- Joined
- Jan 17, 2019
I was originally going to post about how increasing the difficulty has a completely neglible effect on loot - with zero alteration to gold and resource gain - and leave it there, such is the shittiness of this thing as an ARPG, but fuck it I'm mad about wasting £30 on this fucking firepit.
Let's start off simple. Remember how in the original two games there was a sense of story progression and side quests? Regardless of how shallow they actually were, we got a glimpse into the world and some context for our actions. The Alchemist is evil and trying to eat Gods for their power, so we have to run around chasing him and cleaning up the mess. This lady has gone missing so venture into an optional spider nest to find her, etc.
In the third game there is a story, of sorts, but it is delivered so poorly youd be forgiven for missing it entirely. There's a traitor in the camp - so go and collect item parts from a cave, now from a goblin village, now
...what? This has nothing to do with a traitor. Why does finding a lost scholar suddenly require me to kill a specific bug on the other side of the continent? Why does a quest to find proof of an evil God's existence fizzle out with zero conclusion? Nobody expects a quality story from ARPGS, but they're at least a carrot - Torchlight 2's plot gave a sense of momentum, Diablo 3 had fun character interactions and a vein of humour, 40k Inquisitor gave you a surprising amount of agency within the story. There is nothing to Torchlight 3; you have one path through it, zero deviations and no side quests whatsoever.
The skills are awful. You pick an elemental themed relic as a third skill tree - fantastic, this brings diversity! But no fuck you, literally every single ability in the game has its damage type determined by your weapon. Don't have a poison gun drop for ten levels? Eat shit, your poison relic is now effectively useless as you cannot make use of its passives or synergies. A whole third of your character redundant unless the RNG is helpful.
Sound design is the worst I've ever experienced. My mage's teleport is almost certainly using the stock sound effect for farts in South Park, and even with all the audio bugs discounted there's no sense of cohesion or thought put into things. Let's take "explosive end" enemies: in Diablo there would be a loud swirling noise as the explosion builds, in Remnant you clearly hear a rocket launcher being loaded and cooked off even if you can't see it, the Division's suicide bombers have unrealistically loud footsteps and shout when moving. In T3 these enemies are completely silent, and when the tiny explosion indicator is buried in a hundred spell effects there is no warning of lethal damage until you're dead. No audio warnings whatsoever, and not just for potentially deadly attacks - it's almost like someone forgot to put half the sounds in.
Loot. It's shit, the hardest difficulty gives no bonuses to experience gain or gold, and the pathetic 20% bonus on item drops is completely outdone by everything having six times the health. There is literally no point increasing the difficulty.
Game is shit. Do not buy. Replay the original.
Let's start off simple. Remember how in the original two games there was a sense of story progression and side quests? Regardless of how shallow they actually were, we got a glimpse into the world and some context for our actions. The Alchemist is evil and trying to eat Gods for their power, so we have to run around chasing him and cleaning up the mess. This lady has gone missing so venture into an optional spider nest to find her, etc.
In the third game there is a story, of sorts, but it is delivered so poorly youd be forgiven for missing it entirely. There's a traitor in the camp - so go and collect item parts from a cave, now from a goblin village, now
...what? This has nothing to do with a traitor. Why does finding a lost scholar suddenly require me to kill a specific bug on the other side of the continent? Why does a quest to find proof of an evil God's existence fizzle out with zero conclusion? Nobody expects a quality story from ARPGS, but they're at least a carrot - Torchlight 2's plot gave a sense of momentum, Diablo 3 had fun character interactions and a vein of humour, 40k Inquisitor gave you a surprising amount of agency within the story. There is nothing to Torchlight 3; you have one path through it, zero deviations and no side quests whatsoever.
The skills are awful. You pick an elemental themed relic as a third skill tree - fantastic, this brings diversity! But no fuck you, literally every single ability in the game has its damage type determined by your weapon. Don't have a poison gun drop for ten levels? Eat shit, your poison relic is now effectively useless as you cannot make use of its passives or synergies. A whole third of your character redundant unless the RNG is helpful.
Sound design is the worst I've ever experienced. My mage's teleport is almost certainly using the stock sound effect for farts in South Park, and even with all the audio bugs discounted there's no sense of cohesion or thought put into things. Let's take "explosive end" enemies: in Diablo there would be a loud swirling noise as the explosion builds, in Remnant you clearly hear a rocket launcher being loaded and cooked off even if you can't see it, the Division's suicide bombers have unrealistically loud footsteps and shout when moving. In T3 these enemies are completely silent, and when the tiny explosion indicator is buried in a hundred spell effects there is no warning of lethal damage until you're dead. No audio warnings whatsoever, and not just for potentially deadly attacks - it's almost like someone forgot to put half the sounds in.
Loot. It's shit, the hardest difficulty gives no bonuses to experience gain or gold, and the pathetic 20% bonus on item drops is completely outdone by everything having six times the health. There is literally no point increasing the difficulty.
Game is shit. Do not buy. Replay the original.
