"Torchlight" required very little of your time. The first game came out in 2009, a relatively quiet time for action RPGs, and was praised for its clever class design, colorful dungeon crawls, and cock-eyed personalities; it had been three years since "Diablo 3" and four years since "Path of Exile," so most people excited about annihilating gremlin armies from an isometric perspective. Eleven years later, the franchise returns with a new developer and the same polished design philosophy; Torchlight 3 is still the same tight, low-expenditure, click-happy Diablo, but it doesn't have the same crowd-pleasing appeal as it did ten years ago.

Torchlight 3 has all the checkpoints of an action RPG. You will roam the frigid mountain tops and dank swamps of this universe in search of glory. A relentless army of skeletons, goblins, and interdimensional beasts stand in your way as you cast massive amounts of AOE burn spells to cut them down. You'll get thousands of different items, categorized by rarity, which will inevitably prove to be nasty upgrades to the items you're currently wearing. And occasionally, you will run into a boss who is several levels more aggressive than the average enemy.

All of this is skillfully executed; there is nothing wrong with Torchlight 3 as long as it is mechanically sound. But in 2020, there is a mediocrity to its priorities that makes it seem bland compared to the other options. More directly, after about the twelfth time I've been stuck in an unconventional dungeon to finish yet another ingenious quest, I've begun to notice what's missing more than what's there.

Torchlight 3 takes place 100 years after the events of Torchlight 2, but the story is mostly incidental to the core gameplay experience. While a few cutscenes and audio recordings can be found throughout the main quest, there are few specifics about the impending existential crisis. Instead, Torchlight gets by on elements that are the franchise's strong points. The world of Nova Stria radiates a rich, playful aesthetic. The swirling ocean currents, the rugged meadows of the Outer Rim, and the gleefully overused Halloween trim of the cemetery all play a major role in grounding players in this frivolous, folkloric fantasyland. That attitude carries over into Torchlight 3's class selection, which seems to have thrown the D&D rulebook out the window. You can become a "rail master," a barbarian engineer who is literally taken around by the train. But I spent most of my time as a "Dusk Mage". The "Dusk Mage" suffers from a complex magic system that constantly synergizes spells from both "light" and "dark" schools, offering a surprisingly high skill ceiling for an ARPG that always prioritizes newcomers.

Once Torchlight3 gets going, the results are spectacular. Each character chooses his or her own unique "Relic." Relics are class-neutral and provide players with a third skill tree that uses resources other than traditional mana and other resources. I chose "Electrode" and now the Dusk Mage can use the power of the electrical attribute. My battle began with a dark cloud that crackled with purple light and buzzed indiscriminately through the hordes that unluckily stood in my way. If you want a good old-fashioned dungeon-hunting power trip, Torchlight 3 offers plenty of that feeling.

Unfortunately, however, the foundation for the fundamental soundness of "Torchlight 3's" combat is missing. If you go back through the archives, you will find that "Torchlight 3" (then "Torchlight Frontiers") was released as a free-to-play product. Publisher Perfect World Entertainment changed course earlier this year and made the game a "premium" full-priced software, but the bones of its scrapped identity are everywhere. When you receive a quest in town, you are told to find a dungeon somewhere in a designated area. You enter that dungeon, defeat the boss, and return to town to learn that there is a new quest to get to the next named region. There is no spirit. There are no oddballs to befriend along the way, no quirky jobs to pick up from the bounty board. In addition, there is a personal fortress that is used as a base camp for all characters, but some of its systems seem to be the opposite of what Torchlight 3 claims to be about the game. For example, a smelter is set up to turn ore into refined metal bars, but it has a completely unnecessary timer. (I want to smelt 25 units of iron; wait 90 seconds.) This is the kind of system you'd expect to find in a predatory mobile game, but somehow it's been moved to the numbered Torchlight sequel.

There is a sparkle missing throughout Torchlight 3. The area I mentioned earlier. This is where the dungeon is located. Other than a little boss fight and a pile of loot, it's mostly wasteland. The dungeon itself. There are some expressive dungeons from time to time, but I ended up in two nearly identical spider caves in the first hour. Combat is tight, but I also ran into quite a few bugs along the way. My pet, an integral part of the Torchlight franchise, disappeared several times, leaving me dry. While fun, Torchlight 3 still feels like it's in Early Access. Probably because, in a way, it's dealing with the growing pains of a major change in scope mid-development. It's not easy to make a retail RPG from the scattered remnants of a free-to-play quarter-eater. Perhaps "Torchlight 3" will go down in history as a cautionary tale.