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Game Review: Torchlight 2
A Testimonial, and a Confession
First, I have to admit some bias here. When Diablo 2 came out over a decade ago, it was my favorite game for quite some time. Its expansion pack only cemented its position as the best game of all time, for me. It's key to note here, that Diablo 2 was only the best game ever in my opinion, and eventually it aged and got to the point where it was nigh unplayable on modern computers. I even tried going back several times in the past few years, and just found it too archaic to function properly on modern hardware. It desperately needed either some patches or a successor to bring it up to date.
When Blizzard Entertainment announced Diablo 3, I couldn't have been happier. At last, an updated version of the best game ever would be available. However, something felt odd about Diablo 3 even before I ever played it. Blizzard kept reviews at bay until after release via a restrictive NDA. That's fairly common, and not enough to raise suspicion alone, but still odd that there weren't more early peeks allotted to the usual media channels. Even after its release, the demo was only available by invite. I couldn't even download the demo for Diablo 3 unless someone who had already bought the game gave me a code. Now something smelled fishy. So I held onto my sixty dollars, which while would be a small price to pay for the best game ever, it seemed like Diablo 3 wouldn't be that game. Eventually I was able to wrangle a demo code from someone who had bought the game and wanted to lure me into playing it. I didn't get very far into the demo before I got a quest just to use a waypoint. Perhaps they didn't realize that I have killed Diablo and his brothers dozens if not hundreds of times already. I know how to work a waypoint. I need monsters to kill. Out of respect for the franchise, I kept on. I even finished the demo, but by the time I did so, it was clear to me, that Diablo 3 was going to be a giant let-down for me. Whatever fun I had with Diablo 2 was done and gone, and would stay in the past.
I had had the good fortune of playing Torchlight, and like just about everyone else, my biggest complaint was that the game had no multiplayer. Other than the lack of multiplayer, I thought it was just about perfect. Given my previous love for Diablo 2, this shouldn't be any sort of surprise. So now at long last, Runic has released the multiplayer-enabled Torchlight 2. Similar to the old "Open Battle.Net" games of Diablo 2, you can play the same character in single player, LAN, and internet games. This proved to be key, as on release day, Runic's servers melted from the onslaught of players. Internet games were finally enabled a couple days later, but in the meantime, plenty of single player and LAN games were had. Through the creative usage of some VPNs, I was even able to play LAN games over the internet.
Once More Into the Fray
The game starts off in the ruins of the town of Torchlight. Wait a second, didn't I save the town from Ordrak at the bottom of the mines and whatever else was down there? Well, it turns out that I did, so long as I wasn't playing an alchemist. The alchemist, on the other hand, was corrupted by the heart of Ordrak and immediately knew that he had to burn down the town, and leave a path of death and destruction across the land as he began his new plot to destroy the world. Okay, so the plot isn't Hugo Award caliber stuff here, but neither was "Diablo lived somehow, and you have to go kill him again," nor was "Hey, why don't you just run on into this dungeon and fetch me the Amulet of Yendor." Really the plot is just a means to goad me into venturing into areas that I haven't already taken it upon myself to go explore and kill everything in.
That brings us down to what the real fun in any point-and-click ARPG is. Taking on and killing hordes of enemies at once, securing an area, and then reaping the immediate rewards in the form of experience and loot. The Torchlight series has traded in the grimdark setting of Diablo for an art style that's a bit more cartoon-like, but the core gameplay survives. This is a feature that Torchlight 2 recreates flawlessly. Combat is fast, frenetic, and visceral. Enemies have a chance to explode into a pile of gibs, leaving bloodstains on the ground. Frozen enemies can be shattered into chunks of ice. Often the action happens so fast, that creatures can be slain before I'm even aware they exist. It's exactly the opposite of the first act of Diablo 3, which comparatively felt like drudgery.
Building the Perfect Warrior
There's four classes to choose from in Torchlight 2, and while they follow some archetypes, they're also rather configurable in how they're played via skills and weapon choices. The embermage is a classic spellcaster who uses staves and wands, and can learn many different spells to put down his enemies. The outlander is a ranged class that excels at nearly every sort of ranged weapon. The berserker is a melee damage class that can gain bonuses from using two weapons of the same type. And last but not least, is the engineer, a versatile class that can use shields, two-handed weapons, and even cannons, or some combination of those, depending on skill set. It's important to note here, that every class can wield every weapon, there's just not always a bonus for doing so. You're free to make a berserker who uses shotguns, for example, there's just not many skills for the class to support it.
