Well I’m going to try to write this review without referring to its striking resemblance to Diablo 2 or even mentioning that hallowed game in the first place. Oh, crud, I already blew it. Oh well, there you have it – Titan Quest is the Diablo 2 of Classical Greece. Now you’ve probably seen your share of Diablo 2 knock-offs but I have to warn you not to write-off the game because of that. While plenty of games have tried to blatantly rip-off Diablo 2 without capturing any of its allure, Titan Quest comes across as more of an homage to that game. An updated and tweaked version of the classic, if you will, because regardless of its inspiration or origins Titan Quest can be a fun game in its own right and is definitely worth a look. Alright, enough with the Diablo 2 already, let’s look at Titan Quest itself.

Titan Quest takes place in Ancient Greece at a time of great crisis. The Titans of old have escaped from the prison crafted for them by the gods of Greek mythology and want to take out their anger on the poor Greeks. Doing most of the dirty work for the Titans are a horde of creatures drawn from Greek mythos including satyrs, harpies, and cyclopses (cyclopi?). You take on the role of a lone warrior who has risen to face this challenge and save humanity, and soon you’ll find yourself not only battling to save Greece, but other centers of ancient civilization as well including Egypt and Babylon.

The basic gameplay follows the click to kill model pioneered by Diablo. You’ll click on a spot to move to that location and click on a monster to attack it. Battles involve clicking and holding the mouse button with the cursor on an enemy until that enemy dies and you move the cursor to the next enemy, with an occasional number key press to fire off a spell or drink a potion. The game itself is a very linear progression from one quest to another, with optional side quests thrown in for good measure. All that you really need to do is to click on a quest giver when you see one (they’re marked with exclamation marks over their heads) and then make your way down the road until you kill the right creature to complete your quest. There’s not much in the way of exploration or puzzle solving in the game as you just need to make sure that you covered all of the ground in an area before moving on to the next one, which is pretty easy to do using the game’s mini-map.

If you’re looking for an in-depth RPG or never really cared for click-happy action-RPG games, then Titan Quest is definitely not for you. If you don’t fall into those two categories, though, Titan Quest is worth a look because what it does it does quite well. The game features a character customization system that forgoes the use of pre-defined classes. Instead you select from one of eight “masteries” that include earth, storm, spirit, warfare, defense, nature, hunting, and rogue once you hit level 2. At level 8 you’ll be able to select a second mastery, giving you 56 possible combinations of character types. Further customization is supported within each mastery as you spend skill points earned whenever you gain a level. These points can be spent to strengthen existing skills or to raise your overall level within a mastery to give you access to higher level skills. This system gives you a lot of leeway to create a character to fit your style of play and to make the experience a bit different should you play through the game a second time.

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