disposable pet users. And that’s just on the surface, I remember seeing people further in the community experimenting with more bizarre stuff like tanky Outlanders or ranged Berserkers. Some smart exploiting of mechanics meant things like using a wand in one hand and a gun in the other also enabled some new options.
The map being different with every character via procedurally generated kept things fresh while playing as even if you knew which quests were in an area, you wouldn’t know where/when you’d encounter them. Some random bits like the buff Totems or encounters like Phase Beast challenges as an example kept things interesting by throwing unexpected scenarios at you with a nice payout at the end.
Your pet. Being able to unload trash equipment for gold in the field, or stock up on basic supplies like potions or identify scrolls without going back to town is convenient. He also aids you in combat and can be outfitted with his own skillset that can include anything from passive bonuses (like netting more money from items sold) to spells that do damage. Ironically, the community standard was to load him up with minion spells so your personal pet would summon a small army of his own. Also, feeding fish to him to transform him into other pets is just funny to me. I have fond memories from years back where me and some friends would just sit in town for a good 20-30m and just fish and chill before heading out properly.
On Torchlight 3, I’m sceptical on it as well. I really like the idea behind the new relic system and the new character classes but I feel like it could all be fleshed out way more than it currently is.
Edit: I just found this Steam review and if everything is true, holy wow. i didn’t think TL3 was this barebones. They have basically stripped out everything I liked/talked about in TL2 above and removed attributes from character building (I’m assuming that they instead take up some of the talent trees, meaning they offer even less exciting stuff). Well that solidifies it for me then - hard pass.