Infinitely mobile.
Torchlight Infinite has officially launched and the folks over at XD decided it’d be a good idea to have me take a look at the game and write about my experience. They even gave me cash shop currency and the battle pass to boot. But what do I think about Torchlight Infinite? Let’s find out together.
Torchlight Infinite is a mobile game and that means one thing; If you take a break for a few months you are guaranteed to log back in to a crapload of free revive tokens due to multiple apologies for extended maintenances over that time span. The response to Torchlight Infinite has been pretty mixed around the net, and I think this is the most I’ve agreed with the general consensus on a game.
Now given Torchlight Infinite is a mobile game and an ARPG to boot, its gameplay loop is going to be the type that can be breezed through by half-asleep people taking a dump at work and eating time on their breaks/lunch or waiting in a doctor’s office. It also won’t have mechanics that would be hard for players on a mobile phone interface.
Torchlight Infinite has a lot of problems, and I’ll say the monetization is the least of my worries. This is why I don’t really talk about mobile games here at MMO Fallout, because I get caught up on all the dumb mobile shit. The constant barrage of notifications, the clunky and terrible user interface, the persistent treating the player like a moron.
There’s a game under all of this clutter, and a decent one at that. It’s an ARPG and as a fan of mindlessly killing thousands of mobs I can dig it. But for every 15 minutes Torchlight Infinite is letting you enjoy yourself, it occasionally kicks you in the head just to remind you that it can.
There is a battle pass system in Torchlight Infinite and it might not be exactly what you expect. I stand by my statement that Fortnite is the gold standard of battle passes, both paying for itself and offering a wealth of cosmetics you’d actually care about. There’s a lot of “I gotta have that” moments in the Fortnite battle pass, which is either a good thing or a bad thing depending on your position and gaming availability.
The battle pass in Torchlight Infinite is…eh. It doesn’t take much time at all to level the battle pass and you get a ton of worthless crap that the game already heaps on you like primocrysts and revive tokens. There’s really three reasons to buy the battle pass; the current new hero is locked behind the pass for one season, they lock advanced auto-loot behind it, and for hero emblems which unlock special hero versions if you collect enough of them. And you do have to collect a lot.
My biggest grievance with Torchlight is the skill system, which might be the most annoying mechanic of 2023 in a game. You get access to skills that seal off massive portions of your mana bar; I’m talking 20-45% per skill plus 30+ mana per affixion for dumb crap like a 6% movement speed increase. These skills level up and seal more mana every time, meaning it’s very easy to suddenly find 98% of your mana bar sealed and actually be unable to perform a basic attack.
This is stupid. You can deactivate a modifier to regain some mana, but it reactivates every time you change zones. I don’t know if this is a bug. You can also unslot it but the game never lets you turn off the notification you have a vacant slot.
I’d say the mana sealing is my biggest grievance with Torchlight Infinite’s skill system, it’s an annoying “balance” mechanic that punishes you for engaging with it, for leveling up, and then for not using it through constant bitching and UI annoyances. I suppose it also doesn’t help that despite losing 95% of your mana the game really never requires you to do much more than spam your main attack and hit the potion bottle.
Torchlight Infinite loves its loot boxes. In fact there are roughly a baker’s dozen different flavors of loot box available in-game as we speak. I did spend some of my stipend on trying to unlock the exclusive outfit for Bing, and was it worth it? I don’t know. I’d probably be more annoyed if I’d personally spent the $70 needed in loot boxes to unlock a single flame outfit.
As a game I’d say Torchlight Infinite is something that is fine to play in small bursts. A half hour here, an hour there. On the other hand, Diablo IV is on the horizon and I can’t see myself playing this much once that game is out.
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