Torchlight III

The story of Torchlight III began with the founding of Runic Games back in 2008 by brothers Max and Erich Schaefer (co-founders of Blizzard North and creators of Diablo) and Travis Baldree (creator of Fate), plus others not relevant to this post. Runic released the first Torchlight in 2009 and its quite successful sequel Torchlight II in 2012. In 2014, Baldree and Erich Schaefer left the company to found Double Damage Games. I remember thinking that it was a considerable loss and a bad omen for the action RPG series. And indeed in 2017, instead of continuing Torchlight, Runic released Hob, an isometric action-adventure game.

Runic Games' original plan had been to build the Torchlight series into an MMO, sort of a continuation to the many action RPGs the founders had worked on previously. Perfect World acquired Runic Games during the development of Torchlight II, the investment targeting the would-be future MMO, which is why I'm surprised they even greenlighted Hob in the first place. Due to Hob's lacking sales or the lack of the MMO, Perfect World closed Runic Games soon after Hob's release.

Max Schaefer had also left Runic Games in 2016 to found Echtra Games. In 2018, Perfect World announced Echtra was developing Torchlight Frontiers: not quite an MMO but still a step-up on some level from the second game's co-op as a free-to-play shared world multiplayer game. In January 2020, due to extensive feedback from testers, Frontiers was rebranded to Torchlight III and released later that year as your usual buy-to-play game without microtransactions.

Unworthy successor

The game does look and sound like a Torchlight title. The visuals are of higher definition than previously but the style is still very much recognizable. Music too was again composed by no other than Matt Uelmen. However, the game doesn't have enough advancements to warrant the number 3, I feel. Despite the name, it is still the spin-off Frontiers.

Torchlight III feels smaller in scale than the previous game. The overworld maps aren't as wide and they are missing personality-giving random events, dungeons, and references. The maps feel surprisingly basic even; there's simply no sense of mystery. One thing this third game does better though is the larger amount of enemies. In (unmodified) Torchlight II you never get so many targets to kill at the same time.

Skill system didn't get any improvement and it's in many ways less exciting than previously. There are too similar active skills and new ranks in a skill offer only minor power increases. Each class gets two skill trees plus a third from the same selection of relics. I picked Electrode as my relic, hoping it would synergize with Sharpshooter class. I don't know if it did more than the others could've and its ultimate skill also turned out to be buggy: it didn't work half the time and/or threw an error when I tried to activate it.

There's an early high-drop-chance legendary armor set that gives +1 to all of your class skills. While I appreciate getting to use set bonuses without extensive farming for pieces first, I don't think a +1 all skills bonus should work on skills you have no points in yet. But as they do in this game, I had access to every Sharpshooter class skill from very early on. That's dull because I then had less to look forward to. I continued wearing the set through the whole game too. That caused me to be gimped on defensive stats later on but despite being very fragile, I made it through the game on Hard without serious trouble.

Remnants of a spin-off

Player strongholds were presumably going to be a big part of Frontiers. You get a small area to plant all kinds of cosmetic stuff which other players can see when visiting your place that can appear in-between the game's actual maps. The feature made it into Torchlight III too -- and it feels pointless. At least I didn't find any joy or purpose from decorating the stronghold (apart from the few items with in-game effects). I wonder if the tester feedback included that players would be unlikely to buy the stronghold cosmetics and that in part led Echtra and Perfect World to abandon the free-to-play business model.

I'm guessing pets -- a Torchlight staple -- were to be monetized as well. There are a whole lot of different ones this time, most found as treasure from boss fights. Your pet collections has a limited capacity and you can pick up duplicates too. It's difficult to see which pets you already have as the list can't be sorted by type. The developers left the system slightly unpolished.

Gameplay-wise pets are more impactful than previously, possibly boosting your character's power considerably. Thus it is unfortunate that there is a rather common bug of your pet disappearing when zoning (often when exiting your stronghold). You can get it back by using a pet station but that is inconvenient. The bug is probably to stay because in March Echtra Games was acquired by Zynga and Torchlight III was turned over to the IP's owner, Perfect World to deal with. I feel the game's current Mixed user review score on Steam is very much warranted.

Oct 15 Addendum

I forgot to mention that Torchlight III released at a higher price point than the second game as well, which was about 20€ at release if I recall correctly. 34€ is not hugely expensive either but it does make you expect more from the third game. Expectations which are then not met.