Well, friend got me Torchlight 2 as a gift on Steam. Surprisingly enough, it even works through WINE. The Linux distro of Steam still has only Linux-written games available. While some of them are quite entertaining, it just doesn't have the breadth of titles yet. I'm sure that will change as it matures, of course.

Quite frankly, Torchlight II is what I feel is the proper successor to Diablo II. Since it was made by most of the same crew, I can't say that I'm surprised by it. Specifically, it has the following features:

* Offline single player mode. Because not everyone likes having a lag-spike kill their hardcore character off in a single-player game

* LAN support, because sometimes you just want to play with your close friends over LAN without dealing with lagspike-o-doom

* Multiplayer support, because sometimes you want to play with your buddies halfway around the world. Funny how Torchlight II doesn't have a problem using your characters either single or multiplayer, which Blizzard said was sooooo hard for D3

* No RMAH. I'm sure they will eventually come out with DLC and micro-transactions, but RMAH needs to die in a fire.

I played around a bit with D3, trial version suddenly appeared on my blizzard account with no explanation, and I won't be purchasing it. Lagspikes were responsible for every single character death I encountered, and they were frequent enough that it made the game not enjoyable, regardless of the shiny graphics or intuitive features.

Oh yea, being able to send your pet back to sell your vendor fodder is awesome. Shortcuts for using potions lets you use the 1-0 for other skills. You've got the ability to hit tab to quick-swap between two 'primary' skills, and it remembers which skills you have on quick=-swap with which weapon configuration, so when you hit w it brings up the relevant skills. For a class like the Engineer, this is a lifesaver, swapping between axe and sword with shield bash to tank bosses, and a polearm with PBAE stuns to cute wide swaths through minions.

The only thing I would have to say I was disappointed about was the skill respec only replacing your previous three choices instead of all of them. However, the fact that many of your skills 'grow' with you means that one skill point in every skill isn't going to kill you.

In short, I feel that it is entirely superior to D3... at a third of the price. Well, a sixth, actually... apparently my buddy picked it up on a half-off sale and picked up four copies for $30 bucks. Which is half of what you'd pay for D3, so... umm... one-eighth of the cost?

I'd recommend this game for anyone who enjoyed D1 and D2. It blends the steampunkish and cartoony graphics of WoW with simple and intuitive controls which feel like a natural progression from D2.