Torchlight Infinite just pressed go on its latest beta test, but is this new incarnation of a classic franchise just a power gamble?
For anybody that missed our earlier Torchlight Infinite hands on, XD has just kicked off a brand new beta test of the upcoming dungeon crawler Torchlight Infinite. A new take on the iconic roguish adventure game, this bright new entry in the franchise is almost ready for launch. While we’ve joined the crows and chased down adventure in earlier builds, this new opportunity to jump in and rejoin Commander Moto, Berserker Rehan, Divineshot Carino, Spacetime Witness Youga, Frostfire Gemma, and now Oracle Thea is a perfect opportunity to talk cold hard cash,
Gacha Grind
Ever since I first noted that Torchlight Infinite looked to be doing something different in the mobile space, we’ve been very sure that Torchlight would sidestep the worst of the gacha grind. While free to play titles and cash shop systems are a necessity to keep many a game afloat, the temptation to leverage open your wallet with core gameplay systems or power creep is extremely tempting. History is rife with games that offer weapon upgrade guarantees for a price, and more recent character based gacha pulls have tied combat capability to random luck. Is Torchlight likely to do the same? The answer is kind of complicated.
Character Content
Torchlight Infinite, unlike some huge mobile anime titles, doesn’t tie the primary play style or character to an RNG roll. While character banners are probably here to stay in many of the current mainstays of the free to play scene, XD’s decided to provide a static roster of characters, each with their own play style and story. This streamlines the narrative development, character progression, and in game combat, so XD aren’t having to develop and balance a ridiculous army of characters. Instead, that balance and diversity hands agency to the player instead of the dice. This design decision starts everybody out from roughly the same place. There’s no retooling an entire roster of characters with a platinum credit card. As of beta, each of the available 9 classes, split across 6 characters, play through to its logical conclusion.
Power is largely an in game selection, with a multitude of progression systems permitting a player to pick active actions, passive abilities, and traits that all tweak layers of play style. The most obvious of these is the active skill and supporting skill system, which sits at the bottom of the screen and spams damage, support, or directly interacts with the world. These slots, their skills, and upgrades seem to be be unlocked by classic leveling, meaning it’s a play to progress system. Similarly, Hero Traits, which support a particular play style, are upgraded as you play, while similar sounding talent trees can be unlocked as a character levels and then used to modify strengths or play choices. Additionally, this all dovetails into the gear system, which comes drops directly from the enemies that fester in the shadows of this world, making the core of the game’s progression easy on the pocket.
The Core Cosmetics
With a progression and customization system that doesn’t ask the player to keep pulling for the right character, issues of fiscal responsibility turn to the other obvious option. Fashion Wars is a term prevalent in the Guild Wars 2 community, and cosmetic monetization has kept ArenaNet’s MMORPG afloat for some 10 years. It’s also likely that this is where the majority of your money is going to go in Torchlight Infinite.
Early impressions of Torchlight uncovered a range of Outfits available in the menu system. Now, this ranges from silly shark attack outfits to a huge array of cool weapon skins, skill effects, body paint, teleport animations, and even a swirling star animation ripped straight out of a magical girl transformation scene. A mind boggling number of cosmetic changes are available for each of the characters alone, and that’s only likely to expand too. Sure, Torchlight doesn’t delve into dying individual elements of each outfit, but there are plenty of choices to begin with.
It’s fair to say that my early impressions of Torchlight’s upcoming monetization systems were already positive. XD has a good history of actually providing something for your money and it became very clear that the rewards for dipping into your own pocket were likely to be cosmetic as far back as our first preview. Most of the cash I’ve dropped on XD titles has, however, been in Muse Dash. Outright buying new song tracks isn’t a great equivalence for an instance RPG like Torchlight Infinite, and that does prove to be the case here.
The Gacha Game
While core gameplay, skill abilities, and characters are not locked behind an RNG system, Torchlight is going to have some level of gacha. While early hopes were that we could directly exchange premium currencies for threads, these will be available using a separate currency, called Fantasy Crystals. These purple orbs can be bought using Primocryst, a catch all premium currency. Much like the established norm of alternative adventure titles, XD will let you roll the dice for cool looking clothes. As we’ve come to expect, gacha does assure a steady rate of return with a set of 20 pulls returning at least a guaranteed rare skin during our hands on in Torchlight Infinite.
If you’re into looking unique then Torchlight Infinite is probably going to be something of a draw to spend. Still, I wouldn’t call this gouging by any means. We found footfall animations on the season pass and daily log-in rewards, while a backpack was free just for seven days of signing in. This might only be an early idea of what’s to come with nothing set in stone, but it’s a positive hint. Not only does it appear that cosmetics will be available to earn directly. Skins and other premium items will also be available via another in game currency, called Jagged Primocryst, thanks to a multitude of reward tracks, achievements, and other similarly titled tick boxes. If all things remain unchanged for the beta, we’d suggest honing in on the Track of Progression achievements. These seemed particularly lucrative.
Certainly, I’d love to see a way to easily transfer in game gold into premium currencies or recycle cosmetic draws, but things could be far more demanding on our wallets. Given the way many mobile first and free to play games gate entire characters behind gacha pulls, XD’s approach feels like a balance that could be a less egregious form of RNG.
The Catch
While individual character progression, gear, active skill slots, and traits allow players to swap a fire caster into a frosty adversary, there is one playstyle modifier you can expect to have to pull for. Torchlight Infinite has a companion system, and these Pactspirits are fixed behind an RNG paywall, similar to the cosmetics. You’ll expect to draw up to 10 for a decent drop thanks to the pity system, but there’s more to this buddy system than just fashion.
Pactspirits in Torchlight Infinite come in three grades, normal, rare, and legendary. These adorable little otters are more than just a fancy friend who can loot for you. Getting into the attributes of these systems, It’s quite clear that each spirit can influence the Pact Ring in its own way. The best of these even brings its own skills to the fight.
This does open up some concerns about power creep. Companions that can functionally change the way a game plays sitting behind a gacha paywall are irksome at best. I’m not a fan, but I’m also realistic about this choice. Anthem, for example, is a Pactspirit I’d want to pull to increase my survivability. It’s one of the game’s best Survival Pactspirits and adds increased ma life, mana restoration, and an XP penalty mitigation. It even adds an additional 14% life regeneration. The accommodation that Torchlight Infinite makes here, is that the game launches with 54 Pactspirits in total, all equally divided across the rarities, and a guaranteed chance of pulling a rare spirit every 10 pulls. The nearest rare equivalent to Anthem provides a seemingly identical effect, with a minor power degradation. Realistically, this is likely what you’ll spend your first tranche of free premium currency on and it isn’t likely to hobble your playstyle.
Where this all ends is with a system that could be better or a dam sight worse. I’d rather pay an out the box price and have this lean further into the Guild Wars 2 model, but XD has struck something of a reasonable compromise. Almost all of Torchlight Infinite’s power progression is an in game affair, and even premium pulls aren’t don’t totally gate the availability of a character or its upgrades behind a paywall. For that reason alone, Torchlight Infinite continues to have our attention. Also, the cosmetics are pretty dam cool.
That said, this is all still in flux and the title is still in beta testing. The team at XD are due to confirm final plans before the final launch. To find out what we think of the game when the numbers settle and we find out how much buying companionship costs in reality, keep an eye on Gamespace and find out more or jump into closed beta testing via the Torchlight Infinite official website now.
7 September: This article was updated to better reflect that this is a glimpse of content in beta testing and may change prior to launch
