Titan Quest tastes like Diablo?

[CaseyV9]

I have been seeing the Diablo 3 trailers. I'm quite surprised how much I find myself wanting to play it.

I could get a new copy of Diablo 2 with the exspansion pack for the same price as Titan Quest and it's exspansion pack.
I used to have Diablo 2 installed on my PC. But the dated graphics of Diablo 2 bugged me so I abandoned it in favour of newer games. I want a good taste of Diablo.

Will Titan quest give me some indication of if Diablo 3 will be a game I'll enjoy?

[Zadock]

Hi Casey

Big titan quest player myself...

Was there anything specific you would like to know about it?

Basically titan quest is similar game play to Diablo but here are some differences.

Features:

1. Its 3D! - supports AA, so GFX are quite nice when you zoom in

2. With the expansion there are 32 character classes. You begin the game with no character class and when you level up the first time you choose your first class (Dream, Warfare, Defence, Rogue, Earth, Storm, Hunter, Spirit or Nature)... once you reach level 8 you are offered a second class. there are lots of interesting combinations; my personal favourites are The Oracle, Hauraspex and conquerer.

3. Weapons set: you can hold two sets of weapons and shields like Lord of destruction (i.e. press w and your using a different e.g. sword).

4. Stash system: Like D2 but you also have a transfer area that allows you to store items that your can view with any of your characters.

5. There is a portal System like D2 but you don't have to buy scrolls

6. There is a quick bar system for skills, scrolls and potions. I like the fact that you can hold a lot more potions than D2 and there is only one key per potion type (mana or health)

7. Multiplayer Its loby based through game spy or Lan

8. There are dozens of item types, sets etc etc.

9. You can create "artifacts"; there is a space on each character for one of these. They are orbs that provide particular benefits e.g. +1 to skills or sometimes unique abilities. I have one on one of my characters that causes blood to rain from the sky that burns surrounding enemies.

10... almost forgot, there are 3 levels of difficulty.

...sure there us more, any quesitons?

[ShenBlade]

Another big fan of Titanquest here, a lot of variety in terms of weapons and armour + the most satisfaction of seeing monsters fly high up in the air!

Gameplay similar to Diablo 2 but with better graphics and the storyline is quite good as well for the lore bunnies.

[CaseyV9]

Hi Zadock, thanks for offering me info.

I've been looking at this. One thing I can't seem to understand are the different character classes.
Hellgate let me down.

I know you got the barbarian and stuff. the others I don't know.
I like be a summoner type dude. The kind where eventually can summon up your own army. A bit like the Necromancer in D2. Is there such a class in world of Titan Quest?

Also I noticed a Rouge type class. Are they a fast sneaky knife weiding class?

[Whiternoise]

Hellgate failed in a number of areas, for me.

The game didn't really feel finished in my opinion, the interface looked a bit choppy and the general gameplay just felt like it had been cobbled together a bit. In effect it felt like some of those free to play MMO's you can download - a good effort, but not really a match for some of the other games on the market.

I thought they ruined it a bit by having the semi first person viewpoint, games like Diablo work best top down/isometric and zoomed back a bit so you have a clear view of the horde (). The way they did hellgate meant that it was a bit clumsy to move characters around, and there were times when it was impossible to keep track of enemies.

Thirdly, and perhaps the things that annoyed me the most was that i was forever picking up items that were no use to me. I mean, literally no use. I played as a templar/paladin/knight thing. So, sword and shield/gun type affair. It got really frustrating to continually have to drop guns and weapons because they were for different classes - and not really finding any that were of any use to me. Diablo got round this by letting every character wield just about every weapon, with some characters having certain perks and character only items.

Finally, the online. Ohh the online. This is where Hellgate shot themselves in the foot big time. Where Diablo reigned was in multiplayer. Hellgate decided to go the pay route. Not good. It really bugs me when you've coughed up for a pretty much single player game (ie NOT an MMO) and they charge you to get the best benefits for online play.

On the other hand, it looks quite swish, the monster variety is good and it's not an inherently bad game. It just isn't really polished enough to me, and the subscription fiasco is needless - it's like they were expecting a WoW or Diablo like following (sure, but Diablo was free if you remember).



Now.. Titan Quest.

From what i've player, it is pretty much EXACTLY Diablo, but set in mythological times. The graphics are nice, the transition between dungeons and overworld is well done - beats a black screen anyway! It's still got the random item affixes which i think is essential for any Diablo clone and it's got the good viewpoint/movement system. However, it's not as long as Diablo was, and there isn't quite as much buzz over the multiplayer aspects of it (afaik). What you've got to remember is that the key selling point of Diablo was replayability. Being able to meet up with friends and have a blast online, as well as typical Blizzard style easter eggs like the "secret" cow level, and the simply staggering amount of items that you can aspire to obtain.

