Recently I was lucky enough to get to play Runic’s Torchlight, the upcoming Action RPG from the guys that brought you Diablo and Fate. The game is Diablo madness mashed with the cartoony graphics of Warcraft. It’s classic dungeon crawling, armed with hordes of enemies, rapid attacking, and slews of abilities. I fell in love instantly.

The first thing you’ll notice if you’re familiar with the Diablo series is well, everything. You really can tell the folks that had their hand in this game had their roots with the Lord of Terror. From the sounds, attacks, ability charts, stats, to the town portal scrolls… It’s all there. It really does seem to be an ancestor to Diablo much more then even, say, Hellgate: London. The nostalgia alone will knock you on your ass. There’s nothing better then 3am dungeon crawls ending with a trip to town after running out of identity scrolls.

I started off with the Alchemist class, and I quickly found myself in a rich experience killing hordes of monsters soundly with magic and minions… And a puppy! That’s the first feature that I really took a liking too. You get a little pal, dog or cat, that follows you into the depths of chaos. They even have their own inventory which you can stock full of items and you can send your buddy back into town to unload the items to a vendor while you continue to explore. Talk about convenience! Now if only I could teach my dog to restock my beer supply from the store… My alchemist buddy had 3 trees of abilities. Attack magic, summoning, and more melee and weapon oriented magical abilities. I decided to go with the legions of minions, and quickly chose my characters path.

It doesn’t take long to get into the action, in fact maybe a whole minute. Plot progression is not something this game decided to waste time on, and it knows what it’s doing in this case. You’re almost instantly having fun after arriving at the Torchlight town by heading underground to search for riches and power. The premise is basically Torchlight is a town sitting on top of a giant underground labyrinth that is filled with magical items and power… and death. The kind of horrible death that sounds like your alarm waking you up at 5am.

As you progress down the caverns, you will find and complete quests from townsfolk with those giant familiar yellow exclamation points. You also work on gaining fame as you kill unique monsters, oh yeah, did I mention that unique monsters are in? It was a glorious occasion when I killed my first and saw unidentified magical items rain down from the sky around it’s corpse, again only to find myself out of identify scrolls.

You have a couple of stashes to store extra items, and even one you can share with your other characters, so there’s plenty of room for replay and versatility. I can’t remember how many times I’ve found items on characters in other single player games I’ve wanted to share with an opposing alt character I have, it’s a great added feature.

As far as character development goes, it’s pretty simple and feels right. You have your 3 ability trees of specialization, 4 stats, and your gear. Gear provides a huge array of possibilities as it can increase your chance to find magical items, increase resistance, attack, whatever. There’s also other spells you can find from vendors or in the vast dungeon that aren’t specific to any of your trees, like a town portal spell. Thank god!

Lastly, and most importantly, is killing things. It’s FUN. The UI is very smooth and you don’t find yourself scratching your head very many times on the learning curb, but there is so much detail there, that when you do want to focus on every detail, it’s right there for you. As I ran around gaining different allies in the vast depth, summoning creatures, and finding treasure, it wouldn’t be uncommon for me to find myself suddenly in the middle of a huge fight with dozens of creatures on the screen until the only thing that’s left is myself and magical items and gold littering the floor, much like my own house in real life…. I wish.

The game looks GREAT and like it has a lot of potential for midnight adventures. The one thing that really caught my attention is the fact of how quickly you can get in the fun, it would be very easy and plausible to jump into the action for 30 minutes or just an hour, and feel satisfied. There’s still more to be explored and the game seems incredibly vast. You can currently purchase the game digitally and get a demo from their website right here! There’s going to be a wide-release of a boxed version in 2010, and with Diablo 3 on the horizon, the by-title true successor to the Diablo franchise, I think Torchlight really can hold its on as a truly unique and fun gaming experience.

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