Titan Quest: Immortal Throne

Genre: RPG, Roguelike, Dungeon Crawler
Release Date: June 26th 2006
Platforms: PC
Score: 7/10
Similar Titles: Diablo, Torchlight, Dungeon Siege

It's handy to have AOE spells prepared for lots of enemies.

Titan Quest is another graphical rogue-like, very similar to the Diablo franchise. Instead of wandering deeper into a typical dungeon, you find yourself undertaking a journey across the lands from town to town smiting monsters and undertaking quests. Although the initial game release in 2006 had major problems, such as horrible inventory management and somewhat linear path from start to finish. Immortal Throne was quickly released in 2007, the expansion that polished the game and provided a plethora of fixes.

Spiders are surprisingly uncommon.

Iron Lore Entertainment released Titan Quest as a Diablo 2 clone, replicating almost every feature with subtle differences. Comparing the two games is like comparing different alcohol. They all taste the same, and will all eventually get you drunk. There is no clear victor between the two, Diablo has better loot variety, Titan Quest has a superior class system. Titan Quest is outside, Diablo is inside. Whichever game you prefer is down to preference. However, I'd suggest you try Titan Quest first- it has better tutorials and production values.

I love being able to skip though the slower parts of the dialogue.

If I had to sum up the story of Titan Quest, I'd choose 'Greek apocalypse'. It's a rags to riches adventure, and the entire world is under siege from mythological monsters. Humanity is in deep shit. As the only character with balls in the entire game, you have to kill everything yourself. And there's a lot of everything. Aside from the regular undead and spiders, you will encounter Hydras and Medusa, Hades and Manticore, every fictional myth you've ever seen in a book.

Be prepared to port back to town to sell items.

As you can probably guess, the narrative isn't a prevalent aspect of Titan Quest. Greek and Egyptian myth takes up a rather sizable amount of the plot. The battle between Gods and Titans is long over, with the Gods victorious. However, an ally of the Titans, the Telkines have escaped, their mission to free the dreaded Typhon. Your role as a mighty warrior is to warn the gods and slaughter legions of enemies in the process.

Gameplay is very straightforward for anyone who has a little RPG experience. Click on things to move, attack, and talk to people. Bind spells and attacks to hotkeys, you can even assign abilities to the mouse buttons. There are nine very interesting classes, called masteries. You can also dual class by combining two together. Some of these class unions are incredibly formidable, but excel in different fields. For example, choosing storm powers will give you a ridiculous amount of damage spells, but not much else. Choosing warfare mastery allows you to wipe the floor with single targets, but large packs might present a problem.

Masteries are diverse. Especially since you get two.

Levelling up your character allows you to place separate points into your spells and stats. Within each mastery you can build a variety of different ways- this depth of character customisation is quite rare in the present. My favorite choice was Dream and Nature mastery, which I played like a high damage mage caster with plenty of monster summons to aid you in battle.

I love fighting masses of enemies.

When you wander into the wilderness enemies will literally crawl out of the ground to get you, and running away will only result in adding more bloodthirsty scum joining the chase. This is one aspect of the game I truly enjoyed. This is a game that tries very hard not to insult your intelligence. Games like Skyrim and Dragon Age are all good and fun- but let us face facts: dying on these titles is almost always accidental, not because you are getting genuinely challenged. If Titan Quest hadn't made health potions so common and easy to obtain; it would be unbelievably hard.

The Inventory fills very quickly.

Inventory management comes with a handy sorting system so you don't have to create space yourself. You may also teleport back to town, sell your unwanted items and then port back to your previous location. This means you aren't wasting any time backtracking through old areas, something that infuriates a lot of players; myself included. Overall I was very satisfied with the quick process of popping back to town to sell your junk and store some valuables, but I ultimately ended up accumulating too much money. The currency of Titan Quest is essentially useless. You will find nothing worth buying so the cash just stacks up until you have more than you can spend. Although each town you visit has a whole host of new things to buy- none of them are upgrades.

Sadly yellow items suck.

My final summation of Titan Quest is simple- it's great for time killing, and rather fun at that. Plenty of people prefer it over the more popular Diablo. You may bypass all of that delay of plot and intervals between combat and get straight into the action. The skill trees are plentiful and you have lots of choices available. Don't pass this up if you like the hack and slash style genre.