Torchlight Infinite can be worthwhile for fans – and for fans of Path of Exile, not fans of Torchlight.
I don”t like to talk things up: The smartphone spin-off of the Torchlight series, which you can now also play on PC in Steam Early Access, doesn”t have much in common with Torchlight apart from its colourful comic look.
The story of Torchlight Infinite is confused, lousily translated rubbish. Applied pieces of armour are no longer visibly displayed on characters, presumably to encourage you to buy costumes. The user interface has been adapted exactly zero for PC play, looks awful and controls very annoyingly.
I know what you”re afraid of: So are we in for a terrible flop like Torchlight 3 in 2020? Well, luckily there”s some positive news too!
Torchlight Infinite has an extremely open and pleasantly flexible character system with several play styles, which is more similar to Path of Exile than Undecember. It even imitates the end game of Path of Exile to a large extent. It plays very quickly, strongly reminiscent of the “zoom-zoom gameplay” that, to the chagrin of many fans, is being patched out of Path of Exile more and more with every update.
Unlike in comparable hybrid games, real money does not buy power in Torchlight Infinite, even if the monetisation is not perfect. It doesn”t have what it takes to be a hit, but it still plays much better than feared!
Table of Contents
A good steal is half the battle
At the beginning of the game you can choose from five different characters, a sixth one is available in the paid Season Pass, but this character will also be playable for free later on. You can choose from the usual suspects, from the dumb hooligan to the pistolero to the techno-dwarf with an affinity for mechanical servants.
The presentation of these warriors are merely serving suggestions. For example, I play the heroine Gemma, presented as an elementalist, as a melee fighter with two swords, heavy armour and summoned pets, simply because it works. In other words: all characters in the game can use any weapon and any skill, you are not bound to any predefined play style, just like in Path of Exile.
Nevertheless, all characters are slightly different: The Berserker has access to all melee skills very early on and only unlocks spells towards the end of the campaign, in addition he builds up rage via a passive talent and thus causes additional damage. Sorceress Gemma, meanwhile, only gets access to magical attacks at first and only unlocks most weapon skills at a higher level, using her passive talent to deal more damage through fire and ice.
The different skills and spells come more or less directly from Path of Exile. You have your weapon attack that shoots flaming projectiles (Molten Strike), your powerful jump attack (Leap Slam), curses, auras, but also skill upgrades for additional projectiles, automatic spell casting on critical hits and so on.
Not unnecessarily complicated
Your skills are not bound to any sockets in the equipment, instead you unlock slots for skills and skill upgrades gradually by leveling up. You also gradually choose three different passive talent trees from a fairly generous selection, divided into skill trees for things like armour and melee damage, mana and elemental damage, minions and buffs, and much more.
This is rounded off by the Pact talent tree, which grants further passive bonuses, for example resistance to elemental damage or more life. You can influence the effect of the bonuses in the Pact talent tree by creating special pets. This can, for example, have the effect of changing a bonus to life into a bonus to drop rate.
You get a few tokens for a Gacha system quite early in the game, which you use to randomly draw a few of these pets. More tokens are available for real money – the more you invest, the greater your chance of getting cooler, legendary pets with (minimally) stronger passive bonuses.
These are by no means decisive for the war, but if you absolutely want a legendary pet, you will hardly get around the paid tokens. After all, things like inventory expansions and places for the storage chest are only available for in-game currency and not for real money. In Torchlight Infinite, hard euros primarily buy you cosmetic junk.
Gacha cosmetics stink
From the obligatory wings to weapon and character skins, cosmetic skill effects to auras and special footprints, there”s a wide range of visual upgrades for your adventurers, none of which you can foolishly buy outright.
Instead, you only pay for Gacha tokens, which you then use to randomly draw cosmetic items from a predefined pool of items, similar to the costume lootboxes in Path of Exile. This is doubly annoying because it”s the only way to change and influence the look of your characters in any way.
In addition, there is of course the unavoidable Season Pass for real money, which unlocks an extended loot function for your pet. On top of that, there are also some cosmetics and little helpers like reset points for the skill tree or coins that prevent you from losing experience when you die.
Such goodies are also available just like that and in generous quantities in exchange for in-game currency. At least, if you pay real money for the Premium Pass because you want the new character from the pass, you get it immediately when you buy it. The best rewards are right at the beginning, so you don”t have to grind for weeks to get the good stuff.
Area for improvement
After about ten hours my character was at level 40 and I had seen the campaign. Towards the end, the (already bad) English voice output was still missing in places, a boss suddenly yelled at me in Chinese.
After that, you fight your way through the entire game world again for 20 levels, this time without a story, before combing through a map system via a portal in the endgame, where you can manually increase the difficulty level via various modifications and gain access to further maps and increasingly stronger bosses.
After a rather primitive start, the game areas become increasingly twisted and larger, the bosses tougher and more demanding. From level 60, you get access to the auction house, which fortunately only works with in-game currency, if you want to hawk your crafting products there or buy equipment from your fellow players.
There is currently no multiplayer at all; you will only meet other players in the hubs. The cartoon graphics are reminiscent of the Torchlight look, but are more functional than pretty.
The music had dropouts during my playtime, often the game remained completely silent, the sound effects in battle are tinny and weak. The menu navigation is designed for smartphones and not for PCs, everything is operated via the left mouse button.
There is no interaction of any kind via double-clicks or the right mouse button. Thus Torchlight Infinite is truly no hit, but it plays quite nicely, it doesn”t push you into the cash shop like Undecember and it doesn”t rip you off mercilessly like Diablo Immortal.
Preliminary Score Box
Editorial conclusion
During the first few hours, I hated Torchlight Infinite: The confused story with the annoyingly bad voice acting, tube levels, only two skills for now, Baby”s first action RPG. If you struggle through for a while, the maps finally become bigger and more complex, the surprisingly extensive and yet easily understandable character system gradually shows its possibilities. Then you realise that you can turn your berserker into a wizard or a gunslinger, or send your mage off with a blunderbuss or a battle axe if you feel like it. I”m really into that kind of thing!
The gacha stuff is crap. Just let me buy the costumes I feel like directly. Better yet, fucking display applied armour pieces visibly on my character! But hey, apart from any pets with micro bonuses that you”re most likely to get for hard Euros at the best of times, real money buys you absolutely no power here. Elementary things like inventory and chest slots cost nothing at all, you get them directly for in-game currency. Multiplayer is still missing, the user interface sucks, but the game plays surprisingly well, and the end game is also fun. It”s fine as a little bite for in between.
