Six years, Shack menz. Six long years, and Diablo II is still on my hard drive. Well, perhaps "still" is a bit inaccurate. I mean, it's on here right now, but I don't think I've ever installed then reinstalled any game (hell, any software app in general) more than D2. There just hasn't been a hack-n-slash RPG like it since, and you know, on Install # 177, I really started to think that there probably never would be.

And then I heard about Titan Quest. Titan Quest, Iron Lore's spiritual successor to Blizzard's classic, and I thought, "This is good." I also thought, "'Bout friggin' time." So does Titan Quest take the crown, or is Satan still Ruler Supreme of all dungeon crawlers?

As mentioned, Titan Quest is, essentially, Diablo II with a fresh coat of paint. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, it is inevitable that anyone who has even heard of the Diablo series will compare it with Diablo, tit-for-tat. So, what I've decided to do is focus on the core areas of each game and how they compare. If you have only a passing familiarity (or no familiarity at all) with Diablo II, fret not. Each aspect of Titan Quest, good or bad, is explained to the fullest so that prospective buyers know exactly what they're getting into. I will also, in fairness, dedicate a section that judges Titan Quest based on its merits alone, because however much it resembles Diablo II, Titan Quest is a separate game—though not by much.

Alrighty then. Without further ado, let's do this.

Character Creation & Development

In this area, I find Titan Quest to be greater than Diablo II. TQ allows you to make your character whatever you want him or her to be, primarily, through the use of the Mastery system. Here's how it works: The first time you level up, you choose one of 8 Mastery trees. For example, I wanted my first character to be an elementalist, so I went with Storm (ice and lightning). At level 8, you are allowed to choose a second Mastery, should you so desire. I went with Earth (fire and rock), thereby creating the perfect elementalist combination.

Why wait until level 8 to choose a second Mastery, should you feel so inclined? It's actually quite clever. For the first 7 levels, you are forced to focus on your primary Mastery so that you feel your character has a real proficiency. Going with 2 Masteries right from the get-go might not have been too confusing for veteran hack-n-slashers, but I found it to be helpful. I was able to develop my Storm tree before having to worry about spreading my Skill points between multiple Masteries.

However, what if you want the best of both the melee and sorcery worlds? Half warrior, half spell-slinger... yeah, that sounds cool. Well, in TQ, you can do that. Go with just Storm or just Fire, then for your second Mastery, choose Warfare. Voila: you've got yourself a decent spell caster and a decent fighter. Or, maybe you want to go pure spell casting but worry about the physical weaknesses those characters are usually cursed with. In this case, you could choose Storm or Earth and Defense. It's this amount of customization that gives Titan Quest such phenomenal replayability, because even if you happen to create more than one character with the exact same 1 or 2 Masteries, you can switch up your skill point allocation to make them unique. While Diablo II has a great cast of character classes, if you choose a Barbarian, then that's exactly what you are; a rough-n-tumble kinda guy with no real chance of slinging cool skills.

Unlike Diablo II, you don't just have to think about which Skills to pop your precious skill points into. Each Mastery also has an overall proficiency level that must be increased, which serves two purposes: attaining other skills (e.g., putting your first skill point into your overall proficiency unlocks the first tier of skills; putting 4 points total unlocks the second tier, 10 for the third, and so on); and secondly, to upgrade your character as a whole. With each skill point spent toward your overall Mastery proficiency, you'll get bonuses to certain attributes. For example, the Storm proficiency increases your Energy, Intelligence, and Health when you drop a point into it. This makes sense for spell casters. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Warfare increases Strength because you'll need stronger armor and melee weapons for that Mastery to be useful.

Just in case some of you Shackers are afraid of commitment, there are a couple of ways that you can actually retract skill points, which is quite a handy feature. The first of which is with the Undo button. When you level up and spend a point on a skill, the Undo button lights up. Let's say you accidentally clicked a spell you have no further use for, or perhaps didn't even want in the first place. Click Undo, and you get your skill point back. Here's the catch: once you close the Skill window, Undo can no longer be used. Plan and spend wisely!

But not too wisely, it would seem. Scattered throughout the game are Mystics, who, for a price, can give you your spent skill points back. The more you retrieve, the more you'll have to spend, but it's nice to know you can work on other more advanced skills if you find those early game skills are no longer serving their intended purpose.

Due to the fact that the game has no idea what kind of character you'll eventually want, you don't have a lot of options at the start of the game pertaining to what you want your character to look like. You choose male or female, a color for your tunic (... okay...) and get to slashing. Items and Masteries are completely responsible for making your avatar look different than all the other boys and girls out there, since you'll all have the same body build, face, et cetera. In my view, this makes the aesthetics of the characters (barring what you'll look like with all sorts of cool gear) rather disappointing.

