Torchlight III

If you are new to the Torchlight franchise then Torchlight III is an excellent jumping on point. At $30 it's a great binge game to play with friends while we all wait on the next-gen onslaught that's just around the corner. But, if you're a hardcore ARPG fan looking for something deeper then you may be better served elsewhere, namely by Torchlight II.

Torchlight III makes no attempt at all to introduce anything new to the genre and this lack of originality is disappointing after 8 years of waiting. It’s quite easy to point out a couple of other flaws (e.g. the shallow story), but I chose not to dwell on them, because the game delivered exactly what I expected from it – around 20 hours of enjoyable hacking and slashing that doesn’t engage the mind too much. [13/2020, p.32]

Torchlight III is a great entry in the series as it doesn’t explicitly try to be exactly like its predecessors. Instead, it attempts to do new things using classes and relics to personalize the adventure along with a few accessible leveling systems and skill trees. It all works for the most part, but it’s a design that doesn’t allow for the deepest amount of customization. Sure, building a fort and collecting loot with my friends is fun, but there has to be some balance and short term goals that make each level up and new area discovered worth it.

Torchlight 3 will scratch any basic RPG itch for adventure, loot, and fantasy, but even with a heckin’ doggo sidekick at its side, it feels a bit too old-fashioned to stand out from the rest of the pack.

Between the flat power curve, unexciting items, and unlocking all your abilities by level 20, Torchlight 3 ultimately suffers a dire pacing problem. Getting to the end game is a fairly non-exciting and long grind and not enough changes with the experience at the end game to keep me playing. I think the developers could get there with a few good patches that make items exciting, enchanting less painful, and skills synergize better together but they have to recognize the problem exists to begin with. The groundwork is there for a great Torchlight installment if they would listen closely to player feedback and fix these pitfalls. Until then I’ll keep checking in with the patch notes and hoping for a No Man’s Sky-esque comeback but for now if someone asks me how Torchlight 3 is I’ll simply respond with “Eh, it’s okay”.

I certainly enjoyed my time with Torchlight 3 and will continue to jump back in if my friends are online, but the game has its faults. I disagree with the common sentiment in online communities that Torchlight 3 feels like it should have been an expansion to Torchlight 2; the new classes and Relic system are an excellent addition to the series and provide a level of replayability and customisation that the previous games didn’t have. Yet with that being said, I’m not convinced that the extended campaign, fort system and new class customisation options are enough to warrant the hefty price tag when compared to the offerings in the previous games. Not to mention the bizarre lack of online public matchmaking, which was a vital component of the previous game. If you’ve enjoyed the previous Torchlight games, you’ll undoubtedly enjoy Torchlight 3 as well, but you might want to wait until it’s on sale.

A perfectly fun experience with some replay value, but even in writing this review, I have reached level 33 of the Dun-Djinn with a level-capped Blood Drinker Railermaster and it already feels too repetitive to keep my interest for long. I suppose I could level new characters, but the drive for that is diminished knowing there is not much to do once that journey is complete.

Developer Echtra Games and publisher Perfect World Entertainment have released Torchlight III. The game has a lot going for it, from its stylized graphics to the overall feel of combat. But it is currently missing a spark that the previous two entries in the series captured.

Quotation forthcoming.

Though the experience is hampered by bugs, glitches, and a few design issues, the snappy and moreish combat, the treasure trove of stats and skills, and the delightfully chaotic co-op play make Torchlight 3 a must-have for anyone looking for more ARPG goodness.

If you’re just here for the gameplay, then you’ll get a lot out of Torchlight III. But the balance is askew if you’re wanting a substantial story and cast to support the wending journey from point A to B with no deviations in between. Perhaps future updates will refine the weaker points in the game, but at the moment, Torchlight III is far from the definitive entry in the series.

