Questions Before Buying

[Mr. Cakes]

I heard many people comparing this game to D3. I originally loved D3, until it became an excessive grind doing the exact same thing over again until I hated it. I would spend hours trying to gear and get nothing in return. Not only this, but the game is completely dead and the developers are milking a dead cow.

In what ways is this game better than Diablo 3? Preferably on replayability (if the repetition is actually fun), map size, variety of items/enemies, and customization (weapons, classes, etc).

If you wanted to get someone into Titan Quest, what would you tell them?

[Mivo]

From my perspective, it's not very much like Diablo 3. D3, to me, always felt like an arcade game more than an ARPG. It's much faster paced and very twitchy, with little character customization. Titan Quest is much closer to Diablo 2 than 3, closer to it than its own successor is.

Titan Quest is more story focused and has fixed maps, but these maps are very large and "make sense", so while the lack of randomization may seem like a minus, it doesn't really matter all that much in practice. Monsters are randomized as is loot (in fact, regular monsters drop what they wear, so if you see a mob equipped with a super shiny weapon, you may well get a nice drop from it!). The game starts relatively slow, but speeds up by around level 15-20.

There are three difficulties that you play through seamlessly with the same character, like in D2 and in D3's first incarnation. This is a little old-school, but I never minded it. The middle difficulty, Epic, is where the character owns everything it comes across, and then in Legendary, the third difficulty, the quality of the build is put to a test (and gear matters here).

The game can at times be grind-y. Loot is random, and there is no consideration for your class or for your build. In D3, you get loot for the class you play, but not in TQ, making TQ far more immersing (to me). There is incentive to keep items for future characters and farming usually yields something worth keeping, even if it's not for your character character. For me, this is a plus, but your mileage may vary.

There is a large number of possible builds to explore, and most of them work well. There are some that are better than average, and some that take more work, but there is a lot of room for customization. You can't change masteries (the combination of two masteries determines the class), but you can remove skill points from skills, so you won't get stuck with skills that you tried out and that didn't work for you. But you can still mess up a character by inefficiently using your attribute points, though the ideal distribution depends on the end game gear you will have. So there is room for experimentation and failure, and you may well decide to re-do a character by starting over. Gear is tradeable between characters, and leveling up to 60-ish is relatively fast (max level is 75, but it's not quick to achieve).

For me, TQ is all about the loot and loot hunting. Bosses are best for farming (especially the Secret Passage area whose treasure chest contains at least one guaranteed rare drop), but just clearing areas works as well (in D2 that was a waste of time, in TQ you have more options for how and where you farm items). Due to the random nature of loot and loot drops, farming can sometimes feel tedious or slow (much better if you have a bunch of characters so more loot will be useful for you, regardless of which character you find it with). I don't know how annoying farming is in D3 these days, but I remember feeling like a bot when I played the end game there. I got bored of it quickly. TQ is not an easy game, it doesn't guarantee you loot, and it can be pretty hard (there is no handholding), but I always enjoyed it, and still do.

So, in short, if you like Diablo 2 (nor 3), you will probably like TQ. If you played roguelike games before, and want something more accessible, you'll also like TQ. If you expect to playf from 1 to 75 without hitting walls in Legendary and having to farm, you will probably be disappointed, because there are plateaus in Legendary difficulty. The game starts easy, then gets harder, then easier, then harder, then fairly hard. :)

[darth.crevette]

Originally posted by Nexus Cakes:

If you wanted to get someone into Titan Quest, what would you tell them?

You're playing one of those legendary heroes from the ancient times, fighting satyrs, cyclopses, manticores, and giant yetis, following the silk road, going all the way up to Olympus and all the way down to Hades.

Builds are very varied, since you can combine any two "classes", with a total of 36 combinations (plus the 9 pure classes if you wish to go that way, but there's no real point save for the challenge). They also (usually) don't depend on getting specific pieces of gear or sets, although some can help make them shine, but are rarely best in slot.
Speaking of "best in slot", most of these will usually be dropped by specific monsters, and if you want those items with the right affixes you're going to need to grind these monsters a lot.

[Mivo]

One thing I forgot to mention that matters to me in games like this: In TQ, monsters do not scale to your level, but have set levels, so you will actually notice that your characters are getting stronger. D3 and various other games always felt very same-y to me because of the scaling.

[Mr. Cakes]

Are there dungeons in the game? Similar to Diablos Rifts?

It looks like a game that doesn't get boring once you finish it from what I hear and see. I don't mind grinding in games, but it matters on how it is done.
-Say if you have to farm the exact same area, fight the exact same enemies, to get the exact same loot for hours on end. That gets boring really quick.

