I hit a mental wall while developing Madness Retaliation 2. Usually when this happens, I go play some videogames. StarCraft 2 would've been my first choice, but my install broke while patching. It frustrated me so much that I uninstalled the damned thing. It'll be a while before I plug back into it seeing as my laptop's DVD drive is broken.

So then I decided to play something a friend recommended: Torchlight. I'd heard a little about this game. I know I'm ages late playing it, but at least it's a fairly recent title. Otherwise I'd be playing "Zelda: A Link to the Past" again.

Feature-wise, Torchlight is more stream-lined than Diablo 2.
-The dungeons are more linear, saving you exploration time.
-The pet allows for selling items without leaving the dungeon so that you sustain your immersion.
-Item costs at shops are affordable (at least for the first 50 levels)
-The inventory system is greatly simplified, which I like. I hated inventory management in D2. I spent about 30% of my play time organizing my stash and pack. Confounded OCD.
-The Shift+click mechanic makes moving items much faster. Right-clicking to equip an item was also a nice touch.
-The minimalist interface was easy to pick up despite the fact that I had not played D2 in years.
-Picking up items was a breeze. Alt+clickclickclickclick. It's not quite as easy as Dungeon Seige's automated item pick-up, but I've no real gripes with that. Also, I hated Dungeon Seige.

One of the major features of Torchlight is that Skills have no prerequisites (apart from Level) which allows you to experiment with builds. This is a stark contrast to Diablo 2's Skill Tree system which restricted you to certain paths. While every Diablo, WoW, and DotA player knows that investing heavily into a small number of skills is the best way to play, having the chance to play with the other spells is a great thing to have. Otherwise, you'd never get to see the fancy animations and visual effects that the game has to offer.

And yet in my eyes, Torchlight still pales in comparison to Diablo 2. And it is all because Torchlight falters in a single category: Story.

...more on that in the next post. I've got to finish my Vanquisher's Normal run.