Titan Quest

The Good
Iron Lore and THQ have taken the action-RPG concept and dropped it right in the middle of ancient Greece. All the usual trappings of hack-and-slash gaming are present and accounted for -- you'll single-handedly slug it out with hordes of mythological creatures, chug more health potions than the human body could possibly assimilate, grab more loot than ten dump trucks could ever hope to carry, and do it all again in the name of somewhat repetitive, but still undeniably addictive dungeon-delving action.

As the hero, you'll be spun into an epic tale that spans from the shores of Sparta, through the Tombs of Egypt, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and the Great Wall of China, on to the eventual final confrontation on...er, well, no sense in spoiling anything now, is there? More to the point, the locales you visit in Titan Quest help keep this game fresh with a nice variety of environments to explore, as well as solid level design within each locale.

The monsters are also pretty interesting, from the lowliest satyr to some of the larger and more brutal animals like minotaurs or dragonkind. What really helps to differentiate Titan Quest's bestiary from other RPGs is that most of your opposition will don weapons and armor the same way you do, and if you see a piece of equipment on a creature, that piece will drop to the ground when you kill it. As well as equipment, some of the more powerful monster you face will have access to the same spells and abilities as you, which is a unique take on enemy design in this type of game.

The way your own skills are handled in the game is pretty unique as well. Instead of picking a class from the outset, you choose from one of eight completely independent skill trees when you gain your first level. Another tree of your choice will become available at level 8, giving you a total of two to play with. These trees are categorized by conventional RPG terms, and anyone who's ever played this type of game before will know what to expect from masteries like Hunting, Storm, Rogue, or Warfare. For the less initiated, there's a brief description of what each mastery is capable of so you can make a informed choice.

Those of us who have walked Diablo 2's hallowed ground for any significant length of time knows all too well how stale the graphics of that game were getting in the later years, and by comparison, Titan Quest is a serious breath of fresh air. Everything, from your character, the environments, your enemies, and even the items that drop from each kill are meticulously modeled in beautiful 3D. The effort on the part of the design team shows -- every facet of this game is gorgeous. If you're lucky like me, and you bought the Gold Edition of Titan Quest, you'll get treated to a book of the concept art for the game, and it's well worth tracking down.

The sound department deserves a nod as well -- there's lots of candy for the ears here, especially the soundtrack. There's a main melody which follows you closely throughout the game, but changes instruments and style depending on what part of the world you're in. The sound effects do an excellent job of adding to the experience in their own right - every roar, impact and spell effect hits with enough clarity to be effective.

The Bad
While Titan Quest manages to do everything right in terms of being a solid Action RPG, it just doesn't do anything to move the genre forward. In spite of some innovations in terms of character development and presentation, this still feels very much like a by-the-numbers hack and slash game. In essence, this is Diablo 2 with better graphics and a few different features.

The voice acting, though not outright bad, does come off as over-the-top at times. This becomes especially evident when you start conversing with folks from Egypt and China, who try their very best to speak English while still maintaining as much of a foreign accent as possible. With some characters it's not too bad, but others are downright laughable, which puts a jarring chord in an atmosphere that Titan Quest works so hard to build.

On a more personal note, I really wish single player RPGs could structure a storyline in such a way that everyone isn't just sending you on random errands until you finish the game. The number of times someone said to me "You're our only hope!" during the course of this game seems to suggest laziness on the part of the writers. I know there's only so much you can do with the "one man against an army" storyline, but surely to God there's some writers out there that can pitch material that hasn't been recycled from Diablo 1.

The Bottom Line
Titan Quest is a solid and very playable action RPG, but aside from the source material, there's not a whole lot going on here that we could classify as "new". Anyone looking for something fresh and original probably shouldn't even look twice, but fans of this sort of game who aren't completely bored by the conventions of the genre will have a great time with Titan Quest.

The Good
This game is addictive. Not quite in the 'one-more-turn, Civilization' sense, but close.

