Ember Hammer

Day 419

Much of Torchlight 2's gameplay consists of running around and mindlessly clicking on things until they are dead. This pattern persists until the inevitable point at which your character will instantly die for unknown reasons. It's possible I have significant issues with being observant, but I really do die unexpectedly a lot. Unfortunately, I can't say this is all my fault. I find myself battling the game's interface more often than not, especially when surrounded on all sides by large groups of enemies. It's frequently difficult to communicate whether I want to click to move out of the crowd or click to attack an enemy. This has been in problem in action RPGs in the Diablo vein for as long as I can remember, but targeting is particularly sticky in Torchlight 2--and there's no way to click to move only as far as I know.

It's also quite upsetting that every ability has some sort of delay or cast time attached to it. It's possible this is an inclusion for balance purposes, but I'm used to League of Legends where casting multiple skills in sequence is a very smooth and streamlined process. There's a queue that detects when you've input multiple actions and they'll generally activate no matter what. In the case of Torchlight 2, I find myself repeatedly hammering the R key to activate my Force Field skill--a skill that I've found necessary to even survive. So often my Engineer will fall to the hordes of enemies surrounding her because that invaluable skill has refused to go off because I had the audacity to attempt to cast it during a swing of her hammer or during some invisible global cooldown. Even World of Warcraft has a reasonably intelligent ability queue in place that allows the player to cast multiple abilities in sequence despite the very noticeable cooldown between abilities.

I can't say this is a problem unique to Torchlight 2 but it's annoying all the same. I'd much rather be able to smoothly move, attack, and activate abilities without worrying about those annoying pauses. Even if this meant that many abilities without cooldowns would now require cooldowns I'd be all for it. I feel it significantly smooths out the gameplay, but I guess Runic Games never considered something like this a priority. Maybe I'm being picky but it's something that continues to annoy me. 

I find myself becoming overly negative about the game not because I dislike it but because I've played it a lot already and I'm beyond eager to be done with it. Although it's a decent game, there are other action RPGs out there I prefer, such as Path of Exile. It's probably an uglier game to look at but I find its mechanics more interesting--even if I prefer Torchlight 2's class system approach. Even Diablo 3 has more variety in class builds as well as more classes to choose from. I'd still be interested to see what Runic Games comes up with for Torchlight 3, but this particular entry has not necessarily impressed me. It is a game that mostly has the feel right, except for a series of minor annoyances that go a long way towards diluting the gameplay experience for me. I'd also like more unique and varied abilities. This is a front where Diablo III prevails. Even though it is not a perfect game, it has a ton of really fun abilities to use, at least for Witch Doctor, my class of choice.

I expect we'll be done with the game in a few more nights. After that, I probably won't play another Diablo style RPG until a big new game comes out--such as Torchlight 3 (which I've not heard is even in development) or possibly Grim Dawn. The latter is probably in development hell, but I'd be interested in trying it out if it ever did get released. It's from the developers of Titan Quest, another flawed game that still had some really cool ideas.