In Torchlight II, you'll have far more control over your character build. I've been playing as an engineer, and have been choosing from among three different skill trees, each of which are tied to a different kind of combat—two-handed, sword and shield, or gadget-based. It feels much more like a standard RPG (or more like Diablo II) than the slot-based, interchangeable upgrades of Diablo III.

On a related note, it's also worth mentioning that Torchlight II's skill trees are much more permanent—you can undo your last three skill upgrades in town (for a price), but you can't just swap your skills around all willy-nilly like you can in Diablo III. It's more restrictive, but also truer to its roots. It could be that you can fully re-spec on New Game + or something; I'm not that far yet. It'd be nice! But when it comes down to it: Not counting the mouse, Diablo III has four hotkeys for powers; Torchlight II has ten.

Click to expand...

Schaefer does offer a critique of the way Diablo III dealt with character development and skills customization. “Some of the criticism of Diablo III was about how there isn't really a lot of differentiation between builds of a character, because they all unlock the same skills at the same time. There's less of an opportunity to make a character that's truly individual for you. I think that could have the possibility of reducing longevity, because once you've played through it with a character, there's no particular reason to go through and try a different build.

"I think that we also have, maybe, a longer game at this point. More randomization. A little bit more replayability. I think that Diablo III focused a little more on super-polished mechanics and balance and look and art direction. They're on a Blizzard level. They're seriously good. But it's at the expense, a little bit, of the replayability.”

Click to expand...