Do yourself a favor: play Titan Quest

I have already discussed about the importance of diablo placeholders, at least until Diablo III hits the (virtual) stores. There is no official date yet, I hope Blizzcon will bring some light upon us and redefine that annoying "early 2012". If blizzard comes out with another "Early was too early" mantra... I swear I will drop Diablo III forever.

Back to topic: do you know Titan Quest (and its expansion, Immortal Throne)? If not, get out of your cave and  be extremely happy. TQ is an impressive Diablo clone. Calling it "clone" is reductive, though, because it's extremely well done, polished and packed with frantic action. I would even say that Diablo II looks like a clone of Titan Quest. You can find lots of screenshots and videos on Google Images and Youtube, as well on the official Steam pages linked above. I've already posted about the 2,50€ deal few days ago, now it's time to get into the game a little deeper.

Being a Diablo-like game, I will not annoy you with details and specs... because you should already know the genere: hack'n'slash with tons of enemies to kill and tons of items to collect. That said, I will instead focus on installation, pro's and con's (few).

INSTALLING TITAN QUEST THE RIGHT WAY

TQ was developed in 2006 by Iron Lore Entertainment. Don't get fooled by the age, it's still up to date and can crush almost any competitor. Graphically speaking, I find it's even better than Diablo III (current) beta, enough said. Problem: Iron Lore no longer exists and the game is not supported anymore. This is why you need to know the basics for a good gaming experience:

1. Buy Titan Quest Gold edition on Steam (link). It now goes for 6.66€ (promotion) but the full price is still ridiculous: 9,99€. Yes, it works fine on Vista/Seven 64bit.
2. Install the unofficial fan-made patch 1.17. It will fix several bugs and nasty things. Don't worry, it will not modify content, balancing or anything else. The game will be just "better", not "different".
3. Install and run Titan Quest first, then quit the game. This step is required to play the expansion.
4. Install and run Immortal Throne. From now on, forget about Titan Quest, just play the expansion. It's the same game with some new stuff added one year later (2007). An additional area to explore, items, enemies and some good improvements (shared stash for your characters, caravan to store more items, inventory autosort, ...).
5. Optional - If you play at high resolutions and you are not an eagle, I strongly suggest to install two fan-made mods: Arial font for text readability (quests, items, tooltips, ...) and Large Fonts to get bigger tooltips/texts. You can save your eyes if you play more than 10 minutes in a row. I guess back in 2006 most gamers were running at 1280x1024 or less.
6. Optional - If you need some assistance or just want to share your love/hate, visit the Titan Quest Steam Users' Forum or the unofficial TQ Forums. They are still very active.

Now you are ready to go. Start TQ Immortal Throne, set your graphic preferences (ingame) and don't forget to configure the antialiasing stuff. If it does not work, use the nVidia/ATI panel. Create your character and play. No matter what class you decide to play with, the player always starts with a "noob" character. Your class will be decided depending on where you decide to spend your points, that's one of the coolest things of TQ.

PRO'S

• A *huge* world to explore, offering various different themes.
• Mythological setting: Greeks, Egyptians, ... and more.
• Hand-made and non-random environments. That means everything was carefully planned by the developers, instead of relying on a semi-random generator.
• Amazing graphics, try it with 8X antialiasing and 16 aniso at any high resolution. Trust me, you wont believe your eyes, some places are just stunning.
• Great animations (check the moving grass/crops/bushes when you move) and very detailed  models (houses, enemies, fences, crates, doors, chests, ...). 
• Tons of items to collect... prepare to empty your bags multiple times.
• A grand total of 81 possible classes, obtained by mixing the 9 available mastries. Battlemage? Rogue? Elementalist? Druid? Templar? Ranger... ?
• 3 difficulty levels: normal, epic and legendary. Normal is relatively easy, legendary is... well... the name says it all.
• Portals (insta-travel from your location to any major city).
• Offlline gaming, LAN and modding, something uncommon by the end of 2011.
• Budget price. Even if you play it for 2 hours only... it's still worth the money.

CON'S

• Non-random environments. Unlike Diablo, if you play the game all over again you will see the same stuff once again. I'm not a fan of randomization, to be honest, but for someone it could be annoying.
• Some mastery combinations can be extremely fun and hard at the same time, making some boss fights nearly impossible at the supposed level. On the other side... if you find the right combination/weapons you will one-shot enemies on sight.
• The UI (User Interface) is not that great. Tiny text with a "meh" font (unless you apply the mods, see  above) and fixed tolbars.
• Can be repetitive, don't expect a clever game with incredible quests to be solved. It's mostly a "go there, kill hundreds of mobs and come back".
• Being entirely offline, you could be seriously tempted to cheat. Don't.
• Repeating everything 3 times (normal, epic and legendary) requires true determination.

That's all for now. Give it a try, you can download the demo and see how things go for you. I can't stop repeating how good the game is, even without considering the low price. Have fun!