Torchlight II

While I will probably have 10s of hours more in this game by the time someone finds this review, I cannot recommend this game when more modern ARPGs exist. The game lacked a Technical Writer and that has greatly impacted its playability. I attempted to first play a Berserker. The skill list looked fun: do attacks long enough to get all crits, melee damage gives you X on hit, etc. But this is where tenured Torchlight players will go “well actually”. The documentation makes no such clarification and this is where all the pain comes from. “Mana” and “HP” on hit effects do not impact any skills whatsoever (unless they explicitly say so). Berserker charge doesn’t accumulate on any skill unless it explicitly mentions it. Only one skill does, and another skill adds a flat charge percentage for a time period, but that skill only unlocks at level 35. Melee attacks, that is (intuitively) “attacks that only hit in melee range” do not count many/most/any?? of the berserker’s very short range skills. The words are never defined, anywhere. And where words are used, they’re inconsistent across the entire UX. The various fan-made wikis don’t describe these interactions, either. This would all be fine if it had some sort of visible tagging system (or even a fan-made one) that describes what each skill actually operates as: e.g. “does slicing someone in the face count as melee?” Or “does dashing to someone and then slashing them in the face count as melee?” (the answer is probably "at most one of those" and maybe "neither of those", it's still unclear). But no such tagging system exists anywhere. Not in the game, not on fan wikis. Not in community UX improvement mods. Is the game fun? Sure. Is the game-loop well-made? Sure. Does the game describe itself in a way that is discoverable to allow a person new to the game and without explicit build guides to experience the game in an intellectually consistent way? No. And if you’re a person, like me, that likes to discover, understand and figure things out, at the very least, Breserker is not for you. But this whole game might not be for you. And for these reasons, I do not recommend it.

If you can get the game to launch at all, multiplayer is broken in 2026 without messing with your router. This should not be acceptable, even at a discount.