I played a demo of Diablo when it first came out and at the time did not enjoy it. So I never played it, and for years afterward tended to shy away from the genre that Diablo essentially created (except for a brief and bored foray into Dungeon Siege and a bewildered jaunt through Sacred). The reason I picked up TQ at all was a simple intersection of 1) I'm bored and 2) it was on sale for cheap.

Needless to say I was quite surprised at how it drew me in.

The graphics are spectacular, given the game design and format. The sound design is sufficient, though not spectacular.

What really piqued my interest though, is the sheer volume of STUFF to be had. Over the years I'd read much about the Diablo games' variety of loot and not paid much attention to it. Once playing TQ though, it became a near obsession to get more and better stuff. So I played the game like mad until I beat it. And then I played it again, which leads directly into what I didn't like about it.

The Bad
Repetition. Gobs and gobs of it. I beat the game and then was promptly invited to play it again on "Legendary" level. As I already noted I haven't played many games of this genre, the first being Dungeon Siege which I didn't finish due to boredom, and Sacred, which I did finish and have precisely the same complaint about:

Playing through the EXACT same game but with bigger numbers (hit points, weapon and character stats, monster stats etc.etc.) doesn't really qualify as "more game." Now I'll admit I played most of the way through it again with my original character, but quickly discovered some fundamental limitations of that character as I'd formed him that made it exceedingly difficult to proceed past a certain point. But I couldn't simply create a new character and play at the "Legendary" level, I had to start over at a lower level and work up to it. Again. So I never did get to see that wonderful, high powered stuff, because I sure wasn't going to play the SAME GAME four times. It replays EXACTLY the same each time, there is no deviation aside from character choices, and while there is a wide range of character advancement options, after 100+ hours of playing, they all blend together pretty well in execution... An arrow is a fireball is a whack on the head with an axe.

The Bottom Line
The story was mostly irrelevant, some drivel about a Titan on the loose, a chase through exotic locales, etc. etc. blah, barf, blah. Which is really quite odd when you consider that the writer is a chap by the name of Randal Wallace. Yeah, that guy. The one related to Mel Gibson's Oscar. The story in Titan Quest isn't bad in the same vein as "Killer Klowns from Outer Space" was bad, it's just..... inconsequential.

Ultimately, this game was a blast. The first time through, anyway. So if you're into hack n' slash, loot-heavy games your money is well spent on this one. Just get the expansion, too. It adds quite a lot of new loot immediately accessible in the original game.

The Good
The class advancement system is by far the best of any of the Diablo-style games that I have played. You get to combine two different classes (from a wide selection) into one of many hybrid character types. I also liked that I really felt like I got a real improvement when I leveled up an ability. The ability increases are usually linear and not diminishing like in Diablo II, so most of the time, it really matters whether you have 1 point or 5 points in an ability.

The graphics were also excellent compared to other games I've played in the genre. This actually caused some problems before they patched the game a few times, since performance sometimes suffered in intense fights. After the patches, though, these problems were mostly solved. I really enjoyed the physics effects, too. It's fun to get a critical hit and watch your enemy fly back from the impact.

Titan Quest also gets rid of a lot of the boring parts of games in this genre. You don't have to manage Town Portal scrolls, identify scrolls, or potions, for example. The caravan, where you can store unused but valuable equipment, is sharable between characters, so you don't have to resort to opening multiplayer games just for the purpose of trading items between your characters unless you never throw anything away.

Finally, the game is tuned to be a little more forgiving than Diablo II. The best items in the game are much more attainable than in Diablo II, where some items were nearly impossible to find even if you played 5 characters to level 99. In addition, single-player and multiplayer were created equal. There were no multiplayer-only items like in Diablo II. This is great for people like me, who don't want to play multiplayer that often.

The Bad
My main criticism of Titan Quest is that the game is too easy, especially in the Boss fights. Don't get me wrong, some of the bosses are quite tough until you learn how to fight them or you get the right resistances, but none of the bosses are as challenging as those in Diablo II. This is especially true of the randomly-generated bosses. Some of the random bosses in Diablo II were truly fearsome. In Titan Quest, they just take more hits to kill.

The Bottom Line
Titan Quest is a beautiful hack-n'-slash RPG that is very entertaining, even if it is a bit easy.