Titan Quest

"AKA: Caster Quest"

As a long time player of both Diablo I and II / LoD, I've had high hopes for this game hoping it would satiate my thirst for a new game in the Action RPG genre , but sadly it falls short in many areas.
I will break down the review in the usual categories. I hope you don't mind that I will often use D2 as comparing material to see how this game holds up, as I believe TQ is largely a D2-clone.

# Graphics: 7/10 - So far so good, graphically the game is quite impressive, IMHO this is the only category where it outshines D2, but considering D2 has been around for 6 years now, meh.
Anyhow, the player/monsters have many frames of animation and the animation looks very fluid, one of the high points of the game.

However, even though the game does look good, most of it isn't very appealing. There is some nice scenery at times, I give the game that much.
But the bestiary is very much lacking in character and atmosphere, as many of the creatures you fight against are uninspired or outright boring.

The game is set in a Greek/Egyptian and Oriental setting, so the usual mythical creatures like the Centaur, Gorgon, Yeti and Cyclops are present, but they don't inspire the awe or fear I would expect from creatures like these.
As regular monsters you have humanoid Tigermen and Jackalmen, Skeletons, and an array of animals such as Raptors and Scorpions.

On the other hand, as a comparison Diablo had its fearsome Blood Knights who yell a fierce battle cry with each swing, with metal clanking against metal when their swords collide with your shield; they die out with a metallic scream and explode in a pile of armor when destroyed - that is class.

Also, for a 10 year old game, Diablo 1 had something that this game doesn't; talking villains. Considering that TQ is mostly a single player game, killing over and over gets boring quite fast, if the villains had a little more character this would alleviate the problem some.

Furthermore, lack of customization is blatant as well, as when you create your character you are only allowed to name it, choose its gender and its tunic base colour.
Admittedly though, pretty much every item has its own inventory and character graphic, and one of the neat points is that what you see is what you get; when that centaur is sporting a mace that looks out of the ordinary, he will drop it after you kill it.

# Sound: 6/10 - Not much to say about this, most of it is just very average. The attacks sound a little bland, and there is not much music, just some ambient music once in awhile.
All of the NPCs who you can engage have spoken dialogue though, one of the plus points of the game IMHO.

# Story: 3/10 - Sorry but, this game has no story. Mark my words: basically from beginning to end its one long fetch quest. For those unfamiliar with the term, it pretty much means that you are told by NPC X to go to place Y and get/kill object Z.

Once you have obtained said object, you are given a new objective.
Although many RPGs use this kind of quests, TQ is particularly bad at it.
And this fetch-quest syndrome is much more forgiving if the game you're playing has a good storyline with character development and/or plot twists, or well developed villains which keeps your attention to the game, but unfortunately TQ has none of the above.

What TQ does have though, is an NPC yelling at you saying "the world is dooooooomed" if you don't comply and retrieve the objective of his fetch quest. Yawn.

Compared to Diablo II, I'm sure pretty much everyone has watched the cutscenes at least once which tell a decent story, and the intro was downright amazing.

Another thing about Diablo, most people that have played either installment in the series will remember at least some of the townsfolk that they've talked to, this is because they usually have some decent dialogue or some feature that makes them stand out.

As for TQ, you run through generic town upon town with faceless NPCs that are only there to deliver some form of quest objective, as soon as you are done with your quest you won't even notice they are there anymore.
Partially this is because TQ has many more towns than both Diablo games combined, but quantity does not beat quality.

One of the game's lowest points.

# Gameplay: 5/10 - And this is where the game falls apart.
At first when you just start and kill the first few creatures you may think: "Hey, this game is pretty nice" when you see the fluid animation.
But later on, say about 10 hours into the game you will probably see that the game starts to divert into one of these two roads: unforgivingly hard or ridiculously easy.

