Publisher Perfect World Entertainment changed course earlier this year, making the game a 'premium' full-priced piece of software, but the bones of its scrapped identity are everywhere. If you scroll back into the archives, you'll learn that Torchlight 3 (then called Torchlight Frontiers) was announced as a free-to-play product. But I spent most of my time as a 'Duskmage,' who is saddled with a complicated magic system where you're constantly synergizing spells from both the 'light' and 'dark' schools, offering a surprisingly high skill ceiling for an ARPG that's always prioritized newcomers to the genre.īut unfortunately, the fundamental soundness of Torchlight 3's combat lacks the infrastructure to support it. You can be a 'Railmaster,' a barbarian engineer who's followed around by a literal train, which can be augmented with different speciality cars that unload hell on anyone in your way. That attitude is carried over to Torchlight 3's class choices, which throw the D&D rulebook out the window. The world of Novastraia radiates with a rich, playful aesthetic the swirling riptides of the ocean, the rugged pastures of the outer forests, and the gleefully overworked Halloween trim of the graveyards do a great job at grounding the player in this frivolous, folkloric fantasyland. Instead, Torchlight gets by on the elements that have always been the franchise's strengths. There are a few cutscenes and audio recordings to find throughout the main quest, but specifics about the existential threat on the horizon are scarce. Torchlight 3 takes place a century after the events of Torchlight 2, but the narrative is almost entirely ancillary to the core gameplay experience.

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