So good it was ported to Xbox 360 towards the end of the console’s run (and can still be played via backwards compatibility, so have a peak).
Small town in danger from the horrors lurking in the procedurally generated dungeons below, a trio of plucky adventurers ready to chug potions, spam special skills and install magical gems in their pants to defend it… It’s all par for the course. One of the worthier attempts of the last decade is Runic Games’ Torchlight, a colourful, almost cheery action RPG that didn’t so much wear its influences proudly as it did follow Diablo down a dark alley, chloroform it, skin it and wear its flesh as a suit. Some have, arguably, been as good – but very few have been better.
With a list too long and colourful to cite here, I’ll just say that, by and large, a lot of Diablo clones have been very good. It’s not exactly a dirty word, but it carries certain connotations that suggest not only a copy of an existing product but an inferior one – perhaps never more so than when discussing the clones of Blizzard’s seminal dungeon crawler, Diablo. The term “clone”, when applied to a game like Torchlight 2, is often done so in a bit of a derogatory way.
