Torchlight 2

Torchlight II is an action role-playing dungeon crawler video game developed by Runic Games, released for Microsoft Windows on September 20, 2012. It is the sequel to Torchlight, and features peer-to-peer multiplayer support and extended modding capabilities. The game was released for OS X on February 2, 2015, and for Linux on March 4, 2015. Ports for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One were released September 3, 2019 and were developed by Panic Button. Years after the end of the original Torchlight, The Alchemist (one of the three playable characters in the first game) becomes corrupted by the Ember Blight coming from the Heart of Ordrak, the evil being who had been the source of the corruption under the town of Torchlight, and then destroys the town.

The player character takes on a quest to stop this villain, who is using Ordrak’s power to disturb the balance between the world’s six elements. As the game progresses, the player treks across large geographical areas, corresponding to three “acts” of the story and an epilogue. Act I, Wake of the Alchemist, is set in the mountainous Estherian Steppes, and Act II takes the player to a desert known as the Mana Wastes, and Act III takes place in Grunnheim, a haunted forest that contains the ruins of an ancient dwarven civilization. An Imperial Camp serves as the player’s town. Torchlight II takes place in a fantasy world where the player character can be any of four classes, each with different skills and abilities.

The plot starts with the destruction of the town of Torchlight, at the hands of the Alchemist from the first game, and has the character following the trail of destruction left in the Alchemist’s wake as he searches for a cure to his illness which has driven him insane. The sequel to the first game was originally going to be an MMORPG however Torchlight II was released with both single-player and multi-player support, as the company felt they could release this much faster than the planned MMO. The game received mostly positive reviews from critics. A sequel, Torchlight III, was released in 2020. Like the original Torchlight, Torchlight II features randomly generated dungeons for the player to explore, and numerous types of monsters to fight for experience and loot. 

Torchlight II maintains the same basic gameplay as its predecessor, but features overland areas with multiple hub towns, and a longer campaign. Other new features include time of day cycles, weather effects, and a redesigned user interface. Also unlike the first game, some weapons and armor can only be used by certain classes, as opposed to all of them. With the ability to pursue different unique builds and customize the almost unlimited number of spells, gear, and weapons it leads to intricate fights. The exploration is wide and vast with large quantities of different landscapes. You can make combinations of gear that support your class abilities or choose to try to make tricky strategies to outplay your enemies.

Players are able to customize character appearance with choice of sex, face, hair style and hair color. Additionally, several elements from the first game return, such as pets (but now with expanded options and basic customization available) and fishing. A retirement system was originally planned, similar or identical to the one in the first game, but was replaced with the current New Game Plus mode. The game features four playable character classes. Each class has 3 skill trees to choose from which enable customization within each class. The three classes from the original Torchlight do not return as playable characters, and are instead presented in the game world as NPCs.