Also in the vein of starting out with a simple character is the attribute system. Again, since Titan Quest will have no clue as to what kind of character you'll be building, the stats start out generally the same. I found this to be a boon, since I felt I was given more control over my character. Using my elementalist as an example, I started out with decent strength, so I was able to easily survive (and hence enjoy) the early part of the game, which isn't usually a lot of fun for mage classes. Of course, as I progressed, I ceased distributing points to attributes such as Dexterity, but that's where the careful balancing of TQ came into play: I stopped putting points into Dexterity because I no longer needed that particular attribute. At the beginning of the game it was necessary because my magic spells took a little while to become useful. Once they were, however, I stopped fighting with my fists, so to speak, and started to really completely on magic.

Mechanics & Aesthetics

The whole purpose of Titan Quest is to take Diablo II and improve upon it in virtually every way possible. The easiest part to upgrade was the graphics. I'll be the first to preach that gameplay > graphics, but even when it was released in 2000, Diablo II looked pretty dated. TQ is determined to stay ahead of the game, and I think they'll be able to do just that for quite some time. Widescreen resolutions are available, as is a zoom function that shows incredible detail in those tiny crevices of game worlds you don't really think to look. For example, you can zoom in on a vendor's ware table and actually see individual swords, potions, and armor. It doesn't affect the gameplay, but it's a great touch. Fields of hay and flowerbeds will sway as your character breezes through, and nighttime looks especially gorgeous with haunting lighting affects and creepy shadows.

Mechanically, all the annoying little quirks of Diablo II seem to have been ironed out. Running, for example, is the only way your character can move, and you don't have a Stamina bar to slow you down—pardon the pun. My favorite addition is the fact that when you hover your cursor over, say, a sword, a small window pops up that shows you the weapon you already have equipped. This allows you to easily compare your equipped weapon and prospective weapon without having to look at one then the other, back and forth, to get an idea of which you should use.

In addition to running, traveling in Titan Quest is handled via a Portal system that is almost identical to Diablo II's. Waypoints exist all over the different worlds, allowing you to easily return to different areas. Rebirth Fountains are a new addition that allow you to start at them after saving and quitting, or dying. The best part of the Portal system is the Portal Stone, TQ's answer to D2's Town Portal. Once you activate the first portal in TQ, you are given a Portal Stone that you can use at any time to return to any Portal you have activated. So when your inventory is full, press the Portal Stone Key to make a portal which will allow you to quickly travel back to any Portal you've already activated. The Stone can be used whenever and wherever; you don't have to buy more or waste inventory space carrying it. Like I said, it's the little stuff that has been changed to make all the difference.

The map system is my only real complaint. In the upper-right corner of your screen you have a small compass map that shows what surrounds your immediate vicinity (NPCs, shrines, et cetera). By pressing the Map key, you can look at a much larger portion of the game world—but unless you're already moving, you cannot run around with the map on. What's more, the map isn't transparent, so even if you could move with the map active, you couldn't really see what's coming at you. Yes, the map has handy icons that represent almost everything you need to see, such as NPCs; Quests; shrines, POIs (Points of Interest; usually optional areas like caves); and vendors. However, I honestly cannot remember playing Diablo II without the map on so that I could easily see what ground I've covered and what I've yet to explore. Yes, the map in TQ is prettier and in a sense far more handy, but the fact that you have to stop every 5-10 steps and open the map to see where you need to go is extremely trivial.

The major difference between Diablo II and Titan Quest is that the latter does not employ random level generation. The drops are random, the monsters are random, but the levels are not. Good or bad? Eh, I'm on the fence on this one. On the one hand, it was cool to never really play the same larger area of Diablo II twice. The major quest areas were, for the most part, always the same, but that wasn't a big deal. Titan Quest has tremendous replay value due to the characters you can build. Yes, playing the exact same levels over and over again will get rather repetitive, but hey, Diablo II didn't have random quests, and again, only the large areas of the game were randomly generated; all the important stuff was, for the most part, set in stone.

Given that the map won't be randomly regenerated when you reload your saved game (Diablo II's wasn't either, unless you deleted the .map file, in which case, just as on an Open or Closed Battle.net game, the map was regenerated) since the map remains the same, the areas you've already explored are shown in gray. Thankfully, just as in D2, the monsters come back to life, so you can go around and kill everything again for more loot and experience.

