The gameplay design of Torchlight III is fun and motivating, but it has some deeper flaws that need to be addressed. Players must have a balance of difficulty and challenge. Giving players too much advantage at the beginning and overpowering them will not benefit the longevity of the game. If you need proof, go look at Bungie’s Destiny 2, which is struggling to maintain challenging content, while believing that making players ‘grind’ for shoddy rewards is the right solution for the issue. Finding that balance of building up a character properly and delivering difficulty and challenging enemies along the way is what other action RPGs, like Diablo, classics. Echtra Games did a great job with the initial groundwork of Torchlight III’s gameplay design, but it needs a bit more balance in some backend areas.
Action RPG games like Diablo are not my jam. Not because I dislike the concept or anything like that, but because I have had no interest in playing them. They seem time-consuming, engrossing, and I prefer a buffet of games rather than a single meal. After playing Torchlight III for the past week or so, I might reassess that decision. While Torchlight III was not overwhelming perfect in many respects, it does offer some good action, excellent upgrades, and some fun hack/slash adventuring. That’s a good start for a newcomer like me.
Let’s dig right into this.
Good pluses, some minuses
The biggest plus about Torchlight III is that it’s easy to pick up and get started. The gameplay is simplistically structured, as it lays out plenty of enemies to defeat, a slew of treasure to be had, and an easy-to-use backend RPG skills tree to maneuver through. It’s just easy to fall into and go. You want that type of game when you’re playing a button-mashing hack and slash. The hack and slash part is a big emphasis in the gameplay design, as you will find out quickly when a shit ton of enemies come at you at once. Thankfully, those are easy too.
The enemies in the game are not difficult whatsoever, even the bosses. They contain semi-tricky patterns but establish said patterns without much fuss and surprise. For example, early on in the game, you fight a big shielded goblin that does a rush attack, who is also armed with a giant hammer. His attacks are rush you with a shield and smash you with a hammer. It took me one accidental death to figure out his movements. He charges when he stops moving on the screen, shifts his attack direction, and gives himself a one-second beat before rushing you with the shield. That is more than enough time to move out of the way because once he is committed to the direction, he doesn’t change course. After figuring this out, it took me maybe five-minutes to dispatch him. You will run into big bosses, mini-bosses, and even enemies that are committed to their course that you can easily figure out. The game tries to make up for the ease with tons of enemies coming at you at once, even bosses, but the patterns are easily escapable. This might seem like a negative to the game, but for newcomers like myself, this actually helps with feeling motivated about continuing the game. The easy enemy patterns make for quick progression and for gaining good items, which just amplifies the game’s progression system and fun. Now, I do understand that this might get old and stale for returning players, and that’s a justified feeling, but when I (newbie) don’t die a trillion times, the motivation to keep going and exploring is pretty high.
Sticking with exploring, there is a lot of lands to traverse in this game. On the outside surface, the game is built like a traditional exploration game from the late 90s to early 2000s, kind of like what Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles looks like, where you have a linear path of unlockable lands to open up. Each land is large and flat, containing a lot of different locations within them. For example, the first land you get to explore is a large forest area that contains multi-tier locales in it. Sadly, you cannot go ‘up’ on some of these locales, even if there are ladders, but there are also caves and cellar doors sprawled throughout the land that you can access. The caves lead to mini-bosses and bigger rewards, while the cellar doors generally lead to deadly secrets and occasional nice weapons/defensive items. In the mix of offensive and defensive items, you can also gain animals.
The animal aspect of the game is interesting. They are your partners during gameplay and fierce defenders during battle. The animals come in a variety of shapes and sizes, from birds to dogs to backpack toting cats. You can collect animals and switch them out during gameplay. The best aspect of them is that they can’t really be killed, which I respect the hell out of Echtra Games for this. When they get too damaged in battle, they will flee for a certain amount of time. They make a return once the timer ticks down to zero, and they’re back in battle with you. Anyway, they’re a wonderful partner and another bit of reward motivation to keep playing the game and going further.
Related, on the topic of rewards, there are plenty to be had, and they are probably my biggest reason why I continued to play the game so much. The random drops in the game happen often — I MEAN OFTEN. When you kill a regular enemy you have the chance of getting a powerful item (could be offense/defense). If you kill a boss or a mini-boss, you’re guaranteed a powerful item. If you discover treasure chests (and there are plenty), then you might get a powerful item. See the theme here? In addition, if you complete quests, which you gain from folks in the main city of the game, then you’re guaranteed a powerful drop as well. Each drop can be accessed through the menu system and quickly compared with your current equipped item and used to replace said current item if need be. The system is seamless and plentiful, which makes it enticing to see how powerful you can become quickly. And it sadly happens really quickly, which makes the game less of a challenge.
Waves of enemies
Beating up hoards of enemies and taking down bosses without much fuss can make this game a bit stale, which I think most fans of the series are probably feeling with this release. The arc of game difficulty versus the arc of upgrading/leveling is severely out of whack. The only challenge I ran into is my own stupidity with enemies, as I picked up a powerful gear early on which negated most of the gear I found along the way. Does that make me want to stop playing? No, but I can see the lack of challenge detouring hardcore fans. The game’s algorithm for rolling good gear needs some revising. I’m sure an update can do that sometime down the road and it should. As it stands, you can get too powerful too quickly, which just takes the fun and challenge out of the adventure.
Unlimited Power!
On the backend of things, the game’s design is simplistic, as mentioned before. The skills tree goes as you level up. The leveling of the character is fast, though as you progress beyond level 10, it becomes much slower (which encourages you to go on more adventures). As you level up, you can upgrade skills through skill points. I was a mage throughout this review process, and fully maxed out my initial power (9-10 skill points). That max helped me to defeat a LOT of enemies along the way, and it also opened up new skills I could add to my macro bar at the bottom of the screen. Having the ability to add more powers and to give me more choices during sticky situations is always appreciative. In addition, the game certainly lets you feel like you’ve upgraded a character’s power, as the wickedness of my mage’s magic blast made that self-evident as I took care of enemies (and early bosses) with the greatest of ease. There’s a lot of good motivation in this aspect of the game to continue and get ‘more’.
Another aspect of the game is gaining crafting material and building out your own camp, which can help keep a gamer going once the action gets a bit stagnant. Having a secondary reason to revisit caves, dungeons, and brutal locales are always good, depending on how you feel about crafting and building your own space. For me, I found it charming, but it didn’t give me a reason to want to play the game. I know there are some crafting gamers out there that love this aspect of games, but I’m not one of them. Again, I can see this is another aspect of the game trying to motivate you to keep playing, and it works if you’re into that sort of motivation.
Conclusion
Overall, the gameplay design of Torchlight III is fun and motivating, but it has some deeper flaws that need to be addressed. Players must have a balance of difficulty and challenge. Giving players too much advantage at the beginning and overpowering them will not benefit the longevity of the game. If you need proof, go look at Bungie’s Destiny 2, which is struggling to maintain challenging content, while believing that making players ‘grind’ for shoddy rewards is the right solution for the issue. Finding that balance of building up a character properly and delivering difficulty and challenging enemies along the way is what other action RPGs, like Diablo, classics. Echtra Games did a great job with the initial groundwork of Torchlight III’s gameplay design, but it needs a bit more balance in some backend areas.
