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titan quest minor updates

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Wouter Groeneveld 2021-01-30 11:34:25 +01:00
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content/articles/reviews/titan-quest.md
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@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ game_release_year: '2006 (2018)'
game_developer: 'Iron Lore Entertainment'
---
Originally released only two years after Sacred, Titan Quest brings us back to the ancient Greek mythology: a world full of mesmerizing creatures to kill, wealth to collect, and above all: horrible bugs and boring gameplay. Should you play this hack & slash game over others such as [Dungeon Siege](/articles/reviews/dungeon-siege) and [Diablo 2](/articles/retrospectives/diablo-2)? The answer is a definitive no.
Originally released only two years after [Sacred](/articles/reviews/sacred), Titan Quest brings combines Greek mythology with hack and slash: a world full of mesmerizing creatures to kill, wealth to collect, and above all: horrible bugs and boring gameplay. Should you play this hack & slash game over others such as [Dungeon Siege](/articles/reviews/dungeon-siege) and [Diablo 2](/articles/retrospectives/diablo-2)? The answer is a definitive no.
I slogged through more than twenty hours of repetitive and frustrating gameplay and wrote all this to spare you from the same misery, so do me a favor and simply don't bother: look at [better hack & slash games](/articles/features/the-best-and-worst-retro-hack-and-slash-games/) instead. The game was re-released for Nintendo Switch in 2018, and that's the one I regretted playing. You'd think that twelve years after the original release, most bugs would have been fixed. Think again!
@ -26,9 +26,9 @@ The following compelling about section on [THQ Nordic's page](https://www.thqnor
> From Age of Empires co-creator Brian Sullivan and Braveheart writer Randall Wallace comes an action role playing game set in ancient Greece, Egypt and Asia. The Titans have escaped their eternal prison, wreaking havoc upon the earth. The gods seek a hero who can turn the tide in an epic struggle that will determine the fate of both men and gods. Are you ready for the quest?
Wow, the AoE co-creator and Braveheart writer - this has _got_ to be good, right? The story is slightly original, compared to most other generic high fantasy hack & slash games: no goblins and zomb-wait, zombies are there. No Dragon- wait, dragon _beastmen_ are there. Okay, no rats! Nope, _Ratmen_ are present. [Wizardry 8 Rattkin](/tags/wizardry8)? Nope, no cleverness, funny dialog or questing, just killing and looting - but in style: in ancient Athens, in the Temple of Apollo, in various dull Pyramids that look exactly like the previous one, and on the Great Wall where everybody calls you _Warrior!_ with a strange Asian accent.
Wow, the AoE co-creator and Braveheart writer - this has _got_ to be good, right? The story is slightly original, compared to most other generic high fantasy hack & slash games: no goblins and zomb-wait, zombies are there. No Dragon- wait, dragon _beastmen_ are there. Okay, no rats! Nope, _Ratmen_ are present. [Wizardry 8 Rattkin](/tags/wizardry8)? Nope, no cleverness, funny dialog or questing, just killing and looting - but in style: in ancient Athens, in the Temple of Apollo, in various dull Pyramids that look exactly like the previous one, and on the Great Wall where everybody calls you _"Warrior!"_ with a strange Asian accent.
Okay, so the game looks good - or looked good in 2006. It's fully rendered in 3D, although most scenery is pretty static. On the Switch, it looks and plays quite fluently - aside from the texture mapping bugs here and there. The game look and feel reminds me a lot of [Dungeon Siege](/articles/reviews/dungeon-siege) because of its seamless transition in and out of underground dungeons and caves. But also because of the boring gameplay - mostly because of that. All I had to do with my dual wielding melee build was to press and hold the `Y` button on my controller - that's it. That's it? That's it.
Okay, so the game looks good - or looked good in 2006. It's fully rendered in 3D, although most scenery is pretty static. On the Switch, it looks and plays quite fluently - aside from the texture mapping bugs here and there. The game look and feel reminds me a lot of [Dungeon Siege](/articles/reviews/dungeon-siege) because of its seamless transition in and out of underground dungeons and caves. But also because of the boring gameplay - mostly because of that. All I had to do with my dual wielding melee build was to press and hold the `Y` button on my controller - that's it. That's it? That's it - well, besides the constant thirst for health potions my character had, that can be quenched with a press of the `L` shoulder button.
![](/img/games/TitanQuest/boss.jpg "The Act II boss. A strategy, you ask? Quaff potions and bash away.")
@ -36,7 +36,7 @@ Okay, so the game looks good - or looked good in 2006. It's fully rendered in 3D
Your character automatically targets enemies (on the console) as long as you keep that button pressed - as with [Diablo III](/articles/reviews/diablo-3) and [Torchlight II](/articles/reviews/torchlight-2) I also played on the Switch. However, in those games, actually _re-targeting_ is easy. Not so in Titan Quest: while attacking, you can try to move your character, which reveals a blue cone that should aid the player with choosing a target. In practice, the thing never works, or works after three seconds, when my character ran towards the wrong guy, and ended up getting killed. This is particularly frustrating in Act II tombs, where "Dark Crystals" spawn elemental-wielding skeleton mages at a rapid rate. The trick is to get rid of the crystal, which also makes the summoned skeletons go away. However, in a crowded place such as that one, trying to target a single pillar, is simply an inpossible task. I threw with my controller on several occasions because of this.