Skills aren't tied to any sort of tree structure like they were before. You only need to be of a skill's required level to unlock it. Active skills such as spells, will also confer a bonus after investing five, ten, or fifteen points into them. Leveling up a character also isn't the only way to gain skill points. As you gain in fame from killing bosses and random named mobs, you acquire a skill point for every level of fame you've achieved as well.
Keep Going Back For More
It took me a little over 20 hours to save the world, on my first trip through on normal difficulty. Normal difficulty was still rather easy, and I think my next trip through the world will be at the veteran level. There are however, still a number of activities for my first character to do. Completing the game unlocks the Mapworks, a robot-run area where you can load custom maps to complete. It's also possible to create a new world that begins at your current level, so I could start a new game with that character where the first monsters would be around level 50. Because the dungeons and open areas outside towns are randomly generated, a second playthrough manages to still feel somewhat fresh. Combine that with a character class that you haven't played before, or a new set of skills for one that you have, and there's lots of reasons to keep replaying.
But is this the new best game ever?
In short, yes. I've spent time reading people's meager, whiny complaints about this gift of the gods that has been put on sale for a mere twenty dollars. Sure, you can only reallocate the last three skill points you've spent, and you can't redo all your stats and skills once you're leveled up. That's so that you learn from your mistakes and go back and play the game again. There's no one to hold your hand to find the area where the quest is at. There's a marker on your map for you to aim for, and that's more than any player deserves. The quests are still rather simplistic, and of the form to go kill someone or a group of someones, or to collect a thing, or a group of things. Again, the quests are merely a vehicle to get you into new areas. If you happen to kill the guy that advances the plot, that's a bonus. If you stop to talk to an NPC, the world does not stop for you. Enemies will continue to attack you as you choose your quest reward, because you were too stupid to clear out the area of any possible threats before sitting down to talk. I think I've now sufficiently debunked any negative points I've read in other reviews. If you don't like point-and-click ARPG games, you're not going to like this one. No one is going to change the entire genre to enable someone's crazy ideas. Well, unless it's Diablo 3, and look how that turned out. Sure it sold well, but I would now have to waterboard my friends into admitting that they fell for purchasing it.
My biggest complaint about this most perfect game, is that there's no Mac or Linux versions, yet. I say yet, because three years after the first game was released, we even have a Linux version now. You can pick it up, DRM-free, right now for a limited time, for the price of whatever-you-want, as part of the Humble Indie Bundle 6. You can donate some or all of the price to the EFF as well. Shameless plugs aside, it may take a few years but eventually Torchlight 2 should make the rounds as well. Runic Games has a lot in store for the game yet, such as console versions, as well as Steam Workshop integration, which will enable easy mod installation. Mod support will presumably let players redo their skills and stats, and cheat if they want to.
Since Diablo 3 is a DRM'd monstrosity, I'll give this a try, just to help show blizzard why they aren't getting money.
Normal difficulty was still rather easy
This was one of my very few issues with the game, I don't think "normal" should be labeled such.
The descriptions of the difficulty levels, as I noticed later, are accurate though. It calls normal something along the lines of "never played action RPGs before"
I usually play a game on "normal" cause I'm not looking to tear my hair out, but I think the difficulty levels should have been "super easy, easy, normal, and hard"
I think my biggest complaint is the same as Borderlands 2 .. no crafting to break up the slay-collect-sell rinse-repeat. I guess if you like slay-collect-sell that much, this game is perfect for you. If you want to set your own goals for finding rare components and crafting powerful gear, you're SOL, but that's not everyone's cup of tea.
On the other hand, TorchED is promised, and moddable games are good, which is what sold me. Hopefully someone can add to the gameplay!
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Torchlight 2 still didn't manage to give me anything that Dungeon Siege 2 did...
The WoW-esque graphics are such an extreme turn-off, and the fact that anyone from Blizzard had so major an influence on the game is just as much a boner-kill. Torchlight 2 had promise, but didn't deliver any more than Diablo 3 did. Mashing a single button and watching random numbers float by isn't fun, and is definitely not all that an ARPG can accomplish, but Torchlight 2 has literally nothing else. There's no choices or complexity, it's strictly mindless in all the bad ways. So much so that it ceases to even be mindless fun.
