Torchlight

Great Game.

Fun Game

I usually don't like diablo type game. But this one, i like it. That say it all :-)

THANKS FOR RE-INTRODUCING ME BACK TO TORCHLIGHT SIS. -DK

Torchlight is a hidden gem. It's also one of the first games i ever played as a kid. Very nostalgic playing through it. It is a shame what they have done to the newer torchlight games though. They will never recapture what they had in the first game.

Old School game but still enjoying the game in 2025 despite its age, its a 5/5 -- extremely high fun factor.

A fun game like the Fate games, I find it is full of mystery & wonder.

Bought it with sale, was nice and fun.

If you're like me and you need a Diablo fix while you wait for Diablo III to finally come out you should pick this up.

7 / 10 ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

Torchlight Torchlight started off as a vibrant and entertaining ARPG, but it didn’t take long before I found myself needing additional distractions—watching TV, movies, or listening to podcasts—just to get through the grind. While the game’s colorful visuals and fast-paced combat are enjoyable at first, the repetitive gameplay loop quickly sets in, making it feel like a chore rather than an immersive adventure.

The initial thrill of collecting loot and defeating enemies fades as the lack of depth becomes more apparent. While it has some charm and accessibility, Torchlight struggles to maintain long-term engagement. A good game should hold your attention on its own, and unfortunately, Torchlight fell short in that regard for me.

Pros:
Bright and colorful visuals with a charming aesthetic.
Fast-paced and accessible combat that’s fun in short bursts.
Simple mechanics make it a good entry point for newcomers to ARPGs.
Loot system offers some initial excitement.

Cons:
Becomes repetitive and grind-heavy, losing its charm over time.
Gameplay lacks depth and variety, leading to boredom.
Often requires supplementary entertainment (e.g., TV or podcasts) to stay engaged.
Fails to deliver a truly immersive and captivating experience.

Torchlight is a good game, but it was kinda AA by 2009 standard, so it lacks a few vital features you would expect from a game like this and some elements are not well made, like selecting loot on the ground kinda sucks.

The community created a lot of mods, which add comfort and content and new and fun ways to play this.

If you think this is for you, make sure to try it out shortly after buying so you can get a refund if it is not to your taste,

very fun so many choices on how to build your characters too

Torchlight is a great entry into action RPGs—simple, fun, and addictively grindy. The pet system is a lifesaver, handling loot and sales while you keep slaying.
Very Hard Difficulty might be too much to handle, and class balance is off.
I recommend playing with mods to cover up some of the game's flaws.
Beware of Dark Zealots!

Maybe it felt ok in 2009.

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.

It´s cute for sure, but there´s a couple of things wrong with this game.
You can´t change the keybinds, which is a major annoyance, and the balancing is terrible.

Charging 15 bucks for this in 2025 is an insult.
Go get TL II and mod the hell out of it.

Its a classic a little rough but very much like the FATE series and i love it for that. Definitely worth a playthrough if you like simple dungenon crawlers like FATE hardest difficulty is a grind though but you can prepare using the shared stash.

⭐ 7.5/10 - A Solid ARPG Experience

Torchlight is a fun, action-packed dungeon crawler that feels like a lighter, more casual take on Diablo. Developed by Runic Games, it features a charming art style, addictive loot-based gameplay, and a surprisingly deep pet system.

Pros:
✅ Satisfying Combat – Hacking and slashing through hordes of enemies is smooth and enjoyable.
✅ Great Loot System – Tons of weapons, armor, and enchantments to experiment with.
✅ Companion Pet – Your pet can fight, carry loot, and even sell items in town!
✅ Mod Support – The game has a strong modding community that adds new content and improvements.
✅ Runs on Almost Any PC – Even older machines can handle it without issues.

Cons:
❌ Repetitive Dungeon Design – The levels start to feel samey after a while.
❌ No Multiplayer – It’s a purely single-player experience, which is disappointing for a game like this.
❌ Shallow Story – The narrative is basic and forgettable.

If you're looking for a straightforward, loot-driven ARPG that doesn’t take itself too seriously, Torchlight is a great pick. It’s easy to get into and offers plenty of hours of dungeon-crawling fun. However, if you’re after a deep story or multiplayer action, you might want to look elsewhere.

Verdict: A solid choice for casual ARPG fans, but don’t expect a masterpiece.

This game came out at the perfect time, when Diablo 3 was taking forever to be launched. I didn't have the patience to finish it then, but I'm trying again, after many years.
It's a fun game, easy to play, with clear classes, not too many item types, and the pet addition is a nice touch.

Torchlight is a nice and somewhat cute timekiller, perfect to spend an evening mindlessly clearing a dungeon after a hard day.

Problem is that as a game, it is extraordinarily boring mess of grind, poor gameplay design choices, dull skill trees, dull champion/boss fights and a difficulty "curve" which looks like jigsaw line. I completed it on the hardest level (Very Hard without permadeath), and wouldn't waste my time on this ever again.

A mix of Diablo 1 and 2... but with many quality of life improvements AND without the need of shilling out money to a company that firmly lies in a long list of hated game companies.

That's very much oversimplifying it but still.