[Sebastian]

Originally posted by Nexus Cakes:

Are there dungeons in the game? Similar to Diablos Rifts?

there are some literal dungeons, but nothing like what I think you mean.

Originally posted by Nexus Cakes:

It looks like a game that doesn't get boring once you finish it from what I hear and see. I don't mind grinding in games, but it matters on how it is done.
-Say if you have to farm the exact same area, fight the exact same enemies, to get the exact same loot for hours on end. That gets boring really quick.

if you are looking for uniques, you tend to grind bosses. as long as you are in the right difficulty/act for what you are looking for, you can grind any bosses, with varying efficiency.
if you are looking for monster infrequents (which are kinda like regular items on steroids and very sought after), your grind is generally limited to only very few locations unless you want an abysmally low drop rate.
you can of course get duplicate items, but that is not THAT common, at least for uniques. duplicate MIs is very rare.

[Mivo]

No, there is nothing like Rifts (D3), Maps (PoE) or other instanced end game content. It's like D2 in this regard: to farm and level up after you finished the game on all three difficulties, you go to whatever area or boss you want and clear those areas and bosses again. Maps always get re-populated when you make a new game.

[Belvuk]

I`ve owned the non-steam version before Steam was a thing, played it then and now i`m playing it again, in fact, i find it hard to stop playing it even though i`ve already cleared the game even in steam version (only on normal-easiest though). I haven`t played D3 (none actually) but the game is replayable. I find it a joy i can play for hours straight still. I don`t know what exactly is a big or small map for you but i`d say map here is quite big and there`s plenty of stuff to do. There`s plenty of items and every difficulty will introduce even more different ones. In fact, there are so many different items, you`ll replay the game several times and probably only scratch the surface of what you`ve seen that`s actually in the game. Customisation is alright, not too in depth but still not poor (alright when it comes to skills but no cosmetic ones , besides the gear change). You can enchant certain stuff and craft some artefacts but no further weapon customisation. That being said, there`s still an incredibly large choice of weapons for you to find and chose from so it`s not much of a bother, you will find stuff you`ll like all the time, for constant or situational use. You don`t have to grind to complete the game, though naturally you do have to get through what`s in your way, and farming only comes to it if you wish to farm bosses for items. I personally went back only to repeat one boss one time before the last act and it was since i was close to it and i could kill it fast and easy. Basically, what I got by just playing got me through the entire game on normal and is carrying me still on epic(2nd, 3rd and final is legendary) difficulty. However, if you want specific items or item sets, you will usually have to spend hours trying to get them and probably give up and go back to playing normally since the drop rates are not that great, unless in specific places used by people to farm for items. Still, you`ll find your items usually good enough to get you through the area even with no farming , depending on how you build your characters skill tree and if you`re trying to synergize your skills and equips and use them the best way possible at the moment(you`ll have to switch to situational some times, unless you get lucky with a great drop that can carry for a long time no matter what you face).

[LilithWolfbane]

In my opinion, I much prefer Titan Quest to D3. I understand completely what you mean by the grinding in D3; basically killing the same monsters, in the same place, for what feels like eternity, to essentially get the same loot. Titan Quest differs in that the monsters can and will be randomized every time you start a game. There are certain areas, such as beastmen camps, where there will always be beastmen, however the types of them that are there will be random. In some areas, there are alternate versions of certain maps, such as the labyrinth, where there is the possibility of getting skeletons OR hydras, thereby letting you farm for loot drops from each if you wish. I think the thing that keeps me playing, and farming, is that you never really know what will be around each corner. Now, maybe once you've played a thousand hours or something, you might be able to guess what might be coming to wreck you, but I'm still in the infant stage of 100+ hours playing...and I mean that in all seriousness-this game is addicting.

As stated above, the sheer variety of items that can be found in the game pretty much makes it rare to find the same item, with the exact same stats, more than once. Even if you get, say two Sabertooth swords ( a great monster infrequent sword that you WILL farm ), the stats on them are fairly randomized, so one might be better than the other. Meaning, yes, the repetition of farming in this game is FUN.

As far as character customization...D3 should have taken a few notes from Titan Quest. There are 36 possible classes, and I'm not even gonna try to do the math of how many different styles of each class someone could make. As stated above, some work great, some may not, it really depends on your playstyle. There are some really great guides out there to help out in class customization, and also some good ones for loot farming too.

So, in closing, if you were my friend or relative, heck, I'd probably just buy the game for you, lol, but I'd definitely recommend it. Come to Greece, Egypt, and China; fight titans and hydra, jackalmen and giant bugs, yetis and tigermen; run along the Great Wall of China; fight pharaohs in the Pyramids at Giza; find your way through the Minotaur's Labyrinth in Greece. It's all waiting for you...just hit that "buy" button, and join the fight to save the ancient world.