Thirith on 31/5/2012 at 14:54
Quote Posted by faetal
Titan Quest is quite anodyne, but it's also like crack.
Got to level the fuck up, improve skills.
Need more loot. More rare shit.
Need to kill new shit.
When's the next boss?
Etc...
Well, that's the entire genre. As long as there aren't any revolutionary changes, for me it's down to these two things:
- How polished are the mechanisms? (How cool/useful are the skills? How's the balancing? To what extent can I have different play styles that don't just boil down to "Well, the stuff you're throwing at your enemies has a different colour..."? etc.)
- How atmospheric is the game?
In terms of polish, I thought that
Titan Quest was fairly good, but as you mention, it was anodyne. At least for me,
Diablo is far more atmospheric, and it's the atmosphere that keeps me from realising just how empty the game is.
Jason Moyer on 31/5/2012 at 15:21
Titan Quest's skill trees kick the living shit out of any clickPG that's ever been made. As far as atmosphere goes, if you can't get into the idea of running through the ancient Greek countryside beating the hell out of mythical creatures then there might be something wrong with you.
Ulukai on 31/5/2012 at 15:55
Quote Posted by faetal
£45!? Fuck an entire KILO of that then.
Got it for £28 from Amazon with some discount code.
Thirith on 31/5/2012 at 16:29
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
As far as atmosphere goes, if you can't get into the idea of running through the ancient Greek countryside beating the hell out of mythical creatures then there might be something wrong with you.
Not enough, and why should it be? That's about as facile as "If you don't like pirates and zombies and zombie pirates, there's something wrong with you" as a reason why people should enjoy the second and third
Pirates of the Caribbean film. I like Greek mythology, but still found
Titan Quest much less atmospheric than the
Diablo games.
driver on 31/5/2012 at 18:32
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
Titan Quest's skill trees kick the living shit out of any clickPG that's ever been made.
They did ensure that you never had to invest points in a skill you'd never use just so you could unlock the next one along (a la Diablo 2), but did fall foul of having skills that did set amounts of damage per point invested in them. That meant you could be hilariously over-powered early on if you dumped a load of points in single skill, only for it to swing the other way later on (The Ice Shard spell, for example). Diablo 3 fixed that by having the skills work off a percentage of your current weapon damage, ensuring that no skill ever became obsolete, rather they were situational or appealed to different play styles.
Much as I like skill trees and investing points to unlock new abilities, I do like D3's system as it encourages experimentation and doesn't penalise you for trying something different. Something which D2 was guilty of, it had the illusion of choice but anything other than 1 or 2 specific builds meant that the harder levels were simply impossible.
Jason Moyer on 1/6/2012 at 02:02
I never really felt overpowered early in TQ, since you have to invest points in the general class skill to unlock the higher level powers. I actually ended up respeccing once near the end of Immortal Throne because a particular section of Hades was kicking my ass repeatedly and I had wasted too many points on low level skills early in the game before I figured out that maxing out the class skill before grabbing anything else was important.
Pemptus on 1/6/2012 at 08:43
Enjoyment in Titan Quest is very much dependant on the class you choose. Often the most effective classes are the most boring to play, with their one skill spammage. The trick is to pick a class that forces you to juggle a few skills to survive. I had a fair amount of fun with a Corsair (defense + rogue), but it relied too heavily on poison, which doesn't scale well at all at higher difficulties.
driver on 1/6/2012 at 16:36
Veering back to Diablo for a moment, I've managed to open the hidden level. If anyone wants to come and see it then pm me and I'll send you my Battlenet ID.
Phatose on 4/6/2012 at 01:44
Well, got hacked today. Lost all of my equipment, and told basically "Buy this $6.50 dongle (only $10 shipping!)" and maybe this won't happen again.
Well, I suppose 90 hours of fun is more then I get out of a lot of games. Onto the trash heap it goes.
The Alchemist on 4/6/2012 at 06:43
How did you get hacked? You do realize you having been hacked has zero to do with Blizzard and everything to do with your computer, yes?
In any case, that sucks bro!