I require engagement from my games. That is to say, I require them to be games -- you know, interactive and thoughtful?
I had hoped that the Linux release of the original meant that the sequel would have it from the beginning. Unfortunately, this is not the case, which means I won't be purchasing this game now, I don't want more Windows software. Hopefully they'll do a Linux port of this game before it becomes irrelevant. Too bad they don't have one now, or they could have my twenty bucks, too.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Torchlight 1 does not allow you to change keybindings.
Diablo 3 does.
I almost *never* find default key bindings to be any good.
Can you bind your commands however you want in Torchlight 2? If not, I will stick with D3.
If you have 4 friends(I know that's a stretch) you can buy a 4-pack on Steam and pay only $15 each. Also the music is done from one of the original Diablo people, so it's great too.
Just a note that the original Torchlight is part of the current Humble Bundle (Humble Bundle 6) found at http://www.humblebundle.com/
I think I had exactly the same experience with this game. I like the cartoony art style and the fast chaotic battles. "Normal" difficulty seemed like Easy Mode, and I ran through it with an Embermage in about 23 hours of play. "Veteran" difficulty, on the other hand, requires some attention to get the build right and constantly keeping up with weapon and armor upgrades. But there is plenty of all that to choose from, and each of the character types can win with one of several different build styles. I might even stick my toe into the Elite waters.
The review forgot to mention that the creators of Diablo 2 left Blizzard North and Diablo 3 was made by a whole new crew. Granted those guys have some pedigree too, but not in the ARPG genre (Fallout, Total Annihilation, etc.). Several of the Blizzard North guys eventually worked their way around to Runic games, and TL 1 and 2 are both products of the guys who made Diablo 2.
There's a reason TL 2 plays so well and is so friendly to players the way D2 was. I've often thought but never had proof of it until now: video games are an art and are about vision of the team leads. Programming is important, graphics are important, but those are technical aspects; gameplay is an art form and very dependent upon who is making the game, not what studio, or what graphics or technical aspects it has. No set of games have illustrated this point more clearly than the recent launches of D3 and TL2.
At 20 bucks the game is just begging to be played by anyone with a little itch for isometric action rpgs. It is smooth, crisp, and handles well. Sure, Diablo III has more "stuff" and motion videos and other things, but given the price difference between the games you have to wonder where Blizzard put all that extra money (real money trading, anyone?).
Also, I was one of those that grabbed D3 hook line and sinker. The first game was fun, the second was pretty great, and the third.. it was okay. When I could play - because the servers would crash and lock me out of my single player game. I suppose most of us didn't read the fine print to notice we actually bought an MMO except without the whole.. MM part of it.
In any case, just go buy it. It is the price of a good cut of steak and like a good steak, the game is delicious.
(PS: Real men don't use A-1.)
I haven't played D3, but I've played TL1 and D2, and I've now played through TL2.
Cons: In my opinion, the storytelling of TL2 is somewhat less compelling and expansive than was that of D2. Also, the D2 had good cinematics, and most (all?) of its narration was recorded voices, rather than just text that you have to read.
Pros: Lots of fun, low hardware requirements, good randomization of maps. Fun approach to playing random maps after you beat the game (I'm not going to spoil it.) No DRM.
And last but not least, it's a great entertainment value for $20. Money very well in my case. From the reviews, I don't think I would have considered $60 for D3 to be a worthwhile purchase.
No you haven't, because "you're dumb" is not a refutation.
There's one thing OP doesn't mention, and TBH I think it's worth noting:
It's a pretty lonely game with a garbage multiplayer matchmaking setup/interface. One of the best things about Diablo II was getting online in super filled games and playing through with a huge group of people (who weren't necessarily your friends), while desperately trying to stack auras, barbarian yells, etc. trying to survive an everything-immune rakanishu.
But as with BL2, Torchlight doesn't put any time/effort/funding into providing/maintaining any form of centralized multiplayer servers (everything is P2P), and I think that's one thing that makes them fall very, very short of being a "Diablo Clone (with guns!)" if you've even remotely associated Diablo (II+) with multiplayer.