Titan Quest is by far one of the best games to help you decide whether you're going to enjoy Diablo. The classes in these type of games vary a lot.

Diablo 2 had basically:

Sorceress - Elemental attacks, all round nuker really
Necromancer - Summoner
Assassin - Martial arts and traps
Paladin - Holy auras, big shields and swords
Barbarian - Tank, dual wields
Druid - Also summoner, nature attacks
Amazon - Projectiles

And it's likely to stay the same for D3. As for the rogue, it's likely to be an assassin type build - and from a quick google that appears to be the case. You've got things like gas bombs, specialist knife attacks, and other ninja style attacks. Sneaking isn't really what you do on Diablo - you either go up close and personal or ranged - either way your aim is to deal massive damage as openly as possible, so not really sneaky at all!

The Spirit class in Titan Quest is a summoning class, dunno about an army, but you can summon up single powerful units.

[ShenBlade]

you can actually build whatever combination by picking 2 masteries from 8 schools

if you like having a private army, you cant go wrong with

nature - 2 wolves and a nymph minion at higher levels

and you could combine it with spirit/fire which give you a powerful lich mage/elemental.

Each school has its pros and cons so my advice is just try it out and do some reading on the titanquest forums to suit your gameplay be it nuker fire/storm or melee war/rogue

[Zadock]

Hi Zadock, thanks for offering me info.

I've been looking at this. One thing I can't seem to understand are the different character classes.
Hellgate let me down.

I know you got the barbarian and stuff. the others I don't know.
I like be a summoner type dude. The kind where eventually can summon up your own army. A bit like the Necromancer in D2. Is there such a class in world of Titan Quest?

Also I noticed a Rouge type class. Are they a fast sneaky knife weiding class?

Basically what Shen says... but to elaborate.

there are 8 masteries, you can combine any two or just use one which gives a total of 32 classes.

The way it works is each time you level up you gain 2 attribute points and 3 skills points. You can put the skill points into specific skills or you can increase your mastery to gain access to higher skills. This is a big difference between D2 and TQ because in D2 skills became available to you as you reached particular levels. In TQ you can effective advance to high skills early in the game by pumping the mastery to gain them. By adding to the master you also gain extra hit points, dex, strength, intelligence and energy what the mastery increases is dependant on class. for example the warfare mastery increases str, dex and health and the earth mastery progresses intelligence, dex, health and energy.

On to your other question there abotu the rogue. The rogue cannot sneak but you do get some very interesting skills... the throwing knives are brilliant and have a 100% chance to pass throw enemies. You also get a skill called envenom weapon which adds poison damage and later on you get extra skills as part of this that allow you to confuse your enemies. On the left click( main attack) with a rogue you get a skill called calculated strike which activates on the 4th attack with a large amount of extra damage and piercing damage. The rogue can also lay traps.

To expand on the example of the rogue; if you combine rogue with hunting you get a class called a brigand. these do ridiculous damage because the skills syngerise really well predominantly because they have skills that increase piercing damage (which comes from bows and spears)

I would suggest downloading the demo but bear in mind that the demo doesn't include the immortal throne addon which enhances the game significantly. I would also suggest looking on youtube at game play videos.

[jonathan_phang]

Another vote here for you to try this out. I loved it. Not as much as D2, but it was great fun nonetheless... Give it a go, dont think that you will be disappointed...

@Zadock - what changes are there in the addon? I thought about getting it, but never did. Worth doing?

[Zhaoman]

Yes, Titan Quest is Diablo with better graphics and barechested Greeks. Simple as that!

[Ferral]

Only thing that I really found missing on Titan Quest and the expansion was actually the ingame movies that you get from chapter to chapter in Diablo 2.

Titan Quests start movie when you load up is awesome but that is the only one in the game. Also the end of Titan Quest and its expansion is poor to say the least. You get a paragraph of text spoken to congratulate you and thats it.

Diablo 2 has some of the greatest ingame movies ever. As you finish each chapter you get a long movie telling you where the story is going, really captures you.

Titan Quest is decent enough game though if you are wanting a Diablo stylee game, it also uses ragdoll effects on the monsters when you kill them. They always drop a different way and if you get a good critical hit you will send them flying off the screen. Visually it is very stunning, just a shame that the story wasn't overly great.

[MSIC]

This is really interesting, with my 2 other friends that I played D2 with, we moved over to Guild Wars to try to get a similar feel to D2 but better graphics, however it hasn't worked out exactly like that as GW is a MMO (but subscription free! Yay!).
I still miss D2, and probably will boot it back up soon anyway.