Torchlight is a simple and solid Dungeon Crawler, held back by a lack of QOL aswell as an atrocious difficulty spike in the later part of the game that killed the enjoyment for me.
Despite some hiccups, Torchlight is still a really fun budget title. I recommend it on a sale. The only thing that would complete this game for me is if it had multiplayer, but Torchlight 2 has it, so maybe you'd want to pick up that one instead.

Love this classic game

Decent and fun diablo-type game, but a lot easier to get into. Was one of the first games I ever played and it's nice to return to it after so long.

I loved the game growing up and to this day absolutely love it. It's simple, to the point, and fun to play. 10/10 hack and slash dungeon crawler. It ticks all the boxes. 100% recommend.

I remember having played this game when I was a younger and wanting to try it again... I've played a lot of ARPGs in my time and this game just isn't good, not with the lots of other games there are nowadays and that were there even during its time. I didn't go into it with wanting to dislike it, but have not really found many things to like, or at the very least enough for me to like the game, enjoy my experience, and give it a positive review.

I'm not a fan of the graphics, but that's always been the least important aspect when it comes to games for me, but I can't believe this game is from 2009 judging from... well, everything. The graphics didn't age well (looks like a cheap mobile game), amount of classes (3?!), mechanics, skills and skill trees (every class has 15 active and 15 passive skills), loot (a lot of trash drops) and the controls and combat - very clunky, I tried playing a Vanquisher (kind of a Rogue/Marksman class) and the ranged attacks usually either didn't even connect or only had range for about half the screen.

I'd have expected the game to be at least 10 years older than that, everything just feels so lackluster and jank for its time. If it were, I wouldn't have been so harsh with the review but simply put, there were games that were miles ahead at the time - Titan Quest or Diablo II, which lo and behold, are still very good and playable to this day, even in spite of being older.

There are some nice ideas, like the pet, being able to send it back to town to sell your items. If only the inventory wasn't 3x7, while also having to carry scrolls and potions, making it at least 4 slots smaller. Other than that though, the pet is just basically a way worse and dumbed-down version of the Diablo II mercenary. The only other "good" thing about the game is that you can mod it and the mods don't disable steam achievements, at least the ones I installed. This would be good if the base game itself was good and if some mods just didn't feel mandatory to make the experience less painful.

Now if we move on to the cons, other than everything already mentioned above, there is no respec, why? Yes, there is a mod for it, but still. There were games before its time that had this mechanic, so why does this game not have it?

I am playing in very hard softcore and the game still feels very easy regardless of that, which brings me to the balance being very poor - still remember my first death, which was to a trapped chest dealing over 50% of my health in a zone 5 levels below me, while literally every single other trap I've triggered dealt about 1/10 of the damage of this one, pretty much not even moving my health bar. I just don't get it. On top of that, the monster damage on very hard gets absurd very quickly, even before completing the story you're gonna start getting constantly oneshot with very little counterplay, unless you're of course kiting around half the map and standing half a screen away from the mobs.

This game didn't bring anything new at the time that would be meaningful and worthwhile enough to mention. Unless you're going into the game with extremely strong nostalgia, can't recommend. It is cheap though, so I'll at least give it that.

Torchlight is a pretty simple but fun game. Its not as complex as other top down RPGs, but solid if you just want a good time

Cozy ARPG for fans of Diablo 1

Should play well on almost all systems

Awesome basic dungeon crawler. The RNG is super random, which sounds dumb, but you'll know what I mean if you start playing it.

Awesome story, good themes and a nice chill experience! All in all, double thumbs-up 👍🏻👍🏻

Old school fun

This game is super good, until you get to the end. one of the last zones, before the final boss, is awful. This game starts off like any good ARPG... you are weak, pathetic, and then slowly but surely you open more methods of attack and unlock better equipment and skills. You get to a point where you feel strong, both offensively and defensively, and then you take your first step into one of the last zones...

And you die. Instantly. To enemies that, when they appear on screen, charge you immediately with such force and power that you will die... immediately... to just 1. This happens so quickly that you will likely find it impossible to dodge them. This is such a ridiculous, unnecessary feature to the game. It is an artificial ramp up in difficulty to try and shoe-horn in a BORING ASS DUNGEON GRIND. This game does NOT have enough variety to make ANY grind enjoyable. There are literally only 4 zones, and each level in each zone looks exactly the same. That itself doesn't bother me, because the game isn't that long, but wtf? Really? I HAVE to GRIND this DUMB SHIT?! eat SHIT.

This game SUCKS ASS.

Thank GOD Torchlight 2 exists. Torchlight 3 is even better than this game. I would hazard a guess that even the new reboot Torchlight is probably better than this.

This game has aged very well. A spiritual successor to the Diablo franchise between games 2 and 3. Solid Mechanics, easy enough to get the hang of for both new and seasoned players. I don't have anything bad to say about this title.

"What if diablo 1 was remade and it was way better in literally every single way except the graphics are generic cartoon instead of realistic, dark, and gritty?"
There you go, that's this game. It's really good, but be warned, play it on, at least, the hard difficulty, normal is waaay too easy

Fun game that doesn't require a lot of angst to progress (at least on easy). Hack and slash dungeon crawler with enough variation to keep things fun and not too repetitive. I do wish there were more story to investigate, but it is a fine way to kill time.

