Titan Quest is an action-RPG from Iron Lore Entertainment. Unveiled at E3, we must admit that we were looking forward to this title with quiet optimism.
Titan Quest has a strong theme of mythology, taking the players through Parthenon, the maze of Knossos, the pyramids in ancient Egypt, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
The story starts off with the Titans escaping their prison, they are causing havoc and destruction everywhere they go, and the Gods seem unable to stop them. Guess who the job falls to instead...
Titan Quest uses the old style isometric viewpoint, but with a nice graphical update. Think Diablo 2, but with a serious graphical makeover. Zooming in on the characters and scenery shows them off very well. Everything is animated, and there are some very nice touches - plants moving as you brush past them, livestock in towns acting lifelike, and the splashing of water when you step in it are a few examples.
The background music, combat sounds and voice-overs are nicely done, with enough variety that as the game goes on it does not feel repetitive.
The interface should be familiar to fans of isometric RPGs - you can bind attacks or potions to the right and left mouse buttons, and trigger extra ones with the number keys. There are a couple of irritations - healing others, for example, can be difficult if you can't see them to click on them in a large fight. It is possible to press the number key that your heal skill is bound to, then click on the person in the party bar, but that is quite slow. Also, the pets of party members are not visible in the party bar, only your own pet.
They have attempted to ease this problem by introducing an AE heal skill, the radius is of a decent enough size, so in large fights you can just heal yourself, and party members close by will also benefit.
Picking up loot is done by just clicking on it. You can hold down ALT to see the names of all loot in the area (again, like Diablo II). I think it would be nice if you had to hold down ALT to be able to pick loot up as well, because bag space is limited, and you often end up picking up junk by mistake while fighting.
Titan Quest does not have a 'stash' - instead, you get extra bags by completing quests, and just have to hold on to the things that you want to keep. Good items drop frequently, and in the early to middle levels you will probably find yourself changing items very frequently. There are a number of nice touches in terms of item management - if you accidentally sell something, you can buy it back for the same price (as long as you have not closed the merchant page). The same works for buying items - if you buy the wrong thing, just sell it back right away at no penalty.
Death in Titan Quest is merely a mild annoyance. Scattered throughout mission areas there are Rebirth Fountains that will allow you to respawn at them should you die. There are no 'corpse runs' to get items back, so as long as you trigger a fountain you can just die, re-summon your pet, or rebuff, if you need to, and get straight back into the aciton. You do lose some experience for dying, but you can never go down in level.
Its slightly annoying if you forget to change your fountain to one near a town after completing a mission, but even this is hardly a problem - you can create a portal to any town you have already visited just by pressing a key. No scrolls are required, so you can never run out of portals.
There are a number of different professions in Titan Quest to suit all tastes, from magic, to arms, to pet classes, and even healing and buffing. Each profession is viable for solo play or in a group, although some may end up using more health potions than others. At level 8 you can choose a second profession if you wish. Sub-classing is a good option for a lot of classes - you get enough points to make it worthwhile. You do not have to choose a second profession immediately if you do not want to, however.
If you make a mistake with your skills, there are NPCs in many of the bigger towns that will allow you to remove points you wish to spend elsewhere. This costs money, but only a small amount, so don't be afraid to pick up skills just to try them out.
Its little touches like the ones I have mentioned that make Titan Quest fun - you can play the game to have fun, try new things, and not have to worry about dying or taking skills that you will be stuck with forever.
You can use the same character for both single and multi-player games. Multi-player over the lan requires a good computer for the server, otherwise it can be quite laggy. Internet play is quick and easy to set up, using their own servers, and does not require the installation of any extra software.
Internet games do suffer from some lag, but so far it has not been fatal.
If you create a multi-player game and a much smaller player joins, then they cannot do quests that you have already completed on that difficulty level. They will, however, get credit for all quests you do while partied with them, and they will also level at an incredibly fast rate. In a brief test, a level 1 player running round with a level 15 can survive a couple of hits from an enemy, and even do a little damage. It does not take long for them to catch up to a size where they can make a decent contribution either.
Some purists may say that 'power levelling' like this is a bad thing, but I think it is a nice way of making it possible for someone who has just bought the game to group up with a friend that has been playing a while.
The campaign is quite large, spanning a number of areas, and with lots of side quests. The journal has maps for quests, and will update you when you get close to an area where a quest is supposed to take place. It is possible to get slightly lost, but there is plenty of advice given to steer you in the right direction.
There are three levels of difficulty you can play through the adventure on, giving you plenty of replay value. Again, they are similar to Diablo II - Normal being fairly simple, Epic being slightly harder, and Legendary being the difficulty level that only persistent, crazy 'live the game' addicts will be able to complete.
The comparisons to Diablo II might be getting irritating by now, but honestly, that was the isometric RPG that set the standard for all those that followed. Diablo 2 is getting a little old and dated now, but there are still a lot of people playing it. Titan Quest has managed to make something with the same feel, depth and appeal, but with extra polish. There are more quests, the professions are more varied and interesting, and the graphics are, naturally, generations ahead.
Titan Quest is well worth it for any fan of action-RPGs. It requires a powerful system to get the most out of it (I can see the difference even between a single GPU system and an SLI one) but if you meet the recommended system requirements (3Ghz Processor, 1GB RAM, GeForce 6800 or similar ATI) then you are in for a treat.
We tested it on something above the recommended. The minimum requirements are a lot lower (1.8 Ghz Processor, 512MB RAM and a Geforce 3) - the install is a hefty 5GB. I'm not sure how it would run on the recomended system, although with the graphics options turned down it should be OK. The real beauty of the game is in how it plays.
If you're after something with a lot of hours of game-play in it, then this is the first isometric action RPG that has held my attention in a very, very long time, and I can't recommend it strongly enough. Get a friend or two to play with you, and there goes your summer social life.
