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Deserves to be nominated for a Labor of Love award | Review - Titan Quest: Ultimate Edition

3K View2023-11-30

Titan Quest: Ultimate Edition

8.5

ActionRPGCo-opHack And Slash

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✨Overview

Titan Quest is an action role-playing game originally released in 2006 and has since been updated with new DLCs and ported to mobile multiple times, bringing this classic to new audiences time and time again, introducing various generation of gamers to a mythical journey through ancient civilizations. It has stood the test of time and continues to captivate audiences across different platforms.

🟩Pros

+Premium classic ARPG experience for mobile
+Deep and expansive character customization and progression
+Includes all DLCs, amounting to over a hundred hours' worth of content
+Controller support
+Cloud saves

🟥Cons

-HUD and text sizes are smaller than I preferred
-No multiplayer support

⭐️Score: 8/10

📜Background

Ever since mobile games got better in quality and capability, we started getting some proper PC / Console ports with games like GTA Vice City and Star Wars: KOTOR. Another underrated game on that list is Titan Quest, one of the games that came in my radar before as a compelling alternative to Diablo for mobile phones (Before Diablo Immortal was a thing). Honestly, it’s one of my favorite classic ARPG games.

What’s great is that it comes with a premium one-time payment model that doesn’t have any ads or pay-to-win aspects, just pure DLC content. Well, that one-time payment might have just been a lie, as Titan Quest is a title that just keeps on evolving into many forms, with good reason. Now with another rerelease as Titan Quest: Ultimate Edition, is this release the game’s final form?

Titan Quest: Ultimate Edition serves as a complete compilation of the whole Titan Quest saga, and has all the updates and DLCs included. For comparison, it’s last edition — Legendary Edition, is missing the newest DLC: Eternal Embers. Luckily, it’s available as an in-app DLC purchase for roughly the difference in price between the two editions. If you already own the previous version, then you’d just want to buy the DLC separately. If you own the base game version, you can just get the DLCs inside the app. It’s kinda confusing. Actually. To summarize, the DLCs it comes with are the only difference in these editions. To clarify, there is no "Ultimate Edition" package on PC, only on mobile. on PC, you need to buy the base game and the DLCs separately.

📖Story and Premise

Set against the backdrop of a world inspired by ancient myths and historical civilizations. Titan Quest places players in the role of a hero chosen by the gods to confront mythical creatures and prevent an impending catastrophe. Initially started at as a Greek/Roman mythology inspired game, it has now evolved and expanded to more mythologies and legends with Norse, Egyptian, and Asian mythologies, among others.

🎨Graphics and Art Style

Despite its age of almost 20 years, Titan Quest's graphics have aged gracefully with its impressive lighting and clean CGI or clay-like 3D design, and recent adaptations have further enhanced the visual experience. The art style, a harmonious blend of historical accuracy and mythological fantasy, breathes life into the game's diverse environments. The adaptation to modern platforms — including the now powerful mobile platform — has allowed for improved textures, lighting effects, and overall graphical fidelity.

🎮Gameplay

Titan Quest's gameplay is rooted in the classic ARPG formula, offering a combination of exploration, combat, and character progression. It’s very similar to Diablo and commonly compared to that game for good reason. Players create a character by choosing from various classes, each representing a unique playstyle and skill set. The game encourages experimentation, allowing players experiment with different builds and playstyles.

The expansive world is divided into acts, including the DLC content in which Immortal Throne adds a fourth Act, while Ragnarok adds a fifth act and perhaps the biggest DLC out of all. The other two smaller DLCs are Atlantis and Eternal Embers and offer additional extra content and story but not added as an additional Act.

The non-linear structure enables exploration and side quests, providing a sense of freedom within the overarching narrative. The variety of environments and enemies keeps the gameplay engaging, preventing repetition as players journey through different realms.

⚔️Combat

Titan Quest features a traditional ARPG style real-time combat system. The fluidity of combat, variety of skills; melee, ranged, or casted, combined with a diverse array of enemies, creates a fun experience that you’d usually find in ARPGs. The ragdoll system ford dying enemies was ahead of its time in 2006, and still impresses me until now.

Unlike modern ARPG that focuses on mobility and fast-paced combat, Titan Quest is literally a classic or traditional ARPG like Diablo II, stationary attacks with both feet planted for the character while he/she attacks. Simply put, if you love the style of Diablo II, even the recent Resurrected edition, this game is right up your alley.

⏫Progression

Titan Quest boasts a comprehensive progression system that empowers players to tailor their characters through class selection, skill tree development, and attribute allocation. Character advancement primarily occurs through completing quests, earning experience points, and unlocking new skills. The story missions and Acts serve as main anchors or guides in progressing through the game.

The itemization system features a typical randomized loot system with varied rarity tiers, as players discover and equip weapons, armor, and magical artifacts. The joy of discovering a rare item after a challenging battle or and long day of farming is always a satisfying and gratifying feeling in ARPG games, and Titan Quest does not disappoint.

Crafting and enchanting options further enhance gear, while set items and relics contribute to strategic customization. The intricate synergy between character progression and itemization forms the core of Titan Quest, providing a dynamic and rewarding journey through its mythological realms. A lot of builds are viable and entirely up to the player’s experimentation, and the game’s offline singleplayer oriented focus instead of a live service or pay to win system ensures that good ‘ol uninterrupted gameplay fun is prioritized over anything else.

🕹Controls

It’s essential the same gaming experience with its PC counterpart, and the biggest difference mechanically is the built-in touch controls. It’s implemented decently in this case, and if you’re used to mobile MOBA or ARPG games, this won’t take any effort to get used to. In any case, physical controllers are supported, like an Xbox or PlayStation gamepad connected over bluetooth.

When moving with the left stick on both touch and joystick controls, the character slightly glides around when stopping which makes it a bit floaty, a clear leftover from the game being originally designed as a point-and-click game for PC. The touch controls have a lot of room for improvement, for example, you can’t change the placement of UI elements, and I found the HUD to be very small, even at maximum scale setting, again another leftover from it’s PC roots.

Technical Performance

Speaking of HUD size, the text and icons are also a bit small, and this can pose a problem for other players. Reading the dialogue and identifying skill icons can be harder than usual.

On my Snapdragon 888 device, performance hovers around 60fps for the most part, and when uncapped reaching at 120fps at times especially during indoors. However, it occasionally dips to around 30s and 40s during intensive scenes and while moving around the world, which slightly takes away from the experience. Capping the frame rate to 60 or 30 if you can tolerate it, seems much better. I did encounter a minor bug with the cap being incorrectly set to 20FPS sometimes, but it’s easily solvable by changing the settings back and forth.

Despite the PC version supporting multiplayer, it’s sad to report that this mobile edition currently still does not support multiplayer. It does feature cloud save though, which is nice and allows you to protect and preserve your progress and even play back and forth on multiple mobile devices.

💵 Pricing

Titan Quest Ultimate Edition is being sold at $25, you might think it’s a little big high, but it’s actually already a great value for a decent AAA gaming experience, and this is how you get more AAA games for mobile. With the base game and it’s four DLCs included, this could potentially give players over a hundred hours of content.

⚖️Conclusion

In revisiting Titan Quest through its Ultimate Edition, I am still amazed at the developers/publishers continued support for this game and the mobile platform. The interface doesn’t feel modern, but more than ever, it offers a compelling value for a comprehensive and timeless ARPG adventure, making it and a worthwhile addition for any serious mobile ARPG gamers out there.

Mentioned games

Titan Quest: Ultimate Edition

8.5

ActionRPGCo-opHack And Slash

Get