Going back in time a bit, Torchlight 2 was available for pre-order on Steam and at the time it came with a complimentary copy of the first Torchlight.
"Score!" I thought to myself. "Two decent looking games for the price of one!"
And so I proceeded to play the hell out of the first Torchlight and loved every minute of it, so when Torchlight 2 was finally released I jumped into it with all the excitement and enthusiasm of a kid at Christmas... and within a couple of hours... I felt disappointed.
I'm not sure what it was exactly, but I wasn't enjoying it as much as the first one and I just turned it off. Tried again and again to enjoy it a few times over the years, but, meh. There was one super mega mod that improved it a bit, but it still wasn't to previous levels of enjoyment.
Thus when I saw there was a new Torchlight 3 I didn't really feel much of anything. Didn't preorder it, haven't even bought it yet, but it's on xbox game pass and yesterday something made me want to try it. Plus! You can play it with other people and since my partner wasn't at work and we're not really into FFXIV at the moment (great game, but the quest slog at around 50 gets. so. monotonous. omg.) we thought, "Why not?"
Honestly I didn't look much at all the classes. But there was this archer, a mage, a robot, and some other guy. I just saw the shooter and clicked on it straight away, ignoring the rest.
Part of what I liked with Torchlight 2's super mega mod I downloaded was that it added more character creation customisation. My first thought here was, "Sigh, such lacking customer creation."
Then we got to part two of the character creation, and I was just, "Damn! I like this!" ~ choosing a relic straight off the bat and determining your character's path from the start instead of speccing into random stuff throughout the game? I understand that many people would be annoyed at that, but me? I think it's great.
I like setting a path from the start rather than being overwhelmed by choice in the middle of a game -- and I am easily overwhelmed. This was a thumbs up for me as I didn't like how they did it previously and I was inclined to ignore a lot of the extra skill trees.
After choosing my relic I could now choose a pet! At first I was disappointed that there were only three pretty average pets available to choose from. But then I saw ~ "Rescue more pets from bosses throughout the world." and thought that that was a cool way of doing things.
So I chose an owl, named him Gibbs, and we set forth on our new Torchlight adventure.
It starts off just as any other ARPG. Defeat the first boss, unlock a town-esque quest-hub place, go further into the world, defeat more things, find loot, return to town, etc.
I was feeling a little underwhelmed at first, but then, when I was going through the options on the interface, I saw this:
Craftsman's and Homesteader's contracts?
Throughout the world are boulders and ore deposits you can mine and trees you can chop down. I was wondering what they were for... now I had my first inkling and I was intrigued.
Then, as I progressed through these initial quests, this happened!
I get my very own fort? I can spruce it up? That sounds right up my alley!
I didn't take a 'before' screenshot, but here's what I've done so far:
Furthermore, as you smash things around the world and defeat enemies and bosses, you find blueprints you can learn to build even more stuff!
There's some pet stuff you can build so your increasing number of pets can relax whilst you're out and about; wood, metal and rock refining stations so you can turn wood into planks, ore into bars, and rocks into bricks - crafting requires both the refined and unrefined so you don't want to refine everything!
Also, I've planted a tree that I fertilise with otherwise useless grey and white gear you'd normally ignore in these types of games. I love that! Giving those crappy things a usecase. As you feed the greys and whites to the tree, it can level up and gives you more of a gear-find percentage.
That's a fantastic idea!
There's a similar thing with essences you can get off certain enemies. For example, goblins have a chance to drop their essence, which you then feed into an altar in your fort, and as -that- levels up it increases your fire resistance.
I really like those ideas -- especially that thing with the white/grey gear.
I'm still not entirely sure what those crafting and homesteading contracts are just yet, however. I have a feeling I'm supposed to be activating them every time I go to my fort and start doing stuff? I'll have to do that when we play next and see if anything happens or if it's something for later on in the game.
Either way, this whole fort thing was akin to the game screaming, "Look at this! I'm interesting! Play me more!"
It gave me more of an incentive to play than just kill, loot, gear up, hand in quests I don't care about, so on and so forth. There's something personal in the game for me, for my character, and I approve greatly.
I also approve of the random pets you can find and the abilities they have! Like this cat I aptly named 'Misty.'
He farts every 30 seconds, the fart cloud deals damage AND has a chance of fearing things. That's just brilliant. I may have giggled like a loony when I saw that. (My partner and I are very charming people, obviously. Farts are hilarious and you can't tell me otherwise.)
All in all, I'm actually enjoying this game when I fully expected not to. It's a pleasant surprise!
Multiplayer works great and isn't laggy, neither does it disconnect us, neither did I have to turn off my antivirus for us to even connect like I've had to do in other games. The gameplay is fun and not a mass of overwhelming skill trees. Loot drops are often and rewarding. Environments are graphically appealing. I love the more personal aspect in this one compared to its predecessors.
I'm really enjoying it! Must play more! We're only at the beginning, it's only been a few hours; more! 😄
Must be patient.
All screenshots in this post are courtesy of me, 