Also, to all the whiners bitching about b.net DLC, it's a fucking PITA to accidentally overwrite one set of local files with another if you play from any more than one location, or play with a character from 3 hours ago, because Steam servers don't want to update, or you didn't "log in" a second time while in-game just to update your character, or your computer you played on earlier went to sleep rather than properly quitting steam to upload your local files to teh cl0ud.
For disclosure, I prepaid for BL2 (the DLC pack was worthless about 30 minutes into the game, and now the game's already at half of what I paid for in two weeks of release), was disappointed and purchased TL2, and now regret being $60 in the hole.
This is not really a comment, more of a question: wasn't the biggest complain about Diablo 2 the fact that it was wide open to cheating/hacking due to the fact that you could bring online the stuff you acquired offline? I'm not really familiar with the genre, I only played like three D2 sessions and no torchlight so don't bash me for my ignorance but isn't it exactly the same here ?
What is gonna prevent my neighbor's kid from hacking the sandworm-slaying-axe-of-madness and bringing it online to cut me in half? Damn kid, always playing on my lawn instead of grinding his gear like a real man.
I got my $60 out of it, and so did almost everybody who's bitching about it. I don't know where anybody got this idea that their one-time payment (that has become progressively cheaper as it failed to increase with inflation) should give them hundreds of hours of entertainment.
If you check your played time and it's over 100 hours, maybe you should stop whining about how crappy you think it is, because clearly your bitchy brain and your gaming brain are having an argument.
Actually, the old man in me wishes the entire gaming community would benefit from a complete media blackout when it comes to video games. Then they can buy a game without expectations, enjoy it without absorbing the negative crap from other gamers, and be satisfied.
Needs their fucking head examined. Blizzard implements the shittiest crafting "systems." I'd rather have no crafting than a bastardized version that costs you more in game money and resources than what you get out of it!
Did you really just complain that the story is an issue where the hero from the previous game all of a sudden is the bad guy because his body was taken over and the town ravaged? Right after you say diablo 2 is the best game ever? Where the story is you are chasing the fucker from the first game who at the end shoved the bad guys soulstone into his forehead? really? Did you forget the part in diablo 2 where you go back to the ruined tristam? REALLY?
I require that my bananas taste like steak. That is to say, I require them to be steak -- you know, brown and meaty?
Observe the living contradiction that is hipstanerd, who spends his time playing video games, but /only/ the brainy ones. When reviewing things, you must evaluate them from perspective of what they were trying to accomplish, not whether they fulfilled the limits of your dreams and desires. So it lacks a deep and engaging plot, the characters have no back stories, and there are no choices to make to define your player's charater. That's not what it set out to do, so it didn't fail in their implementation. Does it bring quest after quest of orgiastic click fests with a modicum of strategy, induced by hordes of enemies with varying strengths and weaknesses that test how well we've designed our characters with the limited choices given? Yeah, I guess. Did it do that well? Oh, I totally think so.
Bananas aren't liked by everyone, but they are what they are. You would have to completely misunderstand that most basic of premises to criticize them for not being something else entirely.
This is a bit exaggerated. Best game ever? Just looking at the graphics make me want to puke.
This is the most addictive RPG I have played in my life. I really love the rapid fire pace of the gear and specialization point systems and I only have one real complaint with the combat: it can be pretty hard to actually get your character moving somewhere instead of attacking once you are mostly-surrounded. Cheap deaths are pretty frustrating and the game mechanics are solid but not perfect.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
What Torchlight 2 should be compared against is Path of Exile, which is what D3 ought to have been. It's nearing open beta now, with the odd f2p weekend, so I'd highly recommend anyone who was into D2 to check it out.
Early criticism of D3 are valid, but those are a thing of the past. D3 will grow and continue to improve and enjoy a much larger, more involved community and trading market than TL2 ever will. And the new changes around the corner in 1.05 are a vast step in the right direction.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
I've been playing Torchlight 2 for a few days now, and right away I knew this was the better game. The art style is not better because its cartoony, its better because its designed by better artists, who really understand appeal, quality of animation, and design. This game not only looks better, its just more fun. Diablo 3 was a huge let down. Diablo 3 had 1 interesting boss battle and it wasnt the final Diablo battle, which was a complete fucking disaster artistically. I mean Blizzard should redo the end of the game so that there actually is a climax and a resolve. Diablo 3 is so uneventful, and so poorly designed artistically. I'll give Blizzard a nod for a good item system, auction house, and decent shading and lighting but overall Torchilight 2 makes blizzard look like amateurs.
