Titan Quest (TQ) is one of those games typically referred to as an "action RPG" because it involves character development choices, all of which are focused squarely on how they affect the action and not upon personality or serious role-playing. For those raised in a barrel and just recently released, Diablo invented the genre, and Diablo II (D2) refined and improved upon the original. TQ pays obvious homage to D2, copying it outright in several respects, but adds its own worthwhile improvements as well.
As much as I loved D2, its graphics were merely good enough by the time it was released. I reinstalled it not so long ago because I had been missing it, but I gave up pretty quickly for one simple reason: its graphics were so low-tech, compared to the other games I play, that I felt the edges of each blocky pixel jabbing into my eyes. I still don't know what the heck Blizzard was thinking, giving it a maximum resolution of 800 x 600 with low-resolution, sprite-based artwork, but I suppose their choices were vindicated insofar as D2 was a lot of fun. Nevertheless, its visuals don't hold up well today.
In contrast, TQ is easily the best looking action RPG I have ever seen (and I've played a few). The modeling is very good, the textures are beautiful, the environments are highly detailed, the lighting effects are great, the special effects are downright fantastic, and the art direction is wonderful. I liked D2 a lot, but the brightly colored, beautifully realized vistas in TQ are far better. Perhaps the difference wouldn't seem so shocking were I not running TQ at 1600 x 1200, four times the total number of pixels as D2 enjoyed at 800 x 600, but what really matters is that TQ looks phenomenal.
The only respect in which I can say it doesn't live up to its spiritual predecessor is performance. All that visual goodness comes at a price. Even with a beefy gaming rig like mine, I see occasional frame rate stuttering. I suspect it's some sort of issue with the game engine itself, though, and perhaps one that might be improved through further optimization. I say this because the dips in the frame rate are very predictable. For example, being too quick to walk out of a portal after teleporting results in the game world stuttering until my character stops for a few seconds, almost as if the engine were playing catch up.
Suffice it to say, though, that the frame rate dips are few enough and far enough apart that they do not detract from game play. On only one occasion did I find it onerous, and that turned out to be my fault. Speaking of which, I should note loudly: TQ does not like anisotropic filtering (AF)! Since building my current gaming system, I have enabled 8x AF globally through the NVIDIA control panel. With that setting in place, I was seeing audio stuttering and frame rate issues in TQ regardless of the resolution or other settings. It took me a bit of troubleshooting to discover the cause, but better than 95% of the issues vanished after I disabled AF.
The audio for TQ is entirely serviceable. I really like the ambient music, and the sound effects are well done (if a bit too repetitious for my taste), but the voice acting prevents me from raving about the audio. It's not that the voice acting is bad, per se. In fact, I think it works well for the game. But the inconsistency in the accents leaves me cold. I learned a fair amount of Greek, and I have heard the accents of native speakers. I'm not sure what the developers/producers/actors were trying to accomplish with the voice work in TQ, but it just doesn't come across as authentic, and that's a little jarring given the attention to detail elsewhere. This is, of course, a minor complaint. The audio is more than good enough, and I find some of the music downright inspired. I can't imagine anybody else complaining about the audio; I'm just too fussy for my own good sometimes.
Think simple, then make it simpler. Simplicity was one of D2's great strengths, and TQ emulates it with zeal. The main difference, which I applaud, is the use of additional, numeric hotkeys for activating skills or items. Whereas D2 allowed the player to bind function keys to select specific skills, TQ goes the more traditional route and lets the player configure his skills and items in a quick-access bar, the slots for which may be activated by the number keys. Borrowing from Dungeon Siege (DS), life-saving, special hot keys are also provided for drinking health and mana potions in a pinch.
The only portion of the interface about which I have any complaint is inventory management. As I'll mention later, TQ is stuffed with loot to the point of bursting, which means you'll be picking up tons of goodies. Yet despite taking rewards to new heights, the facilities for dealing with them remain as primitive as the games I played ten years ago. At least DS gave us a key to pick up everything, as well as a key to rearrange inventory to maximize space, but TQ makes the player click every single thing to pick it up and handle its storage manually! Thankfully, the developers did provide filtering keys (i.e., to highlight only those items of minimum quality level or greater), but that still leaves the player with an enormous amount of clicking.
Aside from that, though, the interface is great. The menus are simple, configuring the quick-access bar is easy, choosing skills is clear and not prone to error thanks to the undo mechanism, and so forth. And, of course, playing the game is a breeze. The only down-side to the simplicity of the interface is the hand-cramping caused by too much left-mouse clicking!
