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Torchlight III Review

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Torchlight III is disappointingly short, boring, and fun. Here’s what I thought of it.

The Great:

Graphics:

Torchlight III is a damn pretty game. The different biomes look unique and I love how colorful everything was while I played. Not every game in this genre needs to chase after Diablo II’s overly dark atmosphere. There are enough games out there that mimic it and I’m glad Torchlight III kept its same cartoony art style that the previous two games in the series had.

This game also ran really well on my rig. I never dropped frames no matter how crazy things on-screen got and I only experienced two bugs near the end of the game. My screen turned white and I couldn’t see what was around me during a boss fight. The graphical options are as bared boned as it gets. There are five different options for you to set on low, medium, or high. Torchlight III worked on my current setup and on my wife’s old 960m laptop. A potato could run this game on high settings.

The Good:

Gameplay:

When I’m not comparing this game to a phone game or complaining about how boring it is when compared to other games in its genre I’m murdering hordes of goblins, skeletons, giant bugs, and automatons. Torchlight III has good gameplay. It’s just not up to the standards set by better, and much older, games in the genre. Torchlight was never a series to set a standard in the ARPG genre. It was always a good starting place if you wanted to experience this genre and Torchlight III continues that. This gameplay here is really smooth and responsive and you’ll have fun playing it if you can ignore all of the issues that this game currently has.

In addition to slaughtering millions of mobs, you’ll be able to build yourself a home. Yes, Torchlight III has housing that absolutely no one asked for. If you went down the list of features that we wanted to be added to the Torchlight franchise or things we thought would be a cool addition to it housing would be at the very bottom or near it. This is where the phone game comparisons started with me. Torchlight III was originally Torchlight Frontiers. A free to play game that would be available on PC and phones. The problem is no one liked it and it was scrapped. Or so you would think. Torchlight III is nothing, but Torchlight Frontiers with a different name and none of the pay to win bullshit that it originally had planned for the game, but the remnants of that game are strong here and it’s hard to ignore them.

For starters, there’s a battle pass system in the game. Do you know those games that award you different perks for filling up that battle pass experience bar in games like Genshin Impact, or just about any other phone game out there? That’s here. The difference is you don’t have to pay for the unlockables here, but it shouldn’t be here at all. I got extra stash space as a battle pass reward. You could’ve just let us unlock our stash tabs with gold instead of locking it behind this meaningless feature.

The skills have been simplified and so has the stats. You won’t find any in-depth stats here and go over pages of different attributes. Every item you find will add a flat boost to your attack or defense stat. The problem is none of the loot is very interesting, but I’ll get more into that in the negative section of this review.

You can tell the developers originally wanted Torchlight III to be a live service game. The hints, features, battle pass, etc are proof of that. I’m glad they changed their mind, but that doesn’t automatically make it a good game though. What they should’ve done was completely scrap Frontiers and start from scratch with Torchlight III. Not try and salvage a game no one wanted in the first place.

The moment to moment gameplay IS fun though and it will keep you playing until you finish it. But how long will you stay once you’re done with the underwhelming campaign?

The Bad:

Sounds:

Torchlight III has terrible voice acting, average sound effects, and a very forgettable soundtrack. It’s not booming and epic like Wolcen nor is it more subtle and depressing like Path of Exile. It’s just… there and it sucks. And that’s a shame because I desperately wanted something besides the graphics and gameplay to praise about this game. It’s just disappointing. I eventually stopped caring about what anything sounded like and just put in my earbuds and listened to my music on Tidal. It was that forgettable for me.

Story:

Some evil lady and her three daughters want to do some evil shit and only you can stop them. Sound familiar? The story here is honestly… very forgettable. I’m not claiming that Torchlight I & II had fantastic stories (they really didn’t), but I was at least interested enough to read through all of the dialogue and get through the game. In this game, I just wanted it to be over and didn’t bother letting anyone speak after I finished reading the short paragraph that they had to say. The problem is the way the story is structured feels like something from a phone game. Short sentences, ZERO side quests, and moving from point A to B. All of the “side quests” just pop up when I enter a zone and there’s an “optional” tab near it.

It’s A Glorified Phone Game…

Torchlight III was meant to be a phone game and I know I’ve already written about this a lot already in this review. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I was playing a mobile game on PC because of the way everything is structured. There’s no mystery in this game. Even though some of the zones are open they’re incredibly linear. The progression boils down to looking for a blue question mark because that’s literally the only place on the map to go that isn’t a dead end. There are no off the path caves. Sure there are random elite enemies on the map, but after a while even that got boring. This game has no soul and I couldn’t uninstall it fast enough once I finished playing it.

It’s Really Short:

I completed this game in about 10 hours. Once I realized there was no point in exploring because it didn’t lead anywhere I breezed through the game. I was level 46 when I completed the game and it felt like an on-rails experience to me. There’s nothing wrong with short games, mind you, but I do have a problem with short, boring games with little to no content to keep me interested in the game.

Weak Endgame:

After I beat the final boss I unlocked the end game. It’s basically just running dungeons over and over again until you get bored and quit. To mix it up a bit there are random modifiers that you can choose from that’ll make your trip through each dungeon a little more difficult. If you die you’ll have to start all the over from the first dungeon. I’m not going to be too harsh here because a lot of games in this genre suffer from good end game content. Diablo III did for a long time until Reaper of Souls saved it. Torchlight III is still young and can always get better. The lack of new game plus is a big negative though. Not that I would want to play through this game again though…

Disappointing, But Unique Classes:

There are four classes in the game and I only sort of enjoyed playing as one of them. The mage class in this game has to be the worst mage class ever in any ARPG I’ve ever played in my life. I did no damage and none of the spells I learned were any good and didn’t even look cool. I had the same issue with my warrior class. Even though I was swiftly killing shit left and right with my mine cart and choo choo train none of it looked cool to me.

I didn’t touch a single hammer skill on my character because they were lame. They did little damage when compared to my mine cart and looked so lackluster that I would’ve probably quit the game 3 hours in if I didn’t change my build. Just about all of the skills in this game are lackluster and 95% of the time you’ll be casting them so it’s important for them to look good.

Legendary Gear:

Legendary gear is utterly useless in this game. They’re not that unique, don’t look that cool, and are outclassed by green gear. Blue tiered gear is actually the best gear in the game. I went from getting excited when a legendary item dropped to saying, “oh look another legendary I can break down for my tree at my base”. Legendary gear should outclass green and blue gear easily. If it doesn’t what’s the point of it being legendary? Legendaries need a buff and they need one soon. I went through the entire game with a blue hammer. I did find a decent legendary near the end of the game, but by then what’s the point?

The Verdict

Disappointing. That's the one word that I kept repeating to myself as I played Torchlight III. Disappointing. It's disappointing because it is nothing, but Torchlight Frontiers with the number 3 slapped on the cover of it. It's disappointing because it's so linear and loot is terrible and it's disappointing because it has no soul. Torchlight III is a mere shadow of its former self and I would rather go back and play any of the previous games in this series before I touch this one again. Good gameplay doesn't make a good game.

5
Final Score :
5

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