Hades is my game of the year. Dead Cells has a few dozen hours. My mobile device always has some sort of incremental installed. I really like the concept of growth over time, and that there are ceilings where you need to restart. The “pure” rogues are frankly more like Mario Bros on the NES, where each playthrough is independent of the next, aside from experience. Todays’ versions take that concept, then add RNG to a given run (skills/weapons/spawned enemies), yet maintain a set of rules (e.g. the map has X drops, Y set of enemies). The most popular ones provide tiers of progress within their structure. As much as they are pauses in a given run, they often give rewards for the meta gameplay. In other words, while a full run gives 100% resources, a partial run gives you something.

With that foundation of expectations, my thoughts on Torghast are a mixed bag. First, the not so good.

There are a lot of anima powers. They are average to good, though there are quite a few that drop that are outright bad. Some are bugged. Some have horrible descriptions of what they do. Some are actually built to destroy a run (e.g. can’t move). While I’m game that experience tells you which powers are better than others, there are limits. A good rogue-like will define a run quickly through choice… and it’s rare that by the end of floor 1 you have a defined build in mind.

Ravenous Anima Cells allow you to convert an enemy into a power. You need a wiki entry to see which are actually useful (or just try on the dozens of enemies), which is a giant waste of anima. Some wings are useless, others are amazing. The concept here is great. The implementation… not so much.

Some of the tuning is really weird. Using this week…Mort’regar is full of very large fights with enemies that are hidden. Skoldus Hall has an enemy that continually casts AE attacks that debuff players if they get touched – like 10% per stack and that stick around if you die. So either you kill the bugger (and use their power to cleanse yourself) or your run is pretty much over. Bosses are all over the place, where you may find floor 5 a cakewalk, then the 6th floor boss hits you for 25% a shot. (Credit to Blizz for the downtuning on Dec 17th for pretty much everything.) The RNG on floor design is also a bit iffy. You can have a straight corridor that lasts 2 minutes, or you can have a maze that takes 20 minutes.

The reward structure is only based on completion, which is surreal. There is no content in the game where you can do something for an hour and get nothing for it. (Group content still has drops, whether you can use it or not is different.) The meta buffs, which impact future runs, have NOTHING to do with Torghast. You get those through faction gains in the Maw.

Torghast should be account based, not character based. Full stop. Time gating on content here is dumb, since if you’ve done it on one character, then you know what’s coming. There’s zero benefit here except stalling the ALT enjoyment process. The meta boosts are account based, the floor rewards are meta. But accessing the quests or twisting corridors? Nope.

There are no rewards for exploration except more currency. Seems a wasted opportunity.

Now for the good.

The variety in builds is nice to see. There are some crazy OP options for nearly everyone, but they require amazing RNG. Some only shine if you stack them, or if you combo them with others. Or, you could end up with a run where you just end up with +HP. It rewards adaptation.

The skill floor is at a decent spot. It may not be communicated, and it’s certainly RNG heavy, but players need to use most of their skill set to survive (e.g. interrupts / stuns). It could use a couple “long cast” options where it’s near certain death, especially at the floor bosses. If we can’t get the proving grounds, then this is the next best place for it.

The NPCs you meet are useful. Very useful. To the point where you don’t want them to leave, and only complete their quest after clearing the entire floor. It makes the other rewards (chests) seem “meh”. Which, again, the RNG fun of it all.

The enemy variety is nice. You have melee, ranged, AE, DoTs… the whole mix. You need to prioritize targets, stun a few, and pull away to AE. It can get painful, especially where multiple enemies can fear and throw you to the edge where a small step kills you. (The chain bridges have horrible clipping…)

The rare elites are really nice changes of pace, and about half of them have interesting anima powers. They feel like a much better expression of risk/reward than anything else in all of Torghast.

The diminishing returns of Torghast are also good to see. 375 ash for layer 4, and only 195 more if you get to layer 8.

Summary

Rohan said it best, Torghast is effectively a Rextroy simulator. What kind of crazy can you come up with and make it work. It is not a measure of player skill, and barely one of item level. What you go in with has only a small impact on your ability to succeed. Sure, rocking 210 gear is going to be a boost, but you can still clear most of it at 155.

There are still some weird questions here, as to the long term purpose of Torghast. In particular why it doesn’t have it’s own mechanics and why it is gated behind 7 weeks of time gates to get someone else into the twisting corridors. Still, it’s a solid alternative to the go-go-go of M+. With a few more tweaks, this could be a transmog / collection dream come true.