Titan Quest/Immortal Throne - PC - Review

[Ohio Joe]

In my current gaming situation, I am replaying some of the old games I still have and have once again become addicted to TQ/IT. Seeing that I never did a review for it, here it is :D

This is an older game... about '06 and is strictly a Diablo clone. They do not do very much new here but they do most of it right. The few... Well, one, new thing they do is pretty awesome and that is to offer you 9 different classes and allow you to select 2 of them for your character. The mixing and matching of skills to suit your game play style (of the moment) is freakin great and allows you to create a wide variety of characters.

One note - I did have some trouble getting this going on a newer laptop. The game was overheating my CPU and in doing some research, I found this can happen with some older games on newer laptops. The solution is to under-clock your CPU. Unfortunately, you can't do this through BIOS anymore (at least, not on my laptop). The way to get the same results is to lower the power to the CPU. This is done by right clicking on the "battery" icon in the bottom right hand corner and selecting the power option that gives the best battery life and lowest performance. Fixed it right up for me though remember to switch it back when done playing or other programs may not perform as fast as they should.

Characters - All characters start the same except as either male or female, this choice does not effect game play and is audio/visual only. At your first level up, you may select you first class and at level 8 you select your second.

Defense - Various defensive auras and shield enhancing/offensive skills.
Earth - Fire magic and a great minion.
Hunting - Bow and spear enhancing skills as well as some healing.
Nature - Minions (pets) as well as healing.
Rogue - Poison, traps and some bow/spear/sword enhancing abilities.
Spirit - Minions and curses/auras to reduce enemy effectiveness.
Storm - Electric spells and spells to reduce enemy effectiveness.
Warefare - Offensive melee skills and spells.
Dream - Offensive and support skills and spells.

This being and older game, I'm not going to really go into character builds and the mixing and matching of classes. There is though, a still pretty active community that has lots of guides for characters here:

http://www.titanquest.net/tq-forum/forum.php

Your first character is going to be the hardest as they start naked. Later characters will also but quickly gain access to the "town chest" which has an area to exchange items between characters, so you will find that as characters get advanced and find cool items for specific character builds, you will want to build them.

Level up - Spells/stats - I'm not going to go into individual spells or specific stat allocation but I did want to put out some general comments and they are in a way linked. Spells are set up for access in the typical "tree" style. In order to access new and higher level spells, you have to put skill points into your mastery (you get three skill points per level up and a few more from quests... six or seven per difficulty level). To access the highest level spells requires 32 points in each mastery. This seems like a lot but you will almost always put 32 in the mastery for each of your two classes. The reason for this is that points in mastery gives more then access to spells but also each point gives life, mana and stat boost. The amount of life/mana and which stats is determined by what class you are upping. For instance, Warefare gives lots of life, a little mana, strength and dexterity... Other classes give boosts that benefit that class. Also at level up, you get two stat points that can be put into:

Life - The amount of life you have.
Mana - The amount of mana you have.
Strength - How much damage your non-staff weapons do.
Dexterity - Defense, chance to hit, chance to avoid being hit.
Intelligence - How quickly mana regenerates and how much elemental damage you do.

On almost all characters, I put no points into either life or mana ever. What you get from masteries/item bonuses is usually enough. Points go into str/int/dex based on the play style of the character - more melee, more str and dex - more magic, more int and enough str and dex to wear items - etc :D See link above for more specifics.

Mastery/spell allocation of skill points - Boost mastery first, putting only one point in each skill you plan to use. Many skills are very effective with only a single point in them for the difficulty on monsters you will face before all 64 points are in mastery, then start pumping spells/skills. As for what spells/skills to choose... Play away :D Experiment with them as resetting spell/skill point allocation is easy and only takes gold to do (the price does consistently increase but gold is not that hard to find). Mastery points cannot be re-allocated but all spell/skill points can.

Items - Shit loads of items... They are all here and then some:

Magical - One random property
Rare - one to three magical properties.
Sets - Extra bonuses given the more pieces of the set you wear. More sets for higher level character... crap loads of sets for every type of character.
Unique - Very powerful items.
Scrolls - one use items only available from vendors, many different types.
Shards - Kind of like gems in Diablo but many, many different kinds. Some need three to complete a relic, some five. They give different bonuses and have two different uses. Can either be used to enhance items or to build artifacts.
Artifacts - Artifacts are an item you equip but first have to build by finding all the parts. You need to have the formula and the three components. Components can be relics, scrolls and other artifacts (lower level artifacts to build higher level artifacts). A great recipe document for all artifacts can be found here:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/936555-titan-quest-immortal-throne/faqs/48476

Game Play - As I said earlier, this is pure Diablo. Advanced option over even Diablo II, very addictive if you like this type of game. If however, you are not into this kind of game, avoid as it has nothing to make you like it. There are some issues of slowdown that seem to be inherent to the game and not due to your system, they are by no means a deal breaker but they do exist. I have also found that very rarely, a quest cannot be completed... You cannot get your reward or for whatever reason complete the quest. This is also not a big deal as quiting and re-entering the game has always fixed it for me. The only other bug I've encountered (and in all the play I've done over the years, only two or three times) is the invisible/untargetable enemy. They can still be killed by "area of effect spells" or by simply ignoring them and moving on, they will only go so far from where they spawned (I've never seen this with a boss of any type).

Monsters - Crap loads of different types and also you can find a good number of different types in a given area, not just one or two. Monsters of the same type can be easier or harder to kill as they get the bonuses from any items they will drop... heh, it's cool as sometimes you notice a monster wielding a unique item before you kill them :D

Graphics - You know... The game still holds up pretty damn well today. It is a beautiful game with lots of different areas and lots of eye candy. Animations, environments and effects are all top notch. Special mention for the rag-doll physics... The way corpses roll down hills or bounce off walls... Freakin awesome :D

Fun Factor - I really love this game. Bigger, badder and better looking then even Diablo II. It will probably fall by the wayside when Diablo III is released but until then, I'm sure this game with the expansion can be found dirt cheap.

Bottom Line - If you like the action RPG's... Stop reading this crap and go buy this game :D