This is because of lack of balance and/or play testing. As a general rule of thumb, if your character is ranged and/or has a pet; you're in for an easy game.
There have been gameplay videos made by users, who are easily soloing the last area on the highest difficulty with a caster build, taking out multiple monsters in a few hits and soloing the whole area up to the boss in ~2 minutes.
This is the same difficulty which has been said to be "should be nearly impossible to solo" by a game dev. in an interview.

On the other hand, if you're a melee fighter and don't have a pet you will be forced to farm hour upon hour upon hour to get the resistance items you need to avoid being killed in one shot by a boss character, and even then the damage you take will still be substantial.
It is not uncommon for a melee character with ~5000 HP and maxed Piercing Resistance (one of the damage types, archers and spear users in particular deal a portion of their damage as piercing) get shot down by a few archers in a few hits,
say 5-9 hits.

If you lack any resistance on the higher difficulties as a melee character and you meet a creature which deals this type of damage, you will get killed in 2-5 hits from normal monsters, and pretty much any boss character will 1 shot you with its special attacks.

Besides this, as a melee character on the highest difficulty you will find yourself using alot of potions, pretty much 1 hit = 1 pot. This becomes very tedious and frustrating considering how much less effort/skill it takes to play a caster on the same difficulty.

This is quite poorly balanced as the melee fighter is the archetype of the "tank" in most RPGs, but on TQ they are easier to break than wet tissue.
On top of this, for all the damage you take you're not even superior in the offense part , as pretty much any caster build with an area of effect attack has more firepower than you ever will.

Furthermore, itemization is quite lacking and not thought out as well.
For example, a green item with a stat-enhancing Relic inside it will almost always outperform a purple item; which is the highest tiered item type and most rare in game. Despite this you will almost never find yourself using a purple weapon, as the loss of damage compared to a green weapon simply isn't worth it.

This is because you can only put Relics (which give bonus resistances, HP, damage, etc) in items up to the green tier.
Items of the blue and and super rare purple quality above this limit usually have more different stats on them, but many are not useful to your character. You are better off using a green item that gives you the stats you need and boost this item with a Relic.

There are many, many more flaws such as this in the game, but I haven't the space to list them all as this is getting quite longwinded already.
The game isn't all bad though, as it is a major D2 clone, so some of the good features/cornerstones of that game have been carried over to TQ.
To be honest, most of the "5" in this category's score comes from this.

# Play Time/Replayability: 5/10 - As the maps are static, I would say that the replayability of the game is quite low; if you've seen it once you've seen it all.
If you've chosen a character that is not gimped from start (read: melee) and you've beaten the hardest boss on the hardest difficulty, all that is left is to farm him over and over for items or start a new character.

Due to lacking itemization and flawed gameplay the game has little incentive to draw you back into it.

# Game performance: 4/10 - One of the games' black marks as well.
There have been many bugs, most importantly; game crashes. It crashes alot for many people. Some say that these crashes are often caused because people are using the illegal cracked version of the game, but even legitimate game owners get these crashes sometimes.

For some it is so bad that they can't even play the game because it crashes at the title screen, or the game crashes every 15-30 minutes making it nigh unplayable. Other unpleasant features such as:
- character/save corruption after crash
- legit game-owners who can't play the game due to copy protection are free of charge as well.

A patch has been released which seems to solve some of these crashes, but another glaring issue is that the game runs very poorly.
Even people with pretty much the best PC setups available report frameskip, stuttering on low GFX settings, which is simply inexcusable.

# Final Recommendation - "Is a game worth buying or renting new, is it worth searching for, or should you return it if given as a gift?"

Myself I regret buying it, and if given the choice I certainly would not buy it again. The many bugs, dull storyline, poor gameplay and low replay value make this a below-average game.

I give this game a 5/10.
Perhaps it's worth a go if you find it in the discount bin, but I certainly don't think it's worth the retail price of a new release game in its current state.

P.S: I really wanted to like this game as I'm a big Diablo fan and I've been looking for something new, but this game just has too many flaws to be overlooked.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 07/18/06, Updated 07/18/06