izigame.me

So, I've taken the time to beat this game on three separate playthroughs with each run being for each character (Vanquisher, Alchemist, Destroyer) and can confidently say that I can fully recommend this game. Torchlight 1 has a high replayability potential and I had and have a lot of fun playing even after I beat the main dungeon floors (there are 35 floors in the main dungeon),

You only have three classes to play as and, although it has no customization options outside of a name and pet selection (only two pets being a dog or cat) you can temporarily change your pet into other monsters by feeding them fish that you buy from vendors, find out in the wild, or fish yourself, but I myself never bothered with this feature outside of a couple times because they aren't permanent. Boo.

Barring that, this is a very almost cartoon-ish styled variant of Diablo but the mixes and builds of combat synergies are seemingly endless as you progress on your character. For instance, my ranger (vanquisher) runs around with two wands and i'm lighting up the entire field of vision with elemental damage and turrets everywhere. She's not supposed to be using wands, but I made it work and, to be fair, wands synergize really, really well with her range oriented skill set. My alchemist runs around with a sword and shield with robots and damage crystal(s) running straight into the fight; is this wise? No, no it isn't because the alchemist is super duper squishy in most situations, but his skill set has made it to where the enemy can't move fast enough to hit me before I can bring them down.

The point I'm making is that the possibilities are endless and that adds to the replayability along with the dungeons outside of the main dungeon floors are procedurally generated so, though you will run into the same enemies you've fought before, the map will, most likely, never be the same dungeon twice.

After you beat the game for the first time, there are two options that are available to you, one being that you can "retire" your character, which means you take only ONE item from that character and prestige it for your next playthrough, but in doing so that character canonically passes that item down (aka herilooming) to your new character and you will not be able to use that character again. Like, EVER so be absolutely sure you want to before you do it, because there's no going back after you do it. Do I think it's worth that? Personally, no, but I only did it for the achievements. While you can do this if you wanted, you can also not retire your character and go the second route which is the "Shadow Vaults".

The Shadow Vaults open up to you after you beat the first time and stays open for you for that character and any other character you have either old or freshly made. If you wanted to, you could make a new character and, at level one, ignore the main story completely and head directly to the Shadow Vaults. The cool thing about the Shadow Vaults is that it scales with your level on each floor. For example, if you start at level 1, the floor starts at level 1, too. When you move to floor two, that floor will be level 2 and so on.

One thing I'd like to note, however, is I went into the Shadow Vault at level 1 when I started my Vanquisher on Hard difficulty, changed my mind and completed the hard mode main dungeon floors, came back to the Shadow Vaults after doing that, and all of the enemies were level 1 still. I was hoping they'd jump up to my current level (level 48 at the time) but they only went up one level, so I think it scales based on the level of the previous floor, but it does quickly scale up as you continue deeper into the Shadow Vaults, the xp and loot does, too.

Something else I'd want you all to know is that there are 100 floors in the Shadow Vaults and NO FAST TRAVEL so if you happen to die while you're down there and you didn't place a portal down with the "Town Portal" spell or a "Town Portal Scroll" well, you've got a long, long way to run.

While the enemies do respawn in the previous dungeon floors you've already ran, their levels remain the same level as the first time you ran through them so, if you wanted to, you could just run right by them and ignore them, it's not like they could do any real damage to you by that point. Which is good because, you might have to fill the map out again, it won't stay unveiled if you go through it again, so please PLEASE! learn from my mistakes. Ugh.

I also would like to note that there is one enemy in particular that you will inevitably come across called the "Dark Zealot" and, to say that these guys are the epitome of bullsh** is an understatement; they became such an issue that, at some point, they will make you question if you're geared right at all because they have the possibility to 2 piece you, not even exaggerating. After looking around online, I found from several different sources that the developers ran out of time balancing the game and, as a result, the Dark Zealot in particular, boss variant or not, will absolutely rock your world upside down as they are completely and wholly unbalanced, so if you see a Dark Zealot, kill that mf as fast as possible; one of them is bad enough, two of them is a panic show, anything more than two is an aimbot death wish. Good luck with that.

But I can't recommend this game enough despite the Dark Zealots existing, the story is non existent and, we're not there for the story anyway, we're there for the fighting. Give this one a go, you'll have fun.... until you run into Dark Zealots, then it's a battle of attrition.