So I thought I'd fork a spoiler free discussion here for this game, since I know a few of us are/will be playing it. Since I haven't bought Diablo 3, I can evaluate the game without having to draw all those comparisons.

I'm currently up to the Salt Barrens with my level 32 Outlander, playing coop alongside an Embermage. We're playing on Veteran, and have each died a handful of times already. It's no big deal, just pay a bit of money and start at the same level on which you died so you catch up straight away.

While I'm enjoying it so far, I have a few concerns:

• Two updates in the last 18 hours via Steam. One 300mb, the other 160mb. That's a third of the game's install size. I haven't read the patch notes yet, but I believe they've just been released. Will get to those after dinner.
  
• Lag over the LAN is noticeable, and we've been disconnected completely once (the game just continues in singleplayer, we didn't notice for 2-3 minutes). The lag hasn't killed me yet but it has come close. I'm not sure if this is limited to people on wireless repeaters like we are. Magicka also has problems here which we never had on a wired LAN, however I am inclined to think it is still bad net code, as other games run fine.
  
• It's fast and furious. My eyes struggle to quickly pinpoint the difference between enemies and friendly summoned monsters. Playing alongside an Embermage means I also sometimes have trouble distinguishing friendly spells from ones that will hurt me. A couple of my deaths were simply due to me not noticing bad guys standing right behind me.

Otherwise I'm liking it a lot. The loot is fun to play around with, so many options for sockets, enchantments, and sets. I will admit that I thought the Outlander's spells were pretty lame for the first 20 levels, and I pretty much put all points in to weapons mastery or just tangling shot to keep enemies away from me. Only at level 21 have I discovered Sand Storm, which has been both useful and fun to use.

Ah, OK, looks like the double patch was due to a bug in the first patch that could destroy shared stashes, so that part of it was rolled back.

Otherwise the patch is mostly just a few bug fixes and optimizations.

What's the comparison to part 1?

So far?

Faster, much faster. I am not sure if it's due to playing co-op, which couldn't be done before, but I don't recall having trouble keeping up with the action in the original game.

The world is really refreshing, all the different things you come across, and just actually having more than just one tileset change every 4 levels. It actually feels like a really, really big place.

They've made the quests a lot more dynamic too because of that. No more robot looking to make more songs of vanquished monsters, or old dude looking for yet another rare bit of ember. It's now more about running in to people as you go along, and doing side quests from there (if you like). Trips to town not really necessary except for the main quest.

Overall story-wise and NPC-wise it is still a weak point. Diablo 2 had really rich NPCs you could talk to and instantly recognise, excellent voice acting. Torchlight and it's sequel never really bothered with that, and I think it does make the story less memorable. The original Torchlight also had regular intermissions of text for the story to unfold, whereas in Torchlight II there is very little of that. I'm not learning much about the world I am in, I'm just there... two guys in a small office, just getting it done, you know?

I just bought the game today. Haven't played it yet but will get cracking tomorrow...if I can ever get away from Ghost Recon Online.

If you're looking for a story for an action rpg(...really, why would be looking for one here), you'll be disappointed. While the animated cutscenes are nice the little voice work there is, is nothing memorable.

The towns really are just shop hubs with only a few guards posted, no wandering townsfolk to even bring the place to life. You get the sense the places are huge but you're confined to a small section of it. Hopefully an expanded towns mod may get made(ironically the original town of Torchlight has more area you're able to about).

Now after those negative things...THE GAMEPLAY IS FRICKEN GREAT! They've upped the ante on the over-the-top combat the first one had(more things including enemy bodies explode). The skill system, while nothing new, allows for some really nice flexible character builds. Along with each class's unique charge bar mechanic you can pretty much make any class a melee or ranged build despite what they obviously lean toward.

Maps vary each playthrough, you'll even occasionally see new explorable dungeons added and the mob set may be different.

