Titan Quest

"Finally an Action RPG which at least lives up to Diablo."

I was looking forward to Titan Quest for a long time, ever since I read a preview for it a while back. Ultimately, its the first action RPG I've played since Diablo which has satisfied me. Where as it felt like Dungeon Siege had a habit of playing itself, and Fate was blatantly nothing more than Diablo Lite, Titan Quest does a good job of taking the Diablo Formula, and improving it on in many areas. Sadly, it doesn't quite take all of Diablo's strengths.

Graphics:

The graphics are competently done. Performance can get pretty choppy for what you are getting though. Still, the grass waves in the wind, and bends as you and monsters move through it. The environments are hand crafted, often beautifully, and you rarely get that feeling of "have I been here before?" None of the levels are randomly generated, so they are all hand detailed, an approach that personally I prefer.

My only complaint is that there is not a great deal to differentiate the characters from one another. You only get to choose Male or Female and tunic color when you start the game, and all other customization just comes from what you are wearing. And to be honest, things don't really look all too different on your character. I'm not saying there are NO differences, there are, but they are more subtle than the blatantly obvious differences between the character classes in Diablo 2.

Gameplay:

The game follows the familiar Diablo formula. You kill, you loot, you level, you rinse and repeat. Where this game shines is its flexible character classes. There are 8 classes to choose from, 4 melee, 4 casting. When you hit level 2, you pick your first class. When you hit level 8, you pick your second class. This allows for 28 different combinations. At this point, so soon after the game came out, it's hard to say how many of those combinations are viable play options, but a wealth of them are. Many of the classes have enough skills, and variety, so that you could easily mold them to complement each other.

The skill tree works in such a manner than you get 3 skill points per level. You invest these points into a pool of points for the class itself, as well as individual skills. The amount of points you've sunk into the class determine which of that classes skills are unlocked. For example, to put points into Dual Wield in Warfare, you must have allocated 4 points into the Warfare pool. This may have sounded confusing, so its best to play the demo and see it in action. Overall, I think it's a solid system.

One of my major complaints with Diablo 2 was that I ruined my characters by trying to experiment with different builds. Points I'd put into a skill which seemed like a good idea at the time turned out to be useless, and those valuable skill points were gone forever. In Titan Quest, you can buy back your spent skill points from Mystics. By level 20, I had used this several times to experiment with a Warfare/Defense build. Personally, I think this adds much to the game, as you are freed from having to rigidly stick to a certain optimal build you looked up on the internet in order to not feel like you wasted all that time getting skill points.

Another thing I love about the skill tree, is that the skills you get early on stay useful forever. Most of the skills you get at later levels augment and enhance the skills you got at a lower level. Once again, you never feel like you wasted skill points.

Most other elements of the gameplay, such as monster AI, loot, and quest, are adequate. They don't stand out as either especially good, or bad.

Story:

The story is there. It is ok. It's not remarkable in any way, it's not bad in any way. It serves as a good means to get you from one place where you kill things to another. Lets be honest, we don't play action RPGs for the story. Well, at least you won't play THIS action RPG for the story.

Sound:

The sound, like most of the game, is ok. Nothing really stands out as being especially good, or bad.

Etc:

As of writing this, Titan Quest suffers from a few significant bugs which I think limit the greatness of the game. Taken on its game design merits alone, it could easily be a great and long awaited successor to Diablo 2. Sadly, the network code is rather laggy and unstable. I've had numerous problems with people on a LAN dropping out of games, games becoming unsynchronized, or other problems. As well, many users, though not me personally, have reported crashes, followed by character corruption. In addition, the sound often stutters and pauses for brief periods, and the graphics can get horribly choppy when entering or exiting caves and dungeons. A patch is due on July 5th 2006 to address many of these issues.

As well, sadly there is no closed multiplayer server. What this means, is that all characters are stored on the players machines, completely open to hacking. This severely limits the viability of looking for games and playing with people you don't know. As well, and this may disappoint many, there is NO PVP. Yes, there is no Player Versus Player combat. Personally, I never enjoyed pvp, but it's absence cannot be ignored either.

Overall, in its current state, I believe this game is a solid 7/10. When they've addressed their technical issues, consider it an 8/10.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/05/06