Torchlight

Game: Torchlight
Developer: Runic Games
Platform: PC
Release Year: 2009
Stephen's Rating: 4/10

Basic Plot

The story revolves around an adventurer who travels beneath the town of Torchlight into the Ember mines. A story unfolds which reveals how the Ember (a rare and magical ore) is corrupting the land around it.

Gameplay

Torchlight is an action-RPG similar to Diablo or Titan Quest. The player picks one of three character classes (Destroyer, Alchemist, Vanquisher) and dungeon crawls their way through a rough story.

The player gains levels and assigns skills as they progress and use them to engage more and more difficult enemies.

One original mechanic was that every character had a pet which could be used to assist you in combat, and also go back to town and sell items for you. The player could also fish in ponds and water, and feed the fish to their pet to transform them into other creatures.

Positives
 
The game is extremely affordable. I think I picked it up for $5-10 on Steam. It provides a fairly well rounded action-RPG experience for anyone who isn't patient enough to wait for Diablo III.

Negatives

Having only three character classes was a big minus for me. On top of that some of the skills for one class were often duplicated for another character class, meaning they weren't even unique.

The skills themselves felt weak. The abilities you could learn didn't scale well with the difficulty of the game and often held up the natural flow of gameplay and the story.

The cartoony look of the graphics wasn't a good thing, and the story was really an afterthought.

The items were pretty uninteresting and generic. There was nothing with the "wow" factor you got in Diablo II when finding a unique or set item (or building a runeword).

NO MULTIPLAYER!

Memorable Moments

I played this because of my impatience for Diablo III and my unwillingness to go back and play Diablo II again...

Battle Realms

Game: Battle Realms
Developer: Liquid Entertainment
Platform: PC
Release Year: 2001
Stephen's Rating: 5/10

I must apologise for not posting in a very long time. My wife and I are expecting our first child in 3 weeks time and I've been rennovating the baby's room... but I'm back for now in this brief window before she is born!

Basic Plot

The story follows Kenji, the last heir to the Serpent Throne. Right from the start the player is presented with a choice whether he will confront some bandits who are attacking some peasants, or join them in doing so. The choice impacts the game and two different storylines emerge; either Kenji works to bring good to the world and follows the path of the Dragon clan, or he can follow in his predecessors footsteps and lead the Serpent clan.

The story then revolves around trying to obtain an artifact called the Orb of the Serpent before the other clans.

Gameplay

Battle Realms is a real time strategy game similar to Age of Empires or StarCraft. The aesthetics and story are based on Oriental mythology which is unique for games of this genre. The game included four playable races (clans):

• Serpent Clan; uses stealth, trickery, and brutality.
• Dragon Clan; honourable warriors who value honour and justice.
• Wolf Clan; former miner slaves who fought for their freedom.
• Lotus Clan; sorcerers who delve into dark magic.

Each clan had their own fighting style and aesthetic. Like other RTS games the player needs to gather resources to build their structures and units. The two resources in the game are rice and water which are gathered by peasants.

Another resource is either Yin or Yang (depending on the faction). These are obtained by winning in combat, by the size of your army, and how far the army is from your base and can be spent to summon Zen Masters. It can also be used to research some fighting styles and upgrade a Zen Master.

A player starts off only being able to produce peasants. He or she is then able to research new fighting styles in one of their three main structures in order to unlock new units.

Zen Masters are hero units which can be summoned at the cost of Yin or Yang.

Another unusual aspect of the game is that peasants are built automatically and at no cost, but the rate at which they spawn is inversely related to the population of the player. The more units the player builds, the longer it will take to spawn a new peasant.

Positives

For the time this was a fairly complex RTS with a bunch of interesting mechanics which were refreshing.

The aesthetics of the game were strong and engaging.

Negatives

The resource system was somewhat confusing. The peasant spawn system reminded me of "upkeep" in Warcraft III, and really put me off playing it.

Memorable Moments

My memory of this game is that it was kind of oddball and unexpected. I'm not sure why I didn't commit and play it to completion.