Titan Quest: it is massive

Apparently I was wrong about Dungeon Siege II; there are still studios out there willing to shamelessly crib from Blizzard's Diablo II design documents. This makes Titan Quest an easy target for criticism. And as much as I enjoy criticizing failed attempts at recapturing Diablo II, I really think Titan Quest has finally done it. There is a suitable storyline that is not overbearing. There are piles of unique looking monsters and a variety of magic weapons to kill them with. There is the unstoppable desire to click on things. Titan Quest appears to get everything right. If only Iron Lore had similarly aspired to attain Blizzard's level of polish, it might have been one of the best games of the year.

I have been entangled in Titan Quest's Kraken-like tentacles for the last three weeks. I started off with the demo over a month ago, which doesn't let you get a character past level 6. It wasn't enough to whet my appetite for clicking repeatedly and collecting pretty new items. In fact, next to Oblivion's self-important "freedom" (even though it shares the same click-kill-reward gameplay model), Titan Quest felt like the more genuine action RPG experience. But I'll save the details for my Elder Scrolls IV review.

At first I found myself trying to hate Titan Quest at every turn: I crashed to desktop (more than Oblivion!), it was too easy, the "homages" to its predecessors were glaringly obvious - there wasn't enough changed to be of value. And what made this story so special that we had to know it was penned by the writer of Braveheart? I scoffed at these apparent inadequacies. Titan Quest was eventually going to disappoint me. It was going to be just another clone. But I was soon convinced otherwise.

I haven't been in love with a game this bug-ridden since Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines.

Iron Lore knew what to change, but most importantly, they knew what to leave alone. They created an action RPG that knows its roots, but isn't hung up on the conceit that it might actually be contributing something to the genre. Because it doesn't. Instead, it provides people like me reason to revisit their feelings for Diablo II's ridiculously addictive gameplay.

Titan Quest spans three continents, borrowing liberally from Greek, Egyptian and Chinese mythology - even though Titans only had a basis in Greek legend. The thread holding the entire adventure together is your hero's journey to restore communication with the gods. Over the course of the game you are faced with the "Telkine" or "lesser Titans", which are sorcerers intent on destroying the world. They've started by overrunning it with their minions, which take the shape of mythological creatures unique to each of the three regions. But this is more than just Diablo II with satyrs and minotaurs.

Titan Quest is massive. The game feels lengthy and substantial, as there is more than enough to keep you busy in the single player game. The first act alone consists of eight main quests, with four side quests in each. There are also many side dungeons and areas to explore, but they don't drift too far off the linear path to the next objective. There is an overwhelming sense of familiarity to everything, yet the game still manages to convey itself as different. I think using mythology as the basis for what could have just as easily been a typical medieval dungeon hack has allowed for deeper consideration. The game's world is realized through an incredible engine: vibrantly coloured and incredibly detailed, the lush surroundings make it an exciting setting to travel through. Finally a developer realizes that action RPGs don't have to be dark all the time.

What would a Greek dungeon be without a pillared entrance?

Epic in scale, Titan Quest still revels in the details. Monsters will crumple or be hurled across the screen after being hit by a crushing blow. Walking near cliffs will actually show wandering monsters or battles taking place below, expressing a real sense of depth in the terrain. The leaves of trees sway in the wind, and tall grass moves around your character when they run through it. You can go down into a dungeon during the day and come up in the middle of the night. Part of the game's appeal for me is how natural everything looks. There aren't any skulls or blood drenched corridors or burning pits. This is a world steeped in mythology, that plays off of what we've come to expect from the setting with the help of Ray Harryhausen's movies. You'll be wandering through a rocky crevasse, and all of a sudden a cyclops will stomp noisily into the area, dispelling any comfort you may have had with the surroundings. Titan Quest is careful to maintain this storybook setting. I never once felt threatened by the monsters; Outnumbered maybe, but there was a constant sense of playfulness about the whole thing. Titan Quest is assuredly an adventure.

Behind Titan Quest's beautifully rendered exterior, there is still some depth to character customization. The basic Attributes system is present, with two points available every time you level up to be spent in Strength, Dexterity, Health, etc. This is a step backwards when compared with Dungeon Siege II or Oblivion, which upgrade skills based on their use. Though this part of levelling is overshadowed by the intricate, yet easy to appreciate "Mastery" system.

The Mastery system puts a twist on the spending of "skill" points associated with a particular class's special abilities and spells. You start the game as a general hero character, with your only choice being a male or female avatar. At Level 2 you pick your first mastery. There are eight Masteries available: Warfare (melee), Rogue (stealth and sneak attacks), Hunter (bows and traps), Earth (fire magic), Storm (Ice and Lightning magic), Spirit (Necromancy/curses), Nature (Healing), and Defense (imagine a class based around the Paladin's "bash" ability). Instead of a series of prerequisites, you can spend points to increase the level of your Mastery - adding to basic attributes like Mana and Strength - or you can spend points on actual Skills. The Masteries are a blend of passive and active skills that genuinely allow the creation of fighter/mages. Though the passive abilities outweigh the active, making it a melee/bow-heavy game even for mage characters. The advantage to this system is that the passive skills add bonuses to existing Skills, so it forces you to focus on a particular Skill instead of spreading your points too thin to gain the most abilities.

