Titan Quest

Titan Quest is Iron Lore’s new take on the old RPG recipe, which places the player, not within the traditional Tolkein-esque mythos, but straight in the middle of ancient Greece. While there are certainly a great deal of elements to this game which feel familiar (especially to Diablo fans), and even clunky in places, I found myself rather charmed by its new backdrop, good looks, and – dare I say it? – organic approach to character development.

From the initial first impressions, I must admit I was pretty hesitant about Titan Quest. What sort of RPG worth its salt only gives you three options for character creation? Name, gender and tunic colour? I gingerly clicked my choices (female, Minerva (hey, why not, it’s set in Greece), and grey) and proceeded to enter the game. The initial quest and exploration was pretty straightforward – go here, fetch this, kill this guy, etc. Ho-hum, right? Wrong.

All of a sudden I reached level two, and things really began to get interesting. Suddenly I was presented with an option to select a specific skill mastery, from eight options: warfare, rogue, hunting, defence, storm, earth, spirit and nature. Selecting one of these opened a skill tree which I could allocate skill points to, which allowed me to focus on specific areas if I so desired. As a bit of a spoiler, you are offered a second skill mastery once you reach level eight.

Let me just pause here to let this sink in. I’m sure I could be wrong, but I can’t think of a single other RPG which presents you with this sort of character development. How many times have you played an RPG, created your character with all its detailed stat options, only to reach level three and wished you hadn’t decided to play a Rogue Paladin after all? Think about it – in Titan Quest there’s no need to put all your eggs in one basket, no need to play a while, then go back and start all over again with your “proper” character. You can develop as you go. I think that’s brilliant.

There are, of course, drawbacks to this game. The terrain is rather repetitive. You do get to travel through Greece, Egypt and China, but within each country things look pretty much the same. Not that they’re not beautiful, it’s just a bit monotonous.

The inventory is the single most annoying aspect of Titan Quest in my opinion. It’s based on the grid system, where your backpack has a certain number of squares allocated to it. Anything you pick up has a specific size. Once you’ve filled up your space, that’s all you can carry. The annoying part is that you inevitably wind up with spaces in your backpack, and so have to stop playing and regularly go and sort through your items in order to maximize the space. Even a “sort” button would be a welcome relief. But there isn’t one. And the backpack size is so small, it makes it incredibly difficult to go dungeon-trawling and to get out with all the good stuff. Limited space in your backpack also makes exploring difficult. Every time you pick something up you then have to go into your backpack and try and evaluate the thing you’ve just acquired, then decide whether to keep it or chuck it. It does get pretty laborious. By the time I was around level eight someone had given me a bag of some kind, essentially doubling my inventory space – but by that stage, Titan Quest had lost my vote of confidence with regard to its inventory approach.

The game itself is linear, but absolutely massive. The main quest alone will set you back 40 hours. There’s limited exploration outside of the areas through which you are “channelled” by the game. You can acquire side quests, but these are generally pretty sparse on the ground. This is not a particularly good game for those prone to OOS or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome – the mouse action is heavy – dare I say you wind up clicking your way through dungeons and monsters.

That said, the monsters look fabulous. Really they do. The whole game does. The graphics will press your high-spec machine, with swaying grass, beautiful water effects and incredible light effects, such as shadows which move as your light source passes by them.

In terms of navigation, the maps are good, with important people, battle areas, rebirth fountains and portals indicated on the world map. I should mention at this point that while you are able to save at any point during the game, saving will only save your stats and inventory. If you die, or quit and load the game again, you will start from the last rebirth portal you visited. To be honest I’m not really sure why this was implemented – perhaps to create more of a challenge. Perhaps also in some way this is more realistic, but when you’re forced to travel across the same bit of land eight or so times to fight a boss creature, this “feature” can become tiring rather quickly.

Once you’ve finished the game, there are some neat features to ensure Titan Quest doesn’t go back on your shelf straight away. There’s a cool multiplayer aspect to the game that I wasn’t able to explore, but allows you to take your character online and progress from the same place you were in, in the single-player version – but this time you can enlist up to five other players to join you.

There is also a mod tool which will allow you to create your own maps and quests. Depending on how the populace embraces this game, there is definitely a potential for downloading mods and continuing the experience.

All in all, Titan Quest is a good game. It does have its drawbacks, but these aren’t completely fundamental. It gives gamers a fresh look to what is rapidly becoming a tired genre, even though the gameplay will seem familiar to seasoned RPG-ers. That said, this game is still highly enjoyable. The fact that I stayed up way too late playing this last night should testify to its addictive nature. If heavy mouse action does not put you off, then I recommend you at least check out the Titan Quest demo. Meanwhile, I plan to take my nature loving warrior through Delphi, on to Egypt and beyond.