I didn't want this review to start off with the words 'back in the day' and thanks to this sentence it won't, but...  Back in the day, I loved Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II.  There's just something about that isometric RPG hackathon that kept me coming back time after time.  You could just lose yourself in the game, wondering what great armour or weapon you're going to uncover next.  And, joy of joys, once you'd completed the main quest, you could play the whole thing again; with enemies that aren't level-matched to you, it was a fun ego-wank where you could exercise your might with one-hit kills.

Fast forward a million years and you have Torchlight.  Now, Torchlight isn't an earth-shaking triple-A title.  It sells on Steam for £14.99 and this is why I think it holds the secret of some truly great gaming: it's a prettier, less-serious Baldur's Gate II.  With an animal sidekick.

 

It has a disposable feel to it, as if it's quite light and fluffy; it has a cartoony art style and colourful level design which are really quite engaging.  The interface is very MMO-esque (Runic Games have promised a multiplayer facility in the near future) and easy-to-use, but all this belies the fact that under the pretty exterior beats the heart of a really meaty game - if you want it to be that.  If you're the kind of person who wants to go enchanting this yourself, modifying weapons and armour to tailor them to your needs, then Torchlight will let you do that.  Perhaps it's not as advanced as you'd like it to be, but you still have the option.  If, however, you want to just pick up a good weapon, stick with that until a vastly better one comes along and you think it's time to upgrade, then you can do that too.

The storyline isn't terribly complex and once you've waded your way through the 35 levels of the main quest, you may find yourself a little bored with the unvarying looks of the levels and enemies, but wait, you've just played through 35 levels with about eight different looks, scores of different enemies from zombies and skeletons to demons and dragons.  They've even got mimics in there, which is a fun nod to the Dungeons and Dragons universe.  The combat and spells can feel a little as though you're just hitting the same buttons time and again, but you do have the option to do things differently.  Learn to spawn things to fight for you, level them up, use your pet, whatever, but if you are finding you're doing the same thing, it's because it works.

Venture through dungeons with your faithful cat (or dog), pick up loot and sell it in the town of Torchlight.  Then go back down again.  Kill scary things, gain experience levels and new abilities.  Get an item for a wizard, bring it back, gaining experience.  Buy more health and mana potions, go back down to the dungeons.  Picked up too much?  Send your pet back to sell stuff - an unlikely but welcome feature.  It's not taxing by any means, but it is really good fun!  The controls can sometimes leave you wishing it had a WASD-type control interface; the click-and-follow system does work quite well, except when you're trying to attack, when you have to click on your target, which generally results in you walking around and not attacking.  You can hold shift and click to attack and stay in situ, but the problem arises then that your intended recipient of the business end of your weapon will have moved away.  I cured this by learning a great spell that killed everything in its path with a beacon-like beam of deadly greenish light.

Torchlight is certainly a fun, thoroughly enjoyable easy, entry-level RPG.  Like a training RPG, almost, designed to ease you into less forgiving territory.  It rubs your ego up the right way as well, with some well-paced levelling up, procedurally-generated goodies (and badies) and a pet you can turn into a lump of jelly.  If you want.  If you're looking for in-depth character development, stories that twist and turn with how you respond in dialogue, harsh realism or rolling of d20s, then look elsewhere, but if you like hack-n-slash games, like the look of the screenshots and don't know what a d20 is, then it's time to spend fifteen quid.