When comparing Tiny Brains vs Torchlight II, the Slant community recommends Torchlight II for most people. In the question“What are the best 4-player local multiplayer games on Steam?” Torchlight II is ranked 9th while Tiny Brains is ranked 31st. The most important reason people chose Torchlight II is:
Much of leveling up is permanent, which not only gives a sense of connection to ones built characters but also means there is a large incentive to replay to make different builds.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Local play makes for good back and forth between friends
Cooperating with players/friends in the same room can be quite fun bringing back memories of console games of the past where friends are yelling at each other in order to solve the levels of the game. When finally completing a level the sense of exhilaration is something that can't be matched over the internet.
Pro Great for couch play
Tiny Brains offers full controller support on PC, which makes it easy to control on a Steambox in the living-room.
Pro Incentive to replay due to limited respec system
Much of leveling up is permanent, which not only gives a sense of connection to ones built characters but also means there is a large incentive to replay to make different builds.
Pro Elaborate loot system
Loot in Torchlight II is varied and dependent on a wide array of circumstances. There are so many variables that come into play as to what a player will find that makes searching out better and better items a game in and of itself.
Pro Varied level design
Unlike the first title there are many areas to see in the game that all have different looks. Plus there are large open ares as well as close quarter caverns.
Pro Works on different OS's: Linux/Mac/Win
Torchlight II is a multi-platform game that works on OSX, Linux and Windows. Which is great for users who dual-boot as the game can be played no matter what OS is booted at the time.
Pro Well implemented and fun action-RPG combat
Torchlight 2 has all the typical RPG mechanics such as classes, loot, skill trees etc. However all the little touches and details come together to make playing the game really fun and a great balance between depth/complexity and being able to get started killing hordes of monsters. Killing monsters is very satisfying and the loot system keeps things very interesting without feeling like you're just grinding for better items.
Pro Well implemented co-op
You can team up with up to 5 other plays to take on the hordes together. There is also a PvP mode if you'd rather kill your friends instead of team up with them.
Cons
Con Very short campaign
The campaign itself can be played through within roughly 4 hours.
Con Single player is taxing
Due to the mechanics of the game needing all 4 characters in the level to solve a puzzle the single player mode sees the player hot-swapping between characters quite often in order to advance. This gets old pretty quick.
Con Looks to be abandoned
There are bugs in the game that inhibit connecting online with other players. This has been reported multiple times on the games forums with no response and the last update for the game was in 2014.
Con Lacking in story
The characters are flat and the overall story is pretty boring/standard. While not unexpected for such a game it would have been nice to have something other than loot driving advancement in the game.
Con Limited respec system
Much like an old school dungeon crawler, there is little to no useful respec system here. You can respec the last three skill points used on a character, but that is it. This tends to lead towards plenty of skills in the skilltree that ended up going nowhere, which are just wasted points. Unless you know specifically where you will be putting each and every skill point for your build beforehand, no respec may have an impact on making a perfect build.