The one thing that i'd like to know about Titan Quest, that might make me buy it, is around weapons / armour / upgradeable items that are dropped.
In D2, there were many degrees of rarity for a given item, eg. once in 1000 items dropped you might get a gold item that was good, once in 10,000 you get something really kick-ass etc, and then there were the green item sets that were really hard to collect. It gave you a real buzz getting these, giving D2 a 'keep on going' aspect, to see what you could get.
How does TQ do with this? Does it feel just as exciting when you get things?
GW does have dropped items, but to be honest the dropped items do not really get any better as you level up.

Oh, and of course GW is capped at 20 levels anyway, which you actually achieve really early on in playing and then don't feel like you make any progress (in terms of leveling up or developing your character).

[ShenBlade]

Yep,

basically there are 3 levels of diffuculty with each level being accessible once you complete the current level which increase the power of the item (similiar to diablo 2) to deal with the increased monster power

There are sets for everything with lots of items with the power being:

green items<blue items<purple items with items like Zeus thunderbolt or obsidian armour with unique looks so your character does truly look awesome

[Zadock]

This is really interesting, with my 2 other friends that I played D2 with, we moved over to Guild Wars to try to get a similar feel to D2 but better graphics, however it hasn't worked out exactly like that as GW is a MMO (but subscription free! Yay!).
I still miss D2, and probably will boot it back up soon anyway.

The one thing that i'd like to know about Titan Quest, that might make me buy it, is around weapons / armour / upgradeable items that are dropped.
In D2, there were many degrees of rarity for a given item, eg. once in 1000 items dropped you might get a gold item that was good, once in 10,000 you get something really kick-ass etc, and then there were the green item sets that were really hard to collect. It gave you a real buzz getting these, giving D2 a 'keep on going' aspect, to see what you could get.
How does TQ do with this? Does it feel just as exciting when you get things?
GW does have dropped items, but to be honest the dropped items do not really get any better as you level up.

Oh, and of course GW is capped at 20 levels anyway, which you actually achieve really early on in playing and then don't feel like you make any progress (in terms of leveling up or developing your character).

In answer to your question... "How does TQ do with this? Does it feel just as exciting when you get things?"

YES.

There are some nice additions at each difficulty level; for example "beasts of legend", includes some nasties from greek myth such as the hydra. You find these pop up in particular places so you haev to go looking for them.

There is a level cap of 75. There are a lot of new items to be found, I've recently had a proper crack at Legendary difficulty with the conquerer class and I'm finding a lot more stuff than I did in the previous difficulty (Epic).

the Item types are as follows:

Blue: (Epic I think these are called), these can be set or individual unique items of which there are armors, rings, amulets etc etc

Purple: Legendary items (as above), I've recently found some amazing shields of this variety.

Green: Rare monster specific drops... there are a lot of these! some almost form sets. Also they occur for different difficulties so you get the same item but of a higher quality depending on what difficulty you are on. the most famous green on the game, and I have one of these on my conquerer, is the "Stone Binders Cuffs" which can add up to 3 to all skills. One more thing to add about greens is that they can potentially be more powerful than blues or purples because you can imbue them using relics found in the game. Relics are not unlike runes or gems in D2 but you don't have to have sockets on an item to add them. Relics also also occur to higher qualities depending on the difficulty e.g. Normal: Esscence of Herakles Might; Epic; Embodiment of Herakles Might and Legendary: Incarnation of Herakles Might

Yellow: basically everything else.

Artifacts: ever more power recipes to be found.

There is also a secret level that can be accessed at each difficulty and you get the key from the end boss on Hades.

I have an absolute ton of gear so if anyone is playing and is after anything let me know, I may have what your after and I'm open to trade

[CaseyV9]

Thanks all.

I looked on Find-games.co.uk. As I couldn't find these games in the shops.
Well, I can find Diablo 2 but not the add-on pack that'll allow the higher resolution.

I downloaded the Titan Quest demo on my slow internet connection from steam.
I quite like this. I ordered a copy of Titan Quest Gold. It arrived yesterday when I was out so I have got to collect it.

On the demo it looked very pretty with all the settings ramped up. Just as things got repetitive different foes came and kept it fresh. And buy then the levelup got me hooked. Can't wait for this.

Also, I heard the company behind this game went bust? So no more add-on packs then?

[Ferral]

Yeah IronLore went bust unfortunately. It was another piracy helped kill us sort of thing, shame really as anothet TQ expansion would have been good.

Must admit loved the boss battles on TQ, not quite as big as D2 but critters like the Minotaur boss will have you tearing your hair out.

[MSIC]

I hadnt realised TQ was available on Steam, i've been using that more and more recently. Thanks CaseyV9.