Torchlight II The best ARPG of the year!

Torchlight II ignites the franchise created and developed by Runic Games in this exciting sequel to the award-winning Action RPG Torchlight. Runic Games, located in Seattle, is a veteran team composed of the designers and leads of projects like Diablo, Diablo II, Mythos, Fate, and Torchlight, which won the Game Developer’s Choice Award for Best Debut of 2009.

Torchlight II is richly textured with our unique art style, drawing from traditional animation influences and expanding on the whimsical and quirky world captured in the original Torchlight. We aim for that broad appeal that’s appropriate for older kids, but is really intended for the kid in every adult.
CO-OP ACTION

The most exciting new feature of Torchlight II is the multiplayer element. Play with your friends, and use the free peer-to-peer matchmaking service to meet new players of a similar level and interest. Together players will discover expansive randomized outdoor areas and deep ominous caverns; random instanced and persistent dungeons, a huge variety of all new monsters and villains, endless variations of loot to find, and quests to complete. Players journey through the perilous Overworld, enjoying all new weather features, time of day events, and a rich and cunning story to drive gameplay.
BACKSTORY

Beyond the town of Torchlight lies a world shrouded in adventure and mystery. Guardian-warrior Syl appears in a prophetic dream, summoning the player to the Estherian Steppes. There, you meet with the Destroyer and soon venture across the continent of Vilderan, an exotic frontier besieged by forces of evil. A discovery unfolds, that the Alchemist, following his conquest of dark ember, disappeared on his quest to defeat the unknown corrupted force responsible for destroying the mystical race of Estherians. Aided by Syl, the remaining Estherian Guardians, and clues left behind by the missing Alchemist, you will find yourself battling a powerful enemy that threatens to unravel the elements of the entire world.

Runic Games will release Torchlight II initially as a digital download in Spring of 2011.
KEY FEATURES

* Multi-player – Play with your friends over a local area network, or over the Internet. A free matchmaking peer-to-peer service lets you make new friends for exciting co-op play.
* Customizable Characters – Players create and customize a character from one of four classes available and choose an animal companion. Through cosmetic, class, and gender choices, skill path decisions, and the treasures they acquire, each character can be custom-tailored to each player’s needs.
* Moddability – Torchlight II will release with an updated version of TorchEd, the Torchlight editor. Players have the option to create their own mods, adding even more content to the world. You and your friends can download the same mod and play together!
* New User Interface – Torchlight II boasts an entirely new, improved user interface, designed to be easier than ever for new players to pick up and play. Thanks to this intuitive interface, players have immediate access to a rich and varied world, with little experience necessary.
* Overworld Areas – Torchlight II has large randomized overworld areas to explore with weather, time of day cycles, and random events that provide players with even more content to experience.
* Random Dungeons – Delve into randomly generated dungeons within the game at any time for extra experience and rare loot. Dungeons in Torchlight II have even more branching paths to explore with friends filled with random events, rewards and dangers.
* Retirement System – Once characters are sufficiently leveled up, they can “retire” and bestow specific benefits and perks onto new characters.
* Pets – Players choose a pet to accompany them. Pets level up along with the player, and help in battle, learn spells, carry items, and perform a variety of support services.
* Fishing – Fishing returns in the sequel! Players can take a break from the high-energy pace of adventuring to relax by one of the many fishing holes and see what they can catch. Fish have unique benefits for the player and pet, while a number of other rewards can also be discovered.

StayDead wrote:Well, I enjoyed Torchlight 1, but this is going to get swamped by Diablo 3.

Harry Bizzle wrote:I'm still feeling a little burned by the first game, to be honest, but what it was sorely, sorely missing was multiplayer, so yeah I'll probably get this.

First was massively overrated by a bunch of games journalists who didn't even play it that much, I feel.

randomguy wrote:

Harry Bizzle wrote:I'm still feeling a little burned by the first game, to be honest, but what it was sorely, sorely missing was multiplayer, so yeah I'll probably get this.

First was massively overrated by a bunch of games journalists who didn't even play it that much, I feel.

I agree. There wasn't really any substance to it and while I understand some people love "teh loots", I got bored of it after about 3 or 4 hours.

Torchlight 2 is already sounding like a much larger game than the original. "People felt a little claustrophobic with the structure - Torchlight is just one town and a series of dungeons underneath. So the obvious remedy for that is to make big overworlds and different cities, so we're doing that," explains Max Schaefer, CEO of developer Runic Games in an interview with Gamasutra

Torchlight II will be getting online co-op play and that is just awesome. Runic hasn't yet decided how many players the game will support in this mode, at this time, however. In an interview with VG247, Runic honcho Max Schaefer explains:

We haven't set the party maximum just yet. The sweet spot, just from playing in the office, is 1-4 players. There's no technological reason why we can't increase that, but once you get up to, like, eight players, it gets ridiculously crowded if you're at all in the same area.

Thankfully, players aren't locked to the same area as "it is possible to have a group of four in the late game and then another group of four in the early game in, technically, the same game session." There's an internal debate raging, but the maximum player count will "probably be between four and eight."

Noëleo wrote:I really need to get round to playing the first one properly. I enjoyed what I have already played of it, but I don;t think I got much further than the first dungeon.

Pacman wrote:

Noëleo wrote:I really need to get round to playing the first one properly. I enjoyed what I have already played of it, but I don;t think I got much further than the first dungeon.

most of the games you own on steam have been played for like 0.6 hours or something not that im stalking you or anything