TITAN QUEST – Immortal Throne

Titan Quest – Immortal Throne is the expansion of Titan Quest by THQ. If you've been playing pc games for as long as I have, you'll immediately remember Diablo and it's sequel Diablo II as soon as you start-up TITAN QUEST.

TQ is a third person, mouse frenzy, hack and slash game whose story is deeply immersed in various mythology and ancient religious settings. As soon as the game starts, you'll be asked to help a farmer whose horse is being attacked by Satyr's, then your epic quest starts in the village after helping him.

When you get to level 2 you'll be asked to choose from among 9 different masteries. There really is no right nor wrong choice, so you should select the mastery that best reflects the way you prefer to play, or specifically the type of skills you think are “cool”. When you get to level 8 you'll be asked to choose another mastery from the same list minus the one you already have.

I really recommend that you take the time, however tedious, to read through all the skills that each mastery provides, so you can make the right choice or the best one for you. I learned the hard way when I only read the summary of each mastery and later regretted it, so I had to start over and make the same mistake twice. After my third try, I was finally able to create a character better suited to my gaming style and equipped with skills that I preferred.

Having 72 different combinations, you have to make sure you are sure about your choice. On the upside, this huge variation ensures game replayability. When I reached level 2 I chose
Warfare mastery, and at level 8 I got Defense, thus becoming a Conqueror. The choices are Storm, Earth, Warfare, Spirit, Defense, Nature, Hunting, Rogue, and Dream.

When you finish the game you'll be able to play from the beginning but with a higher difficulty. There are 3 levels of difficulties that you wont reach until you complete the game at an easier one first, another reason for replayability. You'll most probably reach a point in the higher difficulty levels where the monsters can kill you with one hit, and that's when you begin to wonder if you chose the right mastery. Well, because of this I believe that you should always select Defense as either primary or secondary mastery, but that's just me.

TQ first immerses you in ancient Greece. At first you'll think that it's just a place and setting for the game, but as you play and speak to NPC's a whole new story and depth unfolds. I learned more about Greek and Egyptian mythology than I expected. It's highly educational actually, if you take the time to listen to each NPC's ramblings, and you'll actually love them for their voice acting are very good. THQ really proved they can make good quality and immersive storyline games with TQ.

I also recommend that you have to install both the original and expansion of TQ, and don't play the original game until after doing so. There are several reasons for this, one is that the original game is very buggy and tends to crash your system every few minutes, even with the latest updates I still am not convinced it fully fixed the stability. Another is that the original game lacks a lot of the features, monsters, items, and character interface upgrades, also only offers only 8 masteries as Dream comes with the expansion. Last and most important reason for me is that the expansion only adds 1 level after the end of the game, and even if you import a veteran character from the original, you'll have to start at the very beginning in the expansion, and you can't jump to where you left off. I found this really boring because my character was too powerful since he was already at the last part of the original game when I imported him to the expansion.

Multi player games are fun, expecially in the more difficult levels where a single player just can't get through anymore. The only lack is a PVP mode, or if it's in there I didn't find it.

TQ is the best Diablo clone I have ever played. Many times better than Sacred and Nox. I very highly recommend it for all players, especially new ones who want to play really good and not very difficult games. Actually, it's one of those games you can recommend to your non-gaming girlfriends, and they'll love you more for it.