Sinny: So we’ve got me, a guy who picked it up specifically as an antidote to Diablo 3, Hent, who bought it to hold him over until Diablo 3, and then Jim in the middle, who can’t work out whether to punch it in the crotch or marry it. “The worst game ever made, made perfectly.”

I found my old review of it a few weeks ago, it was very succinct. I got obsessed with it for a week, rushed through it and ended up despising not only the game, but myself. I’ve always shied away from these obsessive-compulsive clicky clicky RPGS, but I played Torchlight until the tendons in my wrist ached and that is pretty rare because you could crack nuts with them or use them for bridge suspension they are just that strong. Jim: I think ambivalent is nowhere near strong enough to describe my love-hate relationship with the original. Then Diablo 3 was released, and almost immediately afterwards the Torchlight 2 preorder came up, and at this point I’d been waiting so long I blindly jumped aboard the nearest 4-pack without really paying attention to what Diablo 3 might have meant for the genre in general. Largely it was a matter of inertia Torchlight 2 was going to come out before Diablo 3, it was going to provide an ARPG fix while Blizzard put the finishing touches on their Ecce Homo mural, it wouldn’t matter so much that it was good just so long as it existed. Trying to peer back through the thick fog of boredom and loathing to see what my thought process was before I bought the game. Hentzau: I have been trying to figure that out for the last five minutes.

I know Jim was somewhat ambivalent towards the original, why did you get Torchlight 2, Hent? Torchlight was all of those things, and Torchlight 2 promised to patch up what was missing. Sinny: I bought it because ARPGs feel like games that should be cheap, simple and quick to play. Hentzau: So we’re all sitting here, trying to figure out how to kickstart this review/discussion. We zoom in further, to reveal they’re…talking about Torchlight 2. Observing the noble cut of their clothes, the fine pleating of their beards and the ostentatious jangle of their chains and jewellery, one would suppose these gentlemen to be talking of matters of great import, of the rise of kingdoms or the fall of grain prices. The camera focuses in on one table to reveal three men deep in discussion. The sound of quaffing and carousing fills the air, along with the twangs of some unmentionable stringed instrument.

Torchlight 2 guts orange background