Torchlight III Reviews
Torchlight III is an imperfect but endearing action RPG whose great boss fights and enjoyable special skills clash with the noticeable relics of a freemium experience.
Torchlight III is an enjoyable game but is also a bit more simplified than the previous entry in the series. While the Relic system brings some new ways to customize your character, the lack of a regular flowing of skill trees and spending stat points makes it seem like you can't quite customize your character as much as you'd like with stats being tied into your gear. The new fort system is nice but I really only found myself using it to stash gear I wanted to keep and to swap out pets. Overall while I did enjoy my time with Torchlight III, it felt like a downgrade from Torchlight II and fans of the series might want to wait a bit before picking this one up.
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.
Review in Italian | Read full review
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.
A colourful, loot-orientated action role-player let down by over-simplified systems and levelling up that often feels inconsequential.
In its current state, Torchlight III is a step down from its predecessor with its less rewarding gameplay and odd mishaps.
Torchlight III is not the best game in the franchise and appears in a very simplified way, mainly in its gameplay. The changes were notable during the development of the title and it is an experience that falls short of its predecessor. However, it is still fun enough to guarantee a few hours of entertainment.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Though it has fun gameplay and unique character classes, Torchlight III doesn't do much to progress the franchise to attract a new audience.
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.
The Torchlight series, a fantastic series of ARPGs is finally back with the newest entry, Torchlight 3. Originally, this game was planned as a free-to-play shared-world game titled Torchlight: Frontiers. The game is a pretty bog-standard ARPG, but a few bugs and it failing to escape its free-to-play roots ultimately led to an underwhelming experience.
Enjoyment hinges on what you're looking for in an RPG. If you want a great story that has tons of metrics to pay attention to, this really isn't that. Torchlight III is essentially a basic RPG that has a lot of extras if that is your thing, behind engaging gameplay. What makes more to you will differ but if you really just want to run around killing stuff, it's a good choice.
So overall, while Torchlight III doesn’t surpass its predecessors or do anything revolutionary* for the genre, it was a fun return to the ember filled world. With loads of enemies, challenges and class combinations in both single and multiplayer, if you’ve been needing a Hack & Slash fix, Torchlight III will have you covered. *Victor Vran let you jump and wall jump… still blown away by that.
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.
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.
Torchlight III is a totally adequate action RPG and absolutely feels like a new Torchlight game. Anyone worried about weird, holdover free to play elements or significant jank from the project changing directions needn’t be worried.
Torchlight III gets the fundamentals of action RPG well enough. When it comes to clicking on tiny monsters to murder them, the game does that as well as any other, but it offers little in the way of innovation or depth. I didn't see everything that Torchlight III has to offer, but my time spent left me feeling that I'd seen enough and ready to move onto something else with more to offer. Torchlight and Torchlight II showed that ARPGs had life beyond Diablo. In a way, Torchlight III is a victim of its predecessors' success in breathing such vibrant life into the genre. Torchlight III's simplicity might position it as a decent introduction to the ARPG genre. For most players, it's hard not to suggest they direct their attention elsewhere.
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 offers a solid foundation of ARPG goodness, but the balance of loot drops and progression feel off to the point where long sections of the game feel interminable. When everything is clicking, players can destroy waves of bad guys with the best of them – but expect an ebb and flow to the good times.
Torchlight III, while clearly wearing the franchise's skin like a badge of honor, never hits the marks of the previous entries. This is a very basic ARPG that frequently shows its free-to-play roots, and in a market overflowing with action-packed role-playing games, being a mediocre sequel isn't going to win you any favors -- especially from hardcore fans.
But as annoying as the decision to completely separate single player and multiplayer is, there’s no denying the actual gameplay of Torchlight III is a joy. It’s very polished; we’ve encountered a few hiccups, but nothing too frustrating – when passing through a portal, we’ve occasionally been taken back to the entrance of an area rather than where the portal opened, for example. But that’s about it. Very few – if any – Diablo-likes have been able to grab our attention like Torchlight III has. It’s the type of game that begs you to explore just one more area before turning it off; and when you succumb to the ‘quit game’ option, you’re already looking forward to being able to jump back in again.