As stated, offline, steam, GOG galaxy, doesn't matter. Anyone have a fix for modern machines with Windows 11? Would love to play this again.

Have you installed the "direct9.0c from june 2010" , as many games of the time required this version of directx (that is not included in the higher directx version that comes with window 10 and 11) ?

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109

i'm on window 10 and that solved problems i had with dx9 games of around that same time that at first refused to work until i installed this dx9.0c from june 2010

I did, thank you. I've tried anything I've found online, directx, deleting local saves, disabling steam cloud and all other suggestions, no dice. I've tried the GOG manual download installation, the GOG Galaxy installation and the Steam version, none work. Game starts, first splash/load screen comes up and then it stops making the greyed out "Play" button on Galaxy/Steam clickable again showing that the game is no longer running.

I know its an old game, it has a lot of memories, just wanted to take a nostalgic stroll. I would have thought the DRM free version would have worked if nothing else.

No idea about steam or galaxy i don't use them, i only use the offline installers from gog, but maybe try to go to
C:\Documents and Settings\YOURUSERNAME\Application Data\runic games\torchlight\

there's a file named local_settings.txt that contain the game settings
Maybe try to change
OPENGL :0
to
OPENGL :1
to see if it would work better than on directx

or even try to make it windowed by changing
FULLSCREEN :1
to
FULLSCREEN :0
in case there's a problem with it

the resolution both fullscreen and windowed, try to set them to something like 1024 x 768 as it was pretty standard at the time, to see if it can work
WINDOW_WIDTH :
WINDOW_HEIGHT :
RES_WIDTH :
RES_HEIGHT :

Thank you for the suggestions, sadly that didn't do it. Tried Vista and Win 7 compatibility modes as well as run as admin.

Last thing i can think about is trying dgVoodoo2
https://dege.fw.hu/dgVoodoo2/dgVoodoo2/
for some old games it has helped me sometime, worth a try with Torchlight as it "translate" as Torchlight is a dx9 game if i remember well, this should do for how to install :
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/DgVoodoo_2 as a last ditch, you can try DXVK that redirect the directx into vulkan, but i have no experience with it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DXVK

https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/releases

Thank you again I do appreciate the help. Never used that program before. I get one splash screen further than before and then crash, lol. I'm guessing I need to configure dgvoodoo2 more optimally. Any general recommendations for using it and/or customizing it? Google wasn't much help for how to tailor it for Torchlight, I'll try some good old trial and error

Let's try step by step to see if it can help better

- download dgVoodoo2_84_1.zip from that page (the one "for regular usage" , not the debug versionn)
https://dege.fw.hu/dgVoodoo2/dgVoodoo2/

- open the dgVoodoo2_84_1.zip
take the files
dgVoodoo.conf
dgVoodooCpl.exe
and move them to :
(by default)
C:\GOG Games\Torchlight\
(where Torchlight.exe is)

- open the dgVoodoo2_84_1.zip again
go to the MS folder, then the x86 folder (Torchlight is a 32 bits game, so it's the x86 folder), take all the .dll files that are present there (D3D9.dll should be enough, but you may never know, so take those 4 .dll files just in case)
D3D8.dll
D3D9.dll
D3Dlmm.dll
DDraw.dll

and move those 4 files to :
(by default)
C:\GOG Games\Torchlight\
(where Torchlight.exe is)

- double click on the dgVoodooCpl.exe that is now in C:\GOG Games\Torchlight\

at the window that appears ( pic1.jpg ) right click somewhere , select "Show all Sections of the Configuration"
this will make some other tabs appear, click on the one "GeneralExt" that appear to the right of the "DirectX" tabs
On the bottom there's a "FPS Limit" section, click on it and select 60 , it's always good practice to limit a game to 60 FPS due to how they were coded to avoid some physic engine issue or GPU heating too much with fan overworking because you have too many FPS

Now click on the "DirectX" tab
at "Videocard" choose either "Geforce FX5700" or "GeForce 9800 GT" (as both card existed before Torchlight was released they should be ok)
at "Antialiasing" choose OFF (you may change it back after you managed to make the game actually run, but for now OFF)

It should look like in the pic2.jpg
you can uncheck the "dgVoodoo watermark" if you want, i just kept it to see if dgvoodoo run correctly as it should display the watermark

Press "Apply" on the bottom of that window and close it
Launch Torchlight now

I feel slightly better, I did try these steps, still no good. I also uninstalled and did a fresh install of the DRM free GOG version and repeated the steps, still get the crash. Again I cannot overstate how much I appreciate your help, sincere thanks. I'm guessing its because TL uses a proprietary engine and not something like unreal? I don't know, I'm sure there's a simple fix, I haven't yet found it. I did try both of those GPU options to no avail.

THANK YOU! Update: I wiped all folders and did another clean install and it now worked. Must have been something leftover from the install in the runic folder that was interfering? Not sure but I'm glad it works now!

For sure, still love the first two, many memories. Never got into 3 and Infinite looks....I don't know, like a lot of paid mechanics. Sometimes nostalgia wins ;)