There is nothing wrong with auto-targeting on a console, but another problem I had with Titan Quest was the skill tree. While it looked amazing, and the system is classless, meaning you can mix and match however you like, in practice, most skills are passive. That means, you'll be receiving damage/attack rating/defense/etc bonuses from spent skill points, but you won't be receiving a new move that gets mapped to a button.
There is nothing wrong with auto-targeting on a console, but another problem I had with Titan Quest was the skill tree. While it looked amazing, and the system is classless, meaning you can mix and match however you like, in practice, most skills are passive. That means, you'll be receiving damage/attack rating/defense/etc bonuses from spent skill points, but you won't be receiving many new moves that gets mapped to a button.
This was especially true for my build: I was a skilled _warfare_ and _rogue_ melee fighter, with 90% of my points put into the warfare tree. Dual wielding requires a lot of points in several passive skill slots, and does not work like in most other H&S games: there's a x% chance of hitting two enemies at once or attacking with both weapons, depending on the skill level. Most other points went into _evade_ and more buffs, and I ended up with a bit of a glass cannon that can take down hordes of enemies with ease but is also killed with ease because I didn't equip a shield or didn't go with the _defense_ mastery. I should have gone with a caster, I knew it...
@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ What about loot, one of the most compelling reasons to play games such as this?
Besides the regular loot, you collect other spoils of war: boar hides, fangs, demon blood, and so on. These can be combined (3 or 5 items will do) and used to further enhance your gear, not unlike runes. Except that with Diablo's runes, you need socketed gear, and in Titan Quest, you don't - although most unique items cannot be enhanced for some reason. These trinkets do take up a lot of your inventory space, and managing these is very painful, as every single act introduces new variants that do not mix with previous ones. I ended up with a bunch of crap (2 out of 3) items cluttering my precious space, until I finally unlocked some more backpack room. These can be stored in a private stash in town, though.
On a TV screen, it is very difficult to see what's what, especially with those tiny 1x1 things in your inventory. The inventory screen does not make use of a ring-based menu system like Diablo III or Torchlight II, but rather falls back to the PC implementation. That means that scrolling through stuff you'd like to sell or equip is also a pain, although the overview is better than in aforementioned games. I'm starting to get the feeling that _if_ you still would like to play this game, you'd better do this on PC...
On a TV screen, it is very difficult to see what's what, especially with those tiny 1x1 things in your inventory. The inventory screen does not make use of a ring-based menu system like [Diablo III](/articles/reviews/diablo-3) or [Torchlight II](/articles/reviews/torchlight-2), but rather falls back to the PC implementation. That means that scrolling through stuff you'd like to sell or equip is also a pain, although the overview is better than in aforementioned games. I'm starting to get the feeling that _if_ you still would like to play this game, you'd better do this on PC...
![](/img/games/TitanQuest/stuck.jpg "Help, I'm stuck in some bloody cave!")
@ -68,7 +68,7 @@ Another "bad" thing on the console is navigating the menu or overworld map. Ther
Might the questing system be a superior version, compared to Diablo 2? Again, I'm afraid that I'll have to disappoint you. While the towns of Titan Quest offer story tellers, like the good old philosophers who like to hang out in the streets to tell everybody what they should and shouldn't know, most citizens do not have anything to say. That's not unlike most other H&S games, true. But the way you pick up quests is by walking towards people with a `!` on their heads, pressing a, and just walking away - even while they're still trying to explain what you're supposed to do. Why? Because the text scroll speed of the NPCs is terribly slow, compared to the voiced explanation. To me, this breaks immersion, as I lose the patience to sit through a dull "_Oh, Woe Is Me!_" speech.
Another thing that irritated me was that finishing a quest by finding a required item or killing a local nuisance simply resulted in a message saying _Quest Updated_. What does "updated" mean - do I still have to do something? After inquiring in the quest log, the quest was ticked off - and thus, finished - so the answer would be no. Huh? Shouldn't I go back to town and tell the poor woman that I killed the bandit leader? Nope, she'll find out, but here is your money. Where did I get that money form? It fell out of the sky - a God gave it to you.
Another thing that irritated me was that finishing a quest by finding a required item or killing a local nuisance simply resulted in a message saying _Quest Updated_. What does "updated" mean - do I still have to do something? After inquiring in the quest log, the quest was ticked off - and thus, finished - so the answer would be no. Huh? Shouldn't I go back to town and tell the poor woman that I killed the bandit leader? Nope, she'll hear it from a local guard, but here is your money anyway. Where did I get that money form? It fell out of the sky - a God gave it to you.
![](/img/games/TitanQuest/temple.jpg "Hail, Oracle of Apollo!")