The game mechanics will be immediately familiar to anyone who has played the Diablo series: TQ is about running around and killing things. Yes, the game does feature so-called "FedEx quests", insofar as you will have to bring certain objects to certain non-player characters for various reasons. But rest assured that nobody is merely going to hand you said objects; no, you're going to have to go toe-to-toe with the big bad (to say nothing of a veritable horde of little bads) to acquire them. So the mechanics boil down to stocking up, heading out, killing everything in sight, killing everything not originally in sight, killing anything else that somehow managed to escape those first two killing sprees, all the while portal-ing back to town as needed to turn useless items into gold.
Yet despite their familiarity, the game mechanics differ from what I've seen before in a few noteworthy respects. First, there is the subtle difference in the way the portals are handled. Blizzard will forever be my hero for inventing the whole "town portal" idea, but the TQ developers took the next logical step and made it far easier to deal with. It was always a pain to devote inventory space and attention to identifying items in D2 and making sure you always had at least one town portal scroll left.
TQ does away with both, the former by ditching the concept of items needing identification and the latter through the addition of a "portal stone". Each character has a portal stone that can be used at any time. It doesn't have charges, uses, or any other such thing; a player can simply travel to any other portal he's found at any time. That's great! Even better, to my way of thinking, is the lack of a repair facility. I got tired, really tired, of making sure my gear was repaired before heading back out into the wild in D2. In contrast, items in TQ neither degrade nor break, so one never has to worry about it.
I realize these things are all concessions to "realism", insofar as it's hard to imagine your average shield chewer recognizing the ancient uber-staff of what's-his-name, just as it's difficult to accept instant travel to any town. But where realism gets in the way of game play, I'm all for ditching it. Honestly, folks, what do wear and tear really add to game play? What does making the player identify things add to game play? What does making the player buy town portal scrolls add to game play? I don't think I could make a good case for any of these things, and I'm pretty shameless when operating in full sophist mode.
Strangely absent, though, is a lack of distinction in speed; i.e., there is no running versus walking. The player has a particular rate at which he travels and, aside from various items or circumstances that may change it, that's just how fast he moves. Period. I found myself wanting a "sprint" feature on more than one occasion, but I have to admit TQ does a lot better job of laying out the world and creatures so that it isn't such a big deal. I can remember walking down a flight of stairs in D2 only to find every monster in the world waiting right there for the instant kill; in contrast, TQ's monsters take a second or two to react and aren't placed where they would have such a ridiculous advantage. As such, I can live without a sprint feature, strange as I find its absence.
Best of all, though, is the skill system. The thing I hate most about so many other games is the way so many of the skills just don't matter. Many games force you to put points into skills A through G, which effectively serve as mere stepping stones to skills H through Z, the high payoff skills the player really wants when choosing a class. Worse, many games provide no way to unlearn or retrain, leaving the player stuck with any bad choices. Such an approach does keep the player hungry to achieve that next level forces a certain amount of thinking about good choices, but it's ultimately counter productive for three reasons: (1) it detracts from enjoying the low-level skills, (2) limits the players' choices later in the game, and (3) punishes experimentation.
To my way of thinking, the very reason RPGs have stats, skill trees, and so forth is to reward the player for his earlier achievements while simultaneously preparing him for new challenges; in other words, it's a mechanism through which the player takes pride in his accomplishments and exults in the ever-increasing powers of his avatar. D2 drove me nuts, because the farther I went up the skill trees the more narrow my character became. I once tried making a poison-focused necromancer, for example, only to discover that he was useless beyond his first play through; virtually all the creatures he ran into in "nightmare" mode were highly resistant or outright immune to poison, which meant that I had poured hours into a character that just couldn't go any further.
But enough about how not to do it. TQ's skill mechanic bypasses these problems. All of the low-level skills provide a foundation for the later developments, but they never become useless. My first character was a spellbreaker, which means his masteries were in warfare and spirit. I decided pretty early on that I wanted him to focus on dual-wielding, largely because I normally go the safer, more conventional weapon-plus-shield route. I envisioned my character as the sort who would wade right into the thick of things, counting on his monstrous damage-per-second to finish off the bad guys before they finished him. And, should he get in over his head, he could always steal life for a quick health recharge.
What I found was that the early levels were the toughest. As I put my points into warfare mastery and the dual wield skills, I was neglecting defensive and other skills. Frankly, the very first boss fight in the game—against what I now find to be some pathetically low-level centaur tough-guy—was the hardest for me. My spellbreaker could barely take two hits from the beast without dying, had no ranged damage abilities, and couldn't do much damage despite his dual-wielding. It was a long fight, and my character basically had to run like crazy, popping potions, moving in for a couple of quick hits, then running away and popping more potions, but he eventually emerged victorious.
