How do you bounce a ball past the other guy’s paddle? How do you run a pigskin from this side of the field to that one? How do you defeat the thing blocking your way forward? How do you clear a level faster than someone else? How, when many enemies can one-shot kill you, do you juggle loot, cash, inventory, character specs, potions, tactics, crowd-control and dying repeatedly without resenting the penalty?īetter games have multiple solutions. Games are just problem-solving exercises, after all. The design team must have planned it this way. I’ve only lost ground when I misstep, overconfidently jogging smack into enemy platoons, or running down narrow passages where attackers lie in wait. It’s a little like Demon’s Souls without the bloodstains, the equilibrium point somewhere between life and death. That’s the goal, after all: to clear one map after another, even if progress in this case depends on a certain kind of measured failure. It’s a delicate balancing dance: Kill enough stuff to snag enough loot to generate enough dinero to keep my Outlander - the game’s hybrid weapons-‘n-magic class - in decanted health and mana, to keep chipping away at the randomly generated steampunk-themed real estate. I’m dying a lot, this is true, but that’s not the same thing as “not progressing.” Somehow, without grinding to chew through character levels (monsters don’t respawn, or at least they don’t right away) or plying an auction house to oil my wheels, I’ve managed to make do. ( MORE: Project Eternity’s Chris Avellone: Pitching Publisher-Friendly RPGs ‘Makes Me Want to Slit My Wrists’)īut here’s the thing: I’m not sure I’m not playing the game exactly as designer Travis Baldree and the rest of the team at Runic intended.

I’m not one of those, as my double-digit “Deaths” tally reminds me when I scroll through the game’s Arcane Statistics informational panel to scan stuff like “Monsters Exploded,” “Fumble Damage Penalty” and “Fishing Luck Bonus.” Torchlight II believes in numbers and I believe in Torchlight II, even when it’s telling me I stink. That would be “elite” in Torchlight II parlance, intended for the very best players.

Follow quote George Oscar Bluth, “I’ve made a huge mistake” - I chose to play Torchlight II at the maximum difficulty setting.

Can i run torchlight 2