Satyrs and wild boar may greet you in Greece, but by the time you have completed your quest, a dizzying array of man-beasts will lie dead by your hand, and - of course - hordes of the undead will have been put to their final rest.
Of course, this is not a sightseeing game, and your character is assaulted on all sides by monstrous creatures from myth and legend. Both are welcome additions and make navigating the game world a breeze. The in-game map does a splendid job of recording where you've been, and the size-adjustable compass shows the player the direction of interesting landmarks. As the sun rises and sets, shadows from the objects in the landscape shrink and grow appropriately (though not so with the player character's shadow) - between this and the different colors of the ambient light (rose for the rise and set of the sun, a blue for night, a bright glow at noon) added another rich layer of stunning beauty. Even the comparatively drab dunes and sands are livened up with terrain features - such as the iconic Sphinx, tumbled masonry from partially completed stone structures, palm trees and the infrequent oasis. I looked forward to each new location with bated breath, in the hopes that the next would outshine each previously stunning entry. Why Iron Lore chose not to allow the player to reallocate ability points and points out of a Mastery skill is beyond the knowledge of this reviewer.įrom the fields and light forests of Crete, through the deserts and oasis of Egypt, across the Silk Road and down into the thick jungles of China, the environments of Titan Quest are simply marvelous. The Oracles can't help if you place too many points in a Mastery skill, and not enough in the skills themselves - or if you choose to place all your abilities in something like Health, which lets you live longer but doesn't help you use better equipment. While Titan Quest is not a 'hard' game in the sense of a constant challenge, the boss creatures can be radically more difficult than 90% of the other creatures you encounter, making these fights a potential exercise in frustration for bad character builds. The depth of the leveling system comes at the price of it being somewhat easy to create a weak character. Strangely, these points can not be reallocated at all. Leveling also grants the character two ability points which can be spent to raise Health, Magic, Strength, Intelligence, or Dexterity.
This is unfortunate, because you can't take back a poor Mastery choice, but that makes your Mastery choices all the more important, and gives players something to look forward to in new characters. Those skills can be purchased back at Oracles, but you can never retrieve the points spent in the class. Putting points into that class unlocks skills, which can then have points invested in them. This might sound a little confusing, but it's really quite simple: choosing a mastery is like choosing a class. Luckily, the game allows you to reallocate points spent in the various non-mastery skills for a modest sum of gold but you're not allowed to remove points spent in the mastery skill itself (so you could take points out of Weapon Training, but never Warfare Mastery). While the initial choices are somewhat few (one point in a mastery's skill unlocks only three skills), they quickly open up to a dizzying array of possibilities. Theoretically better skills require up to 32 points in the mastery skill - these points also grant stat boosts relevant to the mastery (Warfare Mastery grants Strength, Dexterity, and Health). Each level yields three skill points, which may be spent on the mastery's skill (ie, Warfare Mastery), or skills in the mastery's tree that for which you qualify (ie, Weapon Training, Battle Rage, Onslaught). You are allowed to chose one mastery upon reaching the character's first level, and another upon reaching level eight.
There are eight masteries from which to choose - Storm, Earth, Warfare, Spirit, Defense, Nature, Hunting, and Rogue. The leveling system in Titan Quest manages to be both refreshingly free and curiously rigid. At least, until you start slaughtering every aggressive creature in sight. Aside from gender and color preference, all characters start the same in the eyes of the gods, with nothing but a dagger, your wits, and a handful of coin to lead you to victory. and that's it (eventually, you're given the ability to buy dyes to change your tunic to better colors). You choose between male and female, and one of a handful of colors for their tunic. Visual character customization in Titan Quest is virtually nil. You start the game by creating your character. Developed by Iron Lore and published by THQ, Titan Quest is the latest entry following this ten year old pattern. The game industry has never been the same. In 1996, Blizzard Entertainment released Diablo and gave birth to the Action RPG genre.
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