Torchlight III....

So... Some more use of the other classes in the game shows that what I thought of them initially has only gotten more true as I've played them. That is until I found that all game-play is based on being lucky. The best way to enjoy a class, no matter what you pick is via being lucky. Lucky with gear drops that is(characters shown below are all mainly transmogged). 

My leveling of the Railmaster to level 10 was torturous. Survivability got worse as I leveled him. Drops were all green with a smatter of blues. So the worse his drop luck the worse he did against enemies and in turn the worse my gaming experience got.

Leveling up my Sharpshooter was great fun. Drops were way better, Orange(legendary) and blues with the rare green or two. 

So a switch around with my liking of the Railmaster and Sharpshooter classes, all via luck of the drops. 

Not due to their abilities, nor their class overall...... Gear drops! Not even class specific gear drops.... General drop quality. Even with a mish-mash of gear the better the quality the better the gaming experience.

The mage class was also better to play than had been last time.... All due to the better drops he'd gotten. For the mage, not great drops but better, mainly blues with a few legendaries.

Luck. Quality luck of the drops; Repetition and luck of the drops. An insidious grind that is RNG hell!

Skill does play a part. But the game is casual for me so it's not that tricky of a button mashing experience. Just no escaping that the better the gear the better the game experience.

Long story short and with the gear quality in mind the only other thing that came of my 'testing' was that the other classes are a lot more dependent on class specific stats than the Forged. The forged is a true brute force of the systems. Wade in blasting, it's all good.

Forged can wade through like a tank and just hammer rounds at everything in volume with speed while electrocuting everything in sight. Hard to beat that as a class. 

Forged is best, the rest are for those that want to be overly involved in the game for however long they want. This game is what you make of it.

That's a broad, generalist, quick and non meta take from a casual gamer. 

The game is fun but is very dependent on a gamers own take on the game.

I've no reason to go back to them. I've got a completed play-through that I enjoyed with my forged main and I'm happy with that.

Multiplayer is not real multiplayer. It's a co-op mess of random individuals doing their own thing. A lot like the way I found Ghost Recon Wildlands.  Not bad but not great and very dependent on random strangers.

Hardcore mode in the game is 'just' a reduction in the damage you do and an increase in the amount of damage NPC's can take. Same journey for no other reason than it's hard to kill things. I got a Forged to level 3 in hardcore. His main activity was to run a bunch of NPC's around a tree, dog takes aggro, then he fires at the NPC's. Other side of the tree, dog takes aggro, then he fires at the NPC's. Rinse and repeat. Again and again and again and again..... 3 level was enough of that. Especially all the while doing 1 point of damage per shot... Large groups can be 'kited' about but the lack of outgoing damage means your better off either avoiding them or get swarmed. So you end up taking single targets in a painstaking use of time and effort that's not worth it(imho)... Unless you like this kind of thing but it's not for me in this game(unlike here).

Fun has been had. I've tried to get more from the game but I think I'm too casual for it/with it. I'm done for now. Maybe done for good. All told with the main play-through and faffing about with the classes I've played for about 40 hours. Not a bad game for the cheap price I paid. Worth it overall.