Yet as I moved through the game, I didn't neglect those initial skills at all. I kept putting more points into the baseline skills until they were maxed because the payoff was still worth it. Cranking onslaught all the way up was the best choice I made, and being able to do so much more damage when enraged was a godsend. About the time my character accumulated enough points in warfare mastery to add the hew skill to his repertoire, he was starting to cruise through the game. After assembling solid warfare skills, he was able to put points into the spirit tree, enabling him to drain more life, summon a liche, and do other nifty things.
Nowhere along the way was I screwed by having made a bad choice, nowhere along the way was I unable to find a way to get the job done, and the skills I chose initially got more and more useful as I went along! By the time I finished the game, my spellbreaker could wade into just about anything in a frenzy of destruction, which was a blast. Frankly, I didn't have any trouble with any of the "tough" bosses. Because of the choices I made in armor (i.e., I valued resistances and life/energy steal over raw defense) and weapons (i.e., attack speed boosts and a variety of added damage types), and because of the choices I made in skills, I was able to stand toe-to-toe with most of the game's "tough" bosses. My summoned liche would blast away at the little guys, he and I both benefiting from the boost of my battle standard, while I would chop away with gleeful abandon. It worked very well.
Obviously, I like the mechanics of the game. It's just so refreshing to find such a "meaty" skill system that actually rewards the player and allows a certain amount of second guessing (players may unlearn skills, but not masteries, by giving gold to mystics). I had a ball making my way through the game the first time, and I'm confident I'll be playing that same character in the harder modes, as well as taking other characters through the game because the choices are so much fun.
Let me acknowledge my bias from the outset: I loved the Greek myths as a child. In fact, I am ashamed to admit it, but the only book I have ever stolen was a book from the school library named Mythology. I just couldn't be without it. I devoured the stories of the gods and the titans. I loved the tales of Orpheus and Eurydice, Pygmalion and Galatea, Hercules, Theseus, Perseus, et al. They were my very favorite stories when I was quite young, at least until my father read me The Hobbit and later The Lord of the Rings.
I admit this because I'm probably the only TQ player who clicked on every storyteller in the game, just to enjoy the condensed retelling of the tales. All throughout the game I kept finding neat little bits of Greek history and myth. It was a beautifully sentimental tribute to see Leonidas unite Greece. It was great to hear the story of Daedelus and Icarus—I geeked out completely when I came across their statues! And, of course, who wouldn't enjoy bearing armor enchanted by a relic of Herakles?!
Alright, I'll stop now. Without giving anything away, let me say that I think the average person will probably find the story a compelling enough rehash of the lone-warrior-must-save-the-world template. I absolutely loved it, but I think that's largely because of my bias right from the outset. Most folks will find it more than worthy of propelling the protagonist into harm's way.
First, the good stuff, starting with the focus on authenticity. It's clear that the developers wanted the game to nail the whole ancient-Greece vibe. I was grinning from ear to ear when I watched the opening movies and found myself able to read the Greek text; it's not often that one finds that kind of commitment to authenticity. And, as I said before, I loved the storytellers, finding bits and pieces of Greek history and myth. Obviously, the developers had to take certain liberties, but the game is squarely focused on a neat period with great stories, which makes for an enjoyable setting right from the outset.
The heart of such a game lies in the variety of stuff involved, and on this count TQ does not disappoint. The bestiary is chock full of different sorts of monsters, the boss battles are varied and fun, the arsenal is impressively broad, and the array of effects and modifications is pretty impressive. If anything, I ran across so many different relics that I had a hard time finding enough ways to use them. By the time I was halfway through the game, my character was lucky enough to have two blue-level, "oath rings", as well as a blue-level necklace, to which relics cannot be applied. So I was constantly selling neat relics for rings and necklaces; I wanted to make use of them, but it appears blue-level items cannot be modified.
I also have to say that the arrangement of content made more sense to me that most such games. Maybe I'm jaded, but I've always found it really freaky when a bat or a bird drops a sword or a shield. TQ clearly has a much "smarter" algorithm for determining what drops are possible from what beasties. And it doesn't hurt that the animations are so cool. I never got tired of seeing gold and stuff falling all over the ground from a particularly large chest. If you're a loot junkie, like I am when I play such games, you'll love TQ's approach.