Even the spells, and abilities all look better, more colorful, better particles, better everything. Torchlight 2 just feels right. And hey its 6 player!
Torchlight 2 is the best $20s you can spend on games right now. Torchlight 2 is so good, you will feel ripped off by Diablo 3.
I am definitely pretty happy with Torchlight 2 and definitely like it better than D3. Still prefer Path of Exile, despite it still being in closed beta. It is some much more like Diablo 2 than Diablo 3 in the dark style ARPG. I find TL2 still a bit watered down in what you can do. However it is a blast and the fact that it is easy to play via LAN with friends makes it a great addition. Choice is a good thing!
What's with all the Path of Exile shills these days? It's just another shitty free-to-play game that will eventually be forced to switch to the same 'pay to win' model that nearly every other F2P game already has.
With few exceptions, I want to know what a game is going to cost me to play *before* I start playing. Charge me up front - don't make me piss away a few bucks here or a few bucks there to get full enjoyment out of the experience.
The last game i actually bought was diablo 2
NEWSFLASH never heard a torchlight till now
and i got an older pc
YES guys my bad i tried it via piracy.....bit laggy but an adjustment and its all good
NOW as i see a lot of the old D2 crew is at runic and cause this isnt a bad game at all and 20$ for no DRM and well when i get my disability check RUNIC is going to be the first game company i buy a game from since the box set of diablo 2
NOW that editor thing hung up on me....ill retry but if it works , i might get a few buds and we might just sit about a month making levels for you all.....
I'm about to also inside a month finally come into the modern age with a brand new 32gb RAM 8 core pc for YUP legit video animation.... ....
ya know i got wacky ideas and my thoughts is maybe ill create a few vids of my own d2 style and send em over free a charge
who knows maybe in future torchlight three might get a more cinematic cut scene video stuffs going on....
the fact is they did this aspect cheap cause its very very expensive to pay for software ( again going form welfare to disability and trying to get such for past 8 years in a legal fight which i won means they owe me a few bucks...thi sis me going legite on all the software that pirates help me learn with [and the way it should be try before you buy ] )
the tings i liked...when you put on armour and weapons the guy puts them on...( one caveat the items all look same again this is where a blender guy, 3dsmax , lightwave, cinema 4d person could sit back and spend a month doing up variations....)
hehe but for 20$ VERY NICE job
ya know what they should do is offer out for license say for 2-3 grand and let you make your own game and resell it via there engine.
sort of a unity way....
saw borderlands on that lil pirate circle but i saw way way way way too many issues that ill stay away form even though those that get it to work also like it....
AS you can see im honest and im the guy that really put his money where his mouth is and when the DRM really started flowing I STOPPED BUYING and in fact there are very very few games ill even pirate....
I will buy this game the instant there is a native OS X version available. Loved the first one but I don't have any Windows machines any more and I'm not messing around with virtualization or whatever just for a game.
no longer working for cnet
only have 98 mega video on this computer..... ......128 meg video well and nvidia well um er we'll have to wait and see...
thats the onboard , and many pcs that are out there shipped this way.....if they wanted to get low end sales they should have considered that
and you can't redo all your stats and skills once you're leveled up.
Not entirely true: The game has a 'Potion of Respec', which will let you reassign all your skillpoints. Admittedly, it's a mod (by Runic Games themselves), and vaguely mentioned in the end of the review. Bit of a shame that no more focus on the moddability of the game is being put in the review. With games getting less and less support for modifications, it's always good to see developers still catering to it (and as such making the lifespan of the games bigger).
Just picked up Humble Indy Bundle 6, didn't realize that it had both Torchlight AND Gratuitous Space Battles!
- A long time anonymous coward
The first game I've tried was the original Torch Light. I like it so much so far it's the only game I've played out of the bundle, despite some of the others looking quite appealing.
I've been playing it on my quite powerful desktop - but I noticed it had a "netbook mode" which for some reason was checked by default. I decided to put it on my netbook. For some reason it was NOT checked by default, but after clunking around with the graphics it is actually playable on my dual core Atom using Intel graphics on Kubuntu. I wouldn't exactly call it optimal and smooth, but it's still quite playable.