A few levels later you get to select a second Mastery. It's a system that doesn't impose any limitations if you want to experiment with the various Mastery combinations. But if you don't want to spend any points in another mastery, it just means more points to spend in your first one so you can move faster through the tree. The great thing is that none of the skill prerequesites are level based as in Diablo II – the whole system is point based.

With that said, the game even allows more flexibility in the Mystic, an NPC accessible in some towns which can deduct spent Mastery points for increasing amounts of gold. This is invaluable for when you may have mis-spent a point or two in skills that appeared useful (see the Necromancer and "Teeth" in Diablo II).

I think it would have been more interesting if Iron Lore had used a system similar to Divine Divinity, where the starting class only determined starting attributes, and you were able to spend points in the skills of other classes if you chose to. Spreading your character too thin among the skills will only hurt your character in the end, so it forced some creative balancing. Ultimately a truly unique character would result. Though I'd consider this a superfluous request; the game's moderate difficulty is balanced out by the two mastery constraint.

Half man, Half alligator = 100% pure awesome.

There are some great new additions to the generally accepted formula that I hope to see copied in future action RPGs, because at this point I'm convinced there will be more. Like Fate, monsters will actually drop what they're carrying. If they're wearing a helm or have armour equipped, that will be dropped as well. It's a system I'm surprised has taken this long to implement. Adding to the detail is the appearance of dropped armour worn by larger creatures: it will be slightly oversized on your character. And since picking up dropped items after a messy battle can be a hassle to sort through, there are a series of filters set up to only display certain items (all, magic only, etc.) at the press of a key.

The "Relic" and "Charms" system is Titan Quest's attempt at customizing equipment, but it works well for those that want to get more out of their items. They start off as fragments that are randomly dropped by creatures. Alone or as a completed Charm or Relic, they can be added to equipment for bonuses. Do you collect a complete set for an added bonus or do you apply individually? Even though you can only apply one of these items to your equipment at a time, it makes for an interesting diversion. I found that as the game went on I was doing an unusual amount of thinking about what equipment to arm myself with. Balancing items that give attribute bonuses just so I could use the better armour with those that gave protection against elemental magic was a constant process. Luckily having enough gold for quick upgrades at the merchant is not a problem - I had 200,000 gold before I hit level 15.

Further additions include "Rebirth Fountains", which are activated when you walk by them, determining the point where you resurrect or start the game after quitting. They are usually found in cities and near mission areas to make it easy to continue, though it still ends up being the same as searching for a save point, or the waypoints in Diablo II. You can also open unlimited town portals from anywhere, though they disappear when you die. It makes it easy to refill on health potions.

Nevertheless, any veteran of Diablo II that plays the game at length will immediately recognize its omissions. There's way too much clicking. One of Diablo II's greatest achievements was to be able to hold down the attack mouse button to keep attacking, a welcome change from its predecessor. In Titan Quest's large engagements, it was enough to notice a burning sensation in my index finger, likely recurring from my late night sessions in World of Warcraft. There's no real penalty for death, either. No loss of gold, experience or damage to equipment. There's no harrowing corpse runs trying to make it back to your gear. Equipment doesn't degrade with use, and bows and spears have unlimited ammunition. For a game that has a lot of running (especially when trying to escape), there's no stamina meter to provide a challenge.

Then there's the technical problems holding this game back. I was extremely surprised by the overall inconsistency of the game's performance when compared to the demo. The game would slow to a crawl when there were groups of enemies on screen or when I cast multiple Frost bolts. I'm almost positive there was a memory leak that developed after long play periods (I had frequent experience with this, unfortunately), and crashes to desktop after using a town portal or going down into a dungeon were common. None resulted in a loss of character progress - like Diablo II, the game saves your character's state and any waypoints you've activated. All of these arose on the game's default settings, which I had to cut back to from the demo. Titan Quest has been getting some pretty glowing reviews from genre fans, but I cannot tolerate when such major issues like these are dismissed or not mentioned at all. No matter how great a game is, if it can only be played in fits and starts is it really worth the effort? A patch was issued recently that supposedly addresses most of these technical problems, but I can't say whether it's true or not. The patch installation froze up, with my computer following soon after. I didn't proceed any further out of fear of losing my character and progress (which apparently has happened to some people).

And yet I still can't stop playing. Iron Lore will not be remembered for making a good game, but for making the best knockoff the genre has ever seen. Despite the mechanics of the game being painfully familiar, it feels like the mythological setting alone has breathed new life into an old game. While it may take some liberties with its source material, Titan Quest amalgamates familiar myths and legends to produce an adventure that's almost worthy of its name.