Yet not all is perfect in TQ, starting with my main complaint: the acquisition of wealth just isn't meaningful. There is so much loot, so much gold, so many magical items, that my first character amassed literally millions of gold by the time he had finished the game. But there really wasn't much of anything for him to spend it on. Whenever he would visit a merchant he bought potions. That's about it. None of the gear offered by any merchant was better than the stuff he had just sold to them. I suppose he could have paid a mystic and rearranged some of his skills, but I was happy with the choices I had made. In short, great as the game is, I think it's lacking an outlet for all the treasure, which tends to make seeking it rather pointless.
The game's artificial intelligence can also be somewhat irritating at times. Or to cut right to the point: my pet was an idiot. As much as I liked being able to summon a liche, the goofball had nothing but air inside his ugly skull. He seemed to take a perverse pride in choosing whatever monster was on the other side of the room from the one I attacked, resulting in his getting killed at the back while I then labored against the foes I engaged plus the foes that had killed him. I much prefer the pet control features in World of Warcraft; at a bare minimum it would help a lot if I could set him to attack only those things I attack, or something like that.
A less pressing complaint is the degree to which the environments vary, which is to say that they really don't. You go from running around in the beautiful, sunny fields and beaches of Greece to the beautiful, sunny fields and deserts of Egypt. This is one respect in which D2 did a better job: starting the player off in a small camp, which leads to the desert, to the docks, and ultimately into hell. It made for a lot more variation in look and feel. I never really got bored with the environments of TQ, but I do wish that some other sorts of geography and weather could have been included. It would have made the game's environments more rich and interesting.
Still, these complaints are minor imperfects on a game otherwise chock-full of good stuff. There are plenty of "levels", good quests, mountains of treasure, tons of fun items, lots of monsters, and so forth. I spent roughly twenty-five hours on my first run-through, and I can't imagine anyone finishing the game and all its quests much quicker. I did dawdle in spots, mostly because I was having so much fun, but even if you're heading through on a mad rush you're easily going to get good value from TQ. I'd say it's about twice as much game as your average first-person shooter is these days.
The multi-player aspect of the game is just as good as you might expect. You can team up with a number of other players, and it's a snap to get a game going. Best of all, I think, is how you can play the single-player aspect, team up with some friends to finish quests in multi-player, and your progress can be saved to continue by yourself or with others as you like. In this regard, TQ's multi-player aspect is the very best I've ever seen in an action RPG. The same great single-player campaign can essentially be enjoyed in multi-player with no strings attached and the ability to save the game at any time.
Still, there are a couple of negatives that I need to mention. First, the game appears to use a peer-to-peer network approach, where the host machine is tasked with meeting the bandwidth needs for all the connections. The result is that too many connections, or too little horsepower for all those great graphics, can cause some wicked lag spikes. As long as the host has a beefy machine, and you keep the number of players down to three or four (up to six additional players can join the host), you should be fine.
Second, there doesn't appear to be any control over who can join the game. Every server is an open server, so any client can join. The result can be disturbing if you're trying to get a game going with just your friends. And because the game seems built on a peer-to-peer model, a single player with a bad connection or low-end machine can screw up the experience for everyone else. Thankfully, it's easy enough to jump into another game or create your own, so this isn't a huge negative, but it would have been nice to have at least the ability to password-protect the game.
This review is so far overdue by now, it's almost not worth posting. But I had so much fun with the game, and I was so saddened to hear that the developer, Iron Lore, has gone out of business, that I had to put up the review. If nothing else, it should provide some incentive for those who haven't tried it to give it a whirl.
If the conclusion is seriously in doubt, then you didn't read carefully. I'm so very glad I bought TQ. I wasn't going to do so, but the demo really piqued my curiosity. My first impression was that it was a better looking Diablo that wasn't as much fun to play, but then I kept looking at the skill trees and thinking that the developers had really created something neat. When I saw the game on sale at Amazon.com (for a really great price), that tipped me over the edge, and I'm so very glad I bought the game. I had a really good time playing it, particularly once I solved my audio/framerate stuttering issues.
On the whole, I think I can recommend TQ pretty broadly. If you like either of the Diablo games, then you're virtually guaranteed to like TQ. If you're the sort of gamer who likes the idea of a good RPG game but typically finds them too tedious and too slow, then you too are virtually guaranteed to like TQ. Frankly, the only sort of gamers who won't like TQ are those who are too focused on a different genre. If you hate anything but first-person shooters, or real-time strategy, then TQ isn't for you. But for anyone else, who has either enjoyed games in the action RPG genre before or who is interested in trying one, TQ is a good choice.
03/04/2008