Worth the sale price if you're a fan of the genre, although the sequel probably does everything better.

pretty fun, cartoony arpg.

In 2025 I think it holds a niche of being a simple, lightweight, offline arpg that plays well on a Steamdeck.

light and fun, have dog roaming around spamming heal

It might have been good in 2009, but it has just not aged very well.

Pros:

* Simple, intuitive controls
* Fun animations, nice character models and armor/weapon models.
* Fun skills with interesting combat that'll keep enemies coming and dying.
* Charming environment, artstyle and music.

Cons:

* 99% of item drops are trash and drop too frequently. You'll end up heading to town every 5 minutes to clear your inventory.
* Quests are repetitive and get boring almost instantly. They are all of the type "go into this dungeon and collect X item" or "kill X monster in level 7". All of the quests are given by the same two NPCs. Even Fate had more variety than that.
* Fishing is a brain dead minigame and while turning your pet into a creature is fun, it is never made clear what creatures are vulnerable/strong against other creatures.
* Pet, minion and fiend pathing is abysmal. My pets and minions were constantly getting stuck or would stop fighting if other monsters blocked their path and they were in "move to" mode.
* Pets and minions sometimes miss their attacks because the attack animation fails to complete before the enemies move away. This makes pets and minions half as effective as they should be, and honestly made one talent tree for the Alchemist feel like a complete waste. Once I noticed this issue, I had to roll a new character.
* Gems are too few and far in-between to make gem combination relevant. Also, gems on armor feel like a waste.
* Talent trees were given a formidable try, but still fell flat from expectations. One big issue I see here is that you get one point per experience or fame level increase, but you can put up to 10 points per talent, meaning you'll be spending a long time maxing out one good talent, and in turn, not getting to explore the rest of the tree, making the gameplay feel somewhat monotonous.

Overall, I feel like Torchlight is a re-skin of Fate, but with downgraded mechanics and somehow less inspiration.

Fun but dated.

Superseded by Torchlight 2, which is basically a better version of the same game, so play that instead.

Best game ever

Good Dungeon crawler with nice modding support with tool.

While 2 is better, this one still has charm as a simple ARPG. Mods help the experience greatly.

A great game for its time, but even back when it was released, it didn't do anything extraordinary that other ARPGS weren't already doing. I won't give it a negative review, because it is still a well put together game that does most things right. You will only be disappointed if you're expecting a fresh take on the genre. It didn't even do that in 2009. Torchlight was just a well timed release because of the drought of this type of game at the time. Most of the games mentioned below came in post 2012 other than Titan quest which was 2006.

If you're looking for a cheap ARPG to play with a different story, Torchlight 1 & 2 are decent enough. Somewhere below Path of Exile 2, Diablo 4, Titan Quest, and Grim Dawn. On par or better than Diablo 3, Path of Exile 1, and the Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing, Take Torchlight for a spin during a lull, just don't over-hype it in your mind.

Look, this is a good game and for the price it is well worth it.

The graphics are great, the the story is decent and it is quite playable.
It is one of the better dungeon crawlers/hack slash/button mash RPG's with tons of loot etc.

But the game is basically a copy of Diablo and it comes no where near it in terms of play-ability & fun.

Will you enjoy Torchlight, yes, is it worth the price tag, yes, but don't expect it to "wow" you.

I love this ARPG so much. It's simple, easy, and extremely replayable. Pick it up and just jam for 4 hours. You will beat the game. You will mildly enjoy yourself. It's nothing special but it's so much better than the spreadsheet trash (POE, ect.) that exists out there today. Try this game! You don't need autism to enjoy this ARPG.

Torchlight 1 is still a good game, despite what everyone says. The gameplay is solid and still offers amusement, and it's a good buy, especially if you don't want to spend a lot of money.

Doesn't run on modern machines. Tried half a dozen fixes for Windows 11 and no luck.

It's a well made game, but there are so many other better ARPG's out there nowadays, like I don't mean to be harsh but like... why would you play this over the sequel, for example?

There's three classes, barbarian, bow and arrow girl, and the fucking twit with the magic stick.

All of them play relatively the same after a while though, a lot of the upgrades aren't that significant beyond being stat increases, and there's hardly any variety when it comes to the enemies or the areas; heck, there isn't even multiple areas to explore, the game just kinda has a hub area that serves as the camp you've seen in any other ARPG, and then there's a big cave that just goes on and on and on... after a while that cave turns into a dungeon of sort, but that's about all it goes for variety sake for the first hour or so.

It's just... so much of this genre has been perfected over multiple games, both in gameplay, presentation, heck, even story... as if story was something that most players really wanted out of this ARPG, I mean, from what I know most players of these types of games don't really care that much about the story as much as for the gameplay.

So overall, I was just left a tad bit disappointed by it? I was expecting a more basic Torchlight, and that's exactly what I got, but there was nothing here to keep me going, I just kept thinking about a whole bunch of other ARPG's that do this but much, much better.

Fun game with Diablo 1 vibes.