Another aspect I feel should be mentioned is that item drops actually work in a pseudo-realistic manner in Titan Quest. Not every enemy has the chance of dropping any ol' item. If you kill an archer, the creature will drop a bow. If you kill an undead wielding a magic staff that shoots fire, you'll be able to claim that actual staff. While I personally enjoy this little feature, I did find it annoying that several areas of the game are populated with creatures that will obviously not be able to drop any cool loot. Sure, I got decent amounts of experience, but let's face it, dungeon crawls are all about souping up your character will uber-hot items, and going through periods without finding any shiny pretties is kind of a bummer.

Online

Before I go any further, I should mention something that is, for some gamers, a deciding factor in whether or not to buy a PC RPG these days. There is not, in any capacity, player-vs-player (PvP, for those who don't know the lingo) in Titan Quest. None. Why not? Because according to the Dead Horse Issues listed on the official TQ website, "The resources necessary to support solid PvP, as well as the design compromises that are needed to keep it balanced, just didn't make the cut. We put everything we had into the single-player and co-op experiences." Some may consider that a bad thing, and as mentioned, many gamers may choose to skip a TQ purchase entirely. But that would really be a mistake. Titan Quest does what it sets out to do very well, and that is to create a rich single player or co-op experience. Besides, chances are good that PvP will be available via some user-created mod at some point, though that is not guaranteed! The Dead Horse issues page states: "We will be releasing as many [modding] tools as we can ... Whether that's enough to make mods that change [features such as PvP] remains to be seen.")

Everything here is pretty much identical to Diablo II, except of course, you don't have Battle.net to waste time... er, deal with. Your party can consist of up to 6 players, and you share everything: experience, gold, quest status, the works. Trading takes place via easy to use trade windows, and you can of course opt to trade with gold or other items in order to get what you want from your comrades.

Online usually ends up being a ton of fun given all the unique character combinations that are available in Titan Quest. It makes me wish for the possibility of more than 6 players total, because you can really achieve some nice buffs (enhancements) from all the different characters you're liable to run into.

The World Is Yours

In what many gamers may consider to be the ultimate trump card for Titan Quest, the game ships with a full-featured map editor. Diablo II could be modded, but the limitations were often very much just that: limited. Using the map editor, you will be able to create your very own Quests to distribute online and play with friends, or even on your own. Unfortunately I got my review build a bit late, so I didn't get to play with this feature much, (read as: "at all") but I wanted to make sure that all you level builders out there knew that the game does in fact come with a map editor. Just because I'd like to see if it could be done, (and because I have neither the skills nor the inclination to do it myself) I challenge the Shack Level Gods to create a Diablo II total conversion. Ready... GO!

I... STAND ALONE!

Let's say you've never played Diablo II before, or have perhaps only dipped into the wading area of the hack-n-slash genre pool. Is Titan Quest a good game all on its own? For the most part. The graphics are great, as is the character development, and the gameplay is simple enough to not require much thought when it comes to combat, yet deep and robust enough to allow the majority of your focus to rest where it's supposed to: finding cool loot and building the coolest character possible.

I found the pace in Titan Quest to be a bit slower than I was used to, and while many could argue that I'm using comparisons in a section of the review where I said I would not, I think that even someone who has never played a dungeon crawler before will find the game's pacing to be at a plodding rate. It takes quite a while to level up in TQ, which isn't a problem in and of itself, but rather, the end result of odd design choices. For example, when wading through clusters of foes that were at least equal to my character level (or perhaps a bit above), I repeatedly came upon groups of enemies 5-10 levels lower than my character. Why would you stick a bunch of level 1 vultures in a cluster of level 10-15 enemies? They don't drop items, and at the point I had reached, level 1 creatures did nothing for my experience gain.

There are many side areas in TQ (mostly caves) that exist for no other purpose than to give the player more experience and a bit of treasure. Now, that's cool and all, but most of these places where no more than 6-10 rooms deep, and oftentimes the creatures were at a far lower level than my character, so I often felt as though I was wasting my time.

Conclusion

Since the games are so similar, many gamers have already made up their minds to view Titan Quest as nothing more than something to hold them over until the inevitable release of Diablo III. Please—don't. Firstly, Diablo III probably won't be out until at least 2012, knowing Blizzard; and second, Titan Quest is a very good game that can stand on its own two legs. Yes, it's almost identical to Diablo II in countless different ways, but it's unique enough that both D2 fans and gamers that are looking for their first foray into dungeon crawling will find copious amounts of enjoyment. This is a great game, and well worth your time and money.