I have some issues with Torchlight.

For one, it's repetitive as fuck-- at least, as the Alchemist. Blast with your favorite spell, run away, use a Potion to refill your Mana (let your pet finish off the current hoarde of monsters if you need to), summon some friendly mooks for backup if you're really hurting, repeat. I've been using the same armor (mostly of the Heavy variety, which gives me the added bonus of looking like a purple gem-encrusted ninja), and a nice Unique Staff I picked up from gambling for the last several levels. Gives me a bonus when I summon Golems. S'nice.

Also, the A.I. is really bad. My cat lynx Bubastis (to go with my Alchemist, Ozymandias, of course) can't seem to comprehend what walls or stairs are, and often bangs her head into the geometry like she has no idea where I've moved to, even though I often haven't moved very far (or at all). Weapons, ammo, and potions all drop way too much. The difficulty is either astoundingly easy, or impossibly hard. Walls often get in the way of attacking or grabbing loot (thank goodness for item tags and health bars that appear through them). The voice acting (when it's there) is kinda meh. Also, the secondary characters don't have much depth, and appear so infrequently that I can't get invested in them. (I get the feeling story isn't meant to be a main focus in this game, anyways.) So in summary: A bit on the repetitive/boring side, bad A.I., nearly non-existant story.

However, I still think the game has a lot going for it.

• The Steampunk art style. Even with the dated graphics, the aesthetic is still pretty neat.
• It's oddly relaxing. Whenever I need a game to unwind with, I just set monsters on fire for a few hours.
• The soundtrack is just wonderful. If you're a Diablo fan, you probably know this already.
• I can dual-wield wands! Apparently this is a reference to something.
• Crafting socket-able gems to get to the highest tier is addicting, as is the obligatory fishing minigame.
• The game is very mod-friendly, to the point where there's achievements for installing certain amounts of mods! That in of itself is pretty cool, but I predict a growing trend of this behavior over the next few years when it comes to certain types of PC games. The only one I have installed so far is the mod to re-add the ferret pet that's missing in the vanilla Steam version, but appears in other versions of the game.

Overall, I'd suggest checking it out. I'll probably look into the sequel at some point and see if they've fixed any of the nitpicks I had with the original. We'll see.

It probably won't be for awhile now, I still intend to play every game (at least the full ones, dunno about the prototypes) in the Humble Double Fine Bundle, leading up to the release of Broken Age. Wasteland 2's pretty close on the horizon as well. Looking forward to finally playing both.