ok, this game. if you don't like diablo styled games, you will fucking hate this game. if you love them, you will fucking love this game. it's that simple.
three classes, melee dude, ranger girl, mage guy. you can see, i chose the ranger. figure i generally go melee in most games (exceptions are diablo 1 and 2 where i typically go sorceror/necromancer respectivley) and i don't generally pick the ranger, so i figured i would mix it up a bit. also there's guns in this game, so like you can have a rifle, pistol, pistol/shield (AWESOME COMBO THAT IVE NEVER SEEN BEFORE), dual pistols, which is cool. but i found this bow which does too much damage, so i kind of had to choose it.
also regardless which class you pick, you get a pet, which can be a cat or a dog, and you can name it. at first it sounds kind of lame, but after playing a while (im like level 11 and just got the second waypoint) the pet is rather nice. they can't die, when they lose all of their health, they kind of just run away from enemies until they naturally recover health or you drop a potion on them. they can equip items (two ring slots and a necklace slot), and have the same inventory space as you do.
they also have two spell slots which you can put spells on them (spells are found as scrolls in this game, so you find a spell, use it on yourself or a pet, and you learn it. this is a bit different than the abilities you gain from your skill trees, im assuming spells are universal) so literally, my dog throws fireballs, which is fucking badass. he doesn't spam em, but he does use them enough to where i am satasfied, though he would use em more if i had him set on aggressive rather than defensive.
the last cool thing, there's a little money button on the pet meter up in the upper right corner you see in the screenshot. basically you are in the dungeon, you have a lot of vendor trash on you, and you just want to keep on plowing through stuff rather than going back to town. load up your pet inventory with the vendor trash, and click that button. your pet will leave for an amount of time (not sure what determines the time, im just going to assume the amount of items you give him), when he comes back, you receive money since he basically went to town to sell your shit.
long story short, this game is good, and worth your money if you have a hankerin for a diablo style game. diablo III won't be coming out for a damn long time, and this is something nice to tide one over until then. if you do decide to play this game, i would say put it on hard difficulty (or very hard difficulty) since ive only heard normal is too damn easy. i stated very hard as a possibility because hard feels like what normal should feel like, you know, easy, but like you have to actually pay attention to what's going on.
to make this more of a tldr. this game has no multiplayer. i have to say that since some people would rather not play a game like this single player. obviously im fine with it, but you know, some people aren't. as for what they(runic game's the creators of this here vidya) are doing about multiplayer however...(copy/pasted from wikipedia)
Relationship to upcoming MMO
Runic plans to release an MMORPG set in the Torchlight game world 18 months to two years after the release of the single player game. Max Schaefer, Runic Games CEO and former Mythos executive producer, explained the reasoning behind releasing both a single player game and an MMO. The single player game is intended to introduce the Torchlight game world to the public ahead of the MMO. Further, it would allow the team to get a released game under their belts sooner than if they had immediately started on the MMO.[23] Also, while the Torchlight MMO will be a separate game, it will share the same action RPG gameplay and some of the art assets developed for the single player game.[14]
The MMO will feature some different game mechanics and a wider variety of environments, including a shared "over-world."[23][26] Runic has entered into a partnership with Chinese online game developer and operator Perfect World Co., Ltd. to publish the MMO worldwide.[5]
Because the MMO is planned to be free-to-play, it can be seen as a "free MMO upgrade" to the single-player Torchlight game.[27]so that's happening anyway.