The voice acting is quite good. Although there weren’t any standout characters, from the NPCs to the random voice recordings you find, I always felt involved with the world and its story. Additionally, there is a personal fort you can decorate and craft to your liking. There is quite a variety of options for decoration things purely cosmetic to useful things, like the Lucktree, which you could feed loot to grow larger, granting you better luck within dungeons. However, these little successes don’t fully make up for the game’s shallowness that probably will get you bored in a few hours. Torchlight 3 is not a bad game by any means, I just don’t see a point in playing it over the original or two.

Torchlight III is fine but only if you don't have too many expectations. Ignoring the many elements of the old free-to-play formula that still remain, the game is relatively unchanged from the first and second entries, which can disappoint those looking for improvements. It's a simpler action/RPG, and it's good for those who might want to get their feet wet with the genre but don't want to do so with an older game. Genre veterans, on the other hand, might not be too impressed with what they see.

Although fans did dodge quite a bullet with Frontiers, Torchlight 3 isn’t the sequel TL2 deserves: it’s really just an okay action RPG filled with cute pets and a base of operations gimmick that adds little compared with the enormous amount of stuff that’s lacking at launch. Dungeons will need a big update, combat could be more intense, and the world map is just too damn linear to enjoy.

Torchlight 3 is a passable action RPG with decently crispy combat and satisfactory classes. But the workmanlike boss runs, unexciting gear, dull story, bizarre Fort design, and multiplayer issues all keep it below both its predecessors and competitors.

Torchlight 3 does a great job with its class design, but the world feels barren and unfinished.

Torchlight III still suffers from many issues that have been present since its Early Access stage, including a middling endgame and bland core gameplay loop. Worse, its restrictions on character builds and relic usage lead to a lack of experimentation and customization.

At its best, Torchlight 3 is a fun and colorful (if mindless) romp through mobs of enemies in the search of loot. At its worse, it's a premium game that feels like an empty, free-to-play MMO, and it becomes clear that the game has an identity crisis. That doesn't mean it's not fun, it just means that "Frontiers" feels like an invisible subtitle to Torchlight 3.

Torchlight 3 is not worthy of its name. Exploring the game world is worth zero. Where have all the side missions gone? The transformations for my pet? The fight with two one-handed weapons? Why are there no more jewel sockets and why do I have to collect rat shit in a main quest? This game is monotonous, generic and soulless. If you just turn off your brain for an hour or two, you can still get in here. But if you want more for your money, you're in the wrong place.

Torchlight 3 is a lighthearted, simple co-op ARPG that might provide some fun to casual ARPG players or serious fans of the series, but doesn't do much else to justify its existence.

There isn't much for me to love or hate here. Torchlight III is a slow burn, one that struggles to stand out like its predecessors did back when this genre wasn't nearly as stacked with great competitors. If you're down for a simpler grind, you might find something to latch onto, but don't count on it.

Torchlight III is stuck in between what it is and what it could have been in its MMO days. The final overcome is, unfortunately, everything but unforgettable.

Despite being part of a series that has always stood out positively in the microcosm of isometric action RPGs, Torchlight 3 proved to be a mediocre, confusing and incomplete game.

The third Torchlight has little in common with its two excellent predecessors.

Torchlight 3 was bland from the get-go and never picked up in my near 20 hours with the game. It fails to reach the heights of its predecessor in basically every way. Its origins as a free-to-play game shine through and it conveys an overall cheap feeling to the game. Certain aspects like class builds, area design, and combat have been dumbed down in this game. If you're looking for an average ARPG to play with your friends then it may be for you, but with the $40 price tag on its official launch out of Steam Early Access, it will be hard to recommend.

Torchlight III feels watered down compared to its contemporaries, and worse, its predecessors. The loot is as plentiful as it is unsatisfying. The monsters are a deluge of health bars, removing all sense of threat or purpose. The characters feel so genericized that they can’t transcend past whatever non-specific weapons they may carry. Betrayed by its F2P roots, Torchlight III needed a full rebuild to iterate on its origins, and clearly, that’s not what happened here as it’s simultaneously more of the same, and somehow less.