If I’m firing my bow and need to quickly dodge roll out of an explosion, I have to stop everything I’m doing and press the button frantically until it becomes responsive. That means you have to finish any ongoing animations and wait around a second – which may as well be a decade in some of these encounters. The most frustrating part of Torchlight 3’s combat, which I still haven’t stopped fuming over, is the fact that almost none of the active abilities can be triggered unless you’ve come to a complete stop. Every corner is filled with destructible and interactable items, small but effective embellishments, and mood-setting lighting and effects which ensures no map ever feels too static or lifeless. Whether it’s a stalwart military outpost ringed with fireable cannons or a murky swamp brimming with poisonous beasts, the simple, colorful, readable art style pops and sizzles. The environments you’ll explore and do battle in are excellently constructed, too. Playing on Hard, the difficulty felt just about right. The bigger area and act bosses are a highlight, offering substantial challenges and keeping me on my toes with deadly area attacks. There are powerful elite creatures with randomized ability modifiers, as well as legendary and miniboss bruisers packed with rare loot for your trouble. Occasionally you’ll run into tricker enemies, like wild boars that can take you out in just a couple of hits with a charge attack. You’ll blast through hordes of weakling goblins, bugs, and zombies. The enemy design is respectable, but doesn’t offer much that’s new and exciting if you’ve been around the ARPG block a few times. But it encourages experimentation and helps my builds feel like they’re mine. The Relic skill trees still feel fairly limited, just like the base class ones, with most having two active and two passive abilities that can be upgraded in a couple different ways. A mage with vampiric berserker abilities? Nothing is stopping you. Each relic is class agnostic, so you can mix and match them to create interesting combinations.
You can have one Relic equipped at a time, which opens up an entirely new skill tree that includes an “ultimate” ability with a very long cooldown, similar to those you might see in a MOBA. A mage with vampiric berserker abilities? Nothing is stopping you.It gets a little more exciting with the introduction of Relics, which ended up being my favorite part of the progression system.
But each only features a handful of abilities to invest in right now, and since they’re gated at five level intervals, the choices you have upon levelling up are usually pretty limited.Ī sniper with lightning powers? Sure. Each has two main skill trees with a different focus – the Sharpshooter has one focusing on direct ranged damage and one focusing on summonable creatures, while the Railmaster has one focused on melee combat and one focused on making his train bigger and nastier. The options for customizing these classes are a little bit lackluster, too, especially compared to some other recent ARPGs. There is an unlockable reload skill that refills your ammo instantly, and while it suits the fantasy the sharpshooter is trying to represent, it was far too rare that it let me feel like I was making interesting resource management decisions. That sounds great, but their ammo resource gauge is basically just a fancy stamina bar that recharges quickly when not in use. The Sharpshooter, for instance, is a savvy hunter who can summon various companions and has a whole toolbelt of powerful ranged attacks. The hilariously over-the-top Railmaster reimagines the concept of a pet class by summoning a battle train that follows you around on rails you leave behind as you move, to which more cars with different uses can be added by investing in the skill tree.Įach of the four playable classes has a very distinct and flavorful aesthetic and identity.Not all of them are quite as fun in practice as they seem in concept, though. The weird and eerie Dusk Mage builds up dark mana by using light spells and light mana by using dark spells, and can unleash a more powerful finisher of either type once the appropriate mana gauge is filled.
Each of the four playable classes has a very distinct and flavorful aesthetic and identity.
At least things get a little more interesting when it comes to the class design.
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