Obviously the addition of co-op is a big change. There's no closed server, games are hosted by a player and then sync'ed between all players. This allows you to use the same characters in singleplayer, LAN and Online. Since there's no closed system however there can be no economy, so don't expect a D2 economy to emerge.

Mods should be even better this time around. From what they've stated they have a cleaner system in place and should have more robust documentation so mod makers can get started earlier and with less hassle.

If you wish to play together, catch me on Steam as Edge Damodred, or EDamodred for my Runic Account.

I really enjoy the ability to unlearn skills (up to 3 back). It means you can try them out and if you don't like the way the skill works, roll back for only a moderate gold penalty. You're right, it adds a ton of flexibility, and means you can try out pretty much every skill a character has without needing to commit.

Getting in to some more tonight, now...

A bit miffed with the game tonight. Two of Runic's design decisions combine to cause something of a problem, while not being problems on their own.

First, boss fights are never just boss fights. There are always a bunch of other baddies (and even special monsters) on the scene, making boss fights quite dynamic. I don't mean a few zombies and carvers here and there like when fighting Andariel in Diablo II. I mean, a constant flow of enemy units spawning at the edges of the arena, and will continue to do so until the boss is defeated.

Second, the area around an enemy which you can click to trigger an attack (with, say, my Outlander's pistols) is very large. I can click quite far away from an enemy and it will still register as an attack command. This is obviously ideal for killing smaller critters, as long as you don't need to actually move instead.

And that brings me to the main problem. As an Outlander, trying to kill a couple of bosses, being surrounded a dozen other monsters, it is sometimes important to run away. The constant influx of other enemies means I often have nowhere to click that will force a move command, and she'll just stand there firing her pistols instead while she's mauled to death.

Is there a force move command that I am unaware of?

Sadly no force move command, I just put my cursor on the edge of the screen and held down to move. Also when you move the mouse collision volumes of enemies get bigger. This was due to an issue during the beta with the run speed being fast you'd accidentally move right up to a mob instead of attacking it from range.

As for the Outlander herself, spam Glaive Throw, it pretty much clears out the critters in a few seconds.

Again if anyone's up for multi-player, you can catch me on Steam (Edge Damodred). We can start new characters or I have 2 characters that have beaten the game(probably going to go New Game+ with my Engineer).

I haven't played a lot, yet, but so far it's pretty good. Certainly seems more fun than Diablo III (or at least, act 1 of that, never played the full version). It was certainly more varied in the first (few) hours!

The only thing I don't really like is the skill system for the Embermage. Due to the level restrictions on upgrading skills I get the feeling that I'm forced in upgrading stuff that I hardly use (or will stop using in the future due to unlocking a new skill).

It's a problem with the Outlander as well. I've had 5-6 skill points sitting there waiting to be assigned at times, because I've refused to put them towards skills that look lame. In the end I could see it was just going to stay that way, so I just pumped them all into Dodge, a passive skill. Not sure if it's done me any good, but it can't be worse than just having them sit there.

Pretty much all of the skills don't unlock third tier until you're more than half way to the level cap, so no skill is really going to replace another one. Core offensive skills are given out at the early levels and the later level ones are more situational skills as most tend to have long cool down times. I usually just pool the points as several of the skills I use all upgrade at the same level.

Up to the mid 40's and the Shadowling Brute summoning skill has helped an awful lot. It's just what the Outlander needed.

A little annoyed at one of the optional side quests though, it just dragged on and on far longer than any other side quest (just in terms of map distance and number of floors to end boss), and for the most pitiful of rewards. Runic should be tweaking that one.

One side quest has you go though 5 maps in all 3 acts, then to a enemy filled boss room.

If you're referring to Vyrax's Tower, that's pretty much how the Mapworks maps operate after you beat the last boss. You can either do those maps or start New Game+ which starts the game over with the enemies levels starting around what level you are.

In Reply To #14

That is indeed the one. Thanks for the info.