I loved the original Diablo back in the day, I even bought the expansion pack for it. Then Diablo II came out and I enjoyed it for a while. Not too long, shortly afterwards Blizzard pissed me off by dragging a personal friend into a lawsuit over BNetD, they started suing a bunch of Unreal modders they had previously helped, and I quite dual-booting Windows as I found it to be a waste of hard drive space.
In short Torchlight has offered me everything I liked about Diablo, it works on Linux, and I don't have the guilty sick to my stomach feeling that dealing with Blizzard products gives me.
I can't tell you enough - buy the thing. Go get the bundle, and as soon as a Linux version of Torchlight 2 is released I'll go get it. My only complaint about the original Torchlight - it sometimes crashes when a new area gets loaded up. No big deal, I start the program and I'm standing exactly where I should have been without the crash so - yeah, it's great. Also gem hunting isn't quite as frustrating as it was in Diablo 2.
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You sound like you're the kind of person who doesn't enjoy the original Diablo games or lookalikes. If that's the case, why did you even bother with Torchlight? Its whole reason for existence is to cater to that segment of players.
I played Torchlight 2 a few years ago when it was called 'Fate'. Heck, they even had pets that changed form and had different attacks depending on the type of fish you fed them.
Demo was ok... but since I've recently purchased Civ V expansion, Diablo 3 and Borderlands 2, I don't see the need for this game.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Every day, Mon-Fri, I have a banana, pear & apple, which my loving wife packs for me to take to work. Bananas are my favourite though.
..plus every other Diablo game including expansions... I have also bought TL2 though, and at this time I'm preferring TL2 over D3.
I was tidying up my D3 characters last night; all 5 are now at the same quest in Inferno. What strikes me most is that D3 randomisation is so small that playing the same quest with a different character gets extremely tedious, especially when you're on your 20th run through :/
Note: I didn't bother with the AH until around levels 52 or so in hell difficulty, when I found that I could buy some amazing gear with all the gold I had. Made Hell difficulty pretty easy, though Inferno is of course more difficult.
TL2 I'm still on my first character and first play-through, so no idea how the randomisation will turn out - hopefully enough to keep me around to play all 4 classes through the different difficulty levels! Will have to look at the difficulty levels too sometime, may as well get straight into veteren or elite once I know how the acts progress
I may be different from other players, but I only play for these games, so the D3 always online requirement can be quite a PITA. TL2 definitely wins in this area; the gameplay is also much faster and enjoyable than D3. I'm enjoying the graphics of TL2 as well, though D3 is quite impressive also in this area.
The temptation of the dark side of Diablo has corrupted Blizzard!
It isn't fun. But addictive. I don't even know myself why I keep clicking on monsters for hours. Crazy.
I wanted to highlight fine points about Diablo 3's shortcomings but in the end I can only say this: I am buying torchlight 2. P.S. I hope the money coming in will make torchlight 3 the game Diablo never managed to be.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
I enjoyed certain elements of them. It's possible to enjoy some/many aspects of a game and not actually enjoy the rest of it.
The parts of Diablo 2 et. al. which were significant works of design and worth the experience were the parts which required tactical decision-making, choices and interaction. The parts of Diablo 2 et. al. which were unrepentant wastes of time were the parts where I wore down the buttons on my mouse trudging through what Blizzard hoped would be a wire-head's fantasy of rapidly-triggered endorphin release.
Where "play" becomes "waste of time" is that part which doesn't require or desire a thinking entity to engage with.
Where "play" becomes "waste of time" is that part which doesn't require or desire a thinking entity to engage with.
For you, perhaps this is so. There are plenty of people though who really want a game that literally works best when you've got a nerve going directly from your eyes to your trigger finger, missing the brain. Mind you, not all the time, but occasionally this kind of mindless action can be fun and relaxing.
yeah its fun for a few hours but there is no dedicated server and multiplayer sucks
Torchlight 2's new game plus mode offers a greater challenge, similar to the Nightmare, Hell and Inferno advanced difficulty modes of the Diablo series.
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There is a skill reset potion that exists in the game that let's you reset everything, not only the last 3 skills.