Immortal Throne is the expansion pack to last year’s brilliant Titan Quest, picking up directly after the climatic final boss fight against Typhon at Olympus. You are then ported to Rhodes only to discover that the world is still in peril, which leaves you to continue busting heads until you’ve found the source of this new evil. Eventually gamers will find themselves diving into the underworld itself, as the new evil lurks within Hades. The story is once again extremely well told, and still has plenty of Greek mythology to keep gamers occupied until the end.
One year on, and the gameplay hasn’t changed too drastically. The similarities between Titan Quest and Diablo II are still apparent, though a bit more fleshed out and accessible compared to Blizzard’s mammoth action-RPG title. You’ll still be required to fulfil quests – main and side objectives – to progress the story and equip your character with new items and abilities, as well as still needing to run across environments and through deep dungeons to slaughter throngs of enemies to reach your goal or to find rare items. There are a number of noticeable changes to the way the game is played by the inclusion of new and more intelligent enemies, as well as there being plenty of boss battles. Both of these inclusions provide much more strategy and skill than what was previously required in Titan Quest.
Even the most smallest of enemies are a tough feat.
In addition, to excel on the brilliant effort shown by Iron Lore in Titan Quest, the company has refined a few areas of the game, as well as adding a number of changes that makes the game that much more easier to enjoy. The game now gives you the ability to purchase powerful one-use spell scrolls, which are extremely helpful. You’ll also now be able to find formulas throughout the game that can be combined to create powerful artefacts that do a great job of bolstering your character’s attributes and abilities. There’s also a caravan system where you can store your extra items to free up inventory space, as well as using this new feature to transfer items between your characters that have been imported into Immortal Throne.
Another great addition is that once you die your corpse will now leave behind a tombstone, which when reclaimed you’ll gain some of the experience points that you lost by dying. Meanwhile, there are a number of minor inclusions such as a clock that tells you just how long you’ve gone without sleep to play the game, an auto-sort button that manages your inventory, new map icons and a few graphical upgrades that makes the game look a lot better.
One man, one war.
Probably the most significant inclusion to Immortal Throne is the new mastery, Dream mastery. This new mastery allows you to use a variety of dark and powerful abilities that help increase your general attacks, manipulate time and summon powerful minions to aid you. Unfortunately, none of the previous mastery skill sets have been given new abilities to work towards, which is a bit of a slap to the face when this new mastery has all these neat new abilities while the others get nothing.
And finally, the multiplayer has also been slightly revamped. The lobby has been altered in a number of ways, allowing gamers to easily identify what game suits their needs. Several in-game multiplayer options have also been changed to allow for easier accessibility too.
Much like the original, Immortal Throne is still hurt by a few graphical hiccups. Regardless of the system, you’re still likely to run into a few framerate drops, and this is likely to be a bigger problem for gamers that had trouble with the original (due to the graphical enhancements Immortal Throne has made). Though, there’s still a lot to appreciate, which is a remarkable feat for a game in this genre. Environments are much more detailed and are full of heaps of features, generally ranging from mere water effects to being jammed-packed with added scenery. The game also flexes a variety of new creatures that are well designed and fit perfectly within the game.
Still a visually marvellous game.
Audio generally sounds much better than the original, which is probably thanks to the ability to now play the game with Dolby 4.1 and 5.1 stereo systems – playing the game on a 5.1 system jolts the atmosphere up completely. The soundtrack is superbly executed, with the majority of the tracks perfectly building up in atmosphere as you travel from one area to the next. Sound effects are an area that still falls behind, unfortunately.
Yes, sure, Titan Quest may be extremely similar to Diablo II, and many people didn’t bother with its original release purely because of that very reason, but how long are you spoilsports going to dwell on the past, expecting Blizzard to release Diablo III in the future? Titan Quest is the best action-RPG since Diablo II, and Immortal Throne further cements its position as being a worthy purchase for fans of the genre. Don’t hold your breath for a Diablo III, just go out to the store and enjoy one of the best action-RPGs. You won’t regret it.
so i cant really comment on it, but it looks so awesome
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