✅ Massive amounts of content
✅ Different classes with different playstyles
✅ Great ARPG
✅ Combat is very fun
✅ Heavy loot based gameplay
✅ Game can be sped up than normally possible (really helps with how huge the game is)
✅ Steam Workshop support

❌ Performance is extremely terrible with occasional stuttering and even huge lags sometimes
❌ Inventory and transfer storage is extremely small and it's not enough for a hoarder. There is an external software which can be used for more storage and definitely worth looking into if you're interested in hoarding: https://github.com/EtienneLamoureux/TQVaultAE/?tab=readme-ov-file
❌ No manual save option. This does not allow you to test builds which is so stupid for a game like this
❌ Epic items cannot be enchanted which is really weird
❌ Enchantment could've been so much better if it were like removable gems in Path of Exile
❌ Loot is lackluster until end-game
❌ No debuff icon is shown on enemy units

BUYER BEWARE: This game now backdoors Epic Online Services onto your computer. If you are like me this is a deal breaker. I bought this game over 10 years ago and I've really enjoyed it (the game is great), but EOS is a red line. I want nothing to do with Epic Games and refuse to have their software on my system. It is outrageous that THQ Nordic installed this on my machine without my permission or even a warning. BUYER BEWARE.

As someone who's not a big fan of ARPGs, reviewing an 18-year-old game feels a little unfair. A lot has happened since Titan Quest came out, not least of which is Grim Dawn, a very successful ARPG made by some of the same crew that made TQ itself. But even for a rarely-only player of ARPGs, TQ holds up reasonably well for me in 2024.

It's a fun romp through a grab-bag of ancient mythology, with Greek, Egyptian and Chinese influences coming through. There's a variety of classes and styles to keep theorycrafters busy, and its dual class system is the predecessor of the successful same idea in Grim Dawn. If you don't like digging into stats details or reading wikis for guides, though, its systems might be a bit too opaque to engage with fully.

I don't play a lot of ARPG as they can be exhausting and TQ is no exception. You're clearing waves of bads from every temple, desert, forest, cave and ruin in the ancient world, and spamming skills all the way. For me, one of the biggest gripes was that there didn't seem to be a way to move outside of mouse clicking. This got tiring quickly. If the WASD keys could've been used I think I'd have found it a more pleasant grind, but as it was it felt a bit of a chore. As for the combat, there's a decent satisfaction to it but it perhaps lacked many epic moments outside of boss battles and near-death experiences. I'd also like the sound of combat to be a little chunkier, most attacks felt like dance moves without any real impact.

And while it's a looter game, I did find that nearly all loot was simply a cash vehicle. That's kind of par for the course with these games, though; but I think a mechanism to upgrade more clearly, even if expensive, might've been better.

Good:
- Lots of effort in worldbuilding, weaving together myths from Greek, Egyptian and Chinese legend with care an plenty of flavour text. I feel a little guilty that I didn't stop to appreciate the effort that was clearly involved as I zoomed from quest to quest, but if you're a fan of ancient history you'll certainly see things to appreciate here.

- There seems to be a deep skill and class system, though I personally found the style I opted into excruciatingly boring. As a Warmaster I just spammed cleave on cooldown, though my banner was pretty righteous for a massive dps boost. There are wikis to explore all the depths, but I found the difference between one skill and another hard to perceive. There is no base combat log, so parsing the difference in one build and another will require mods.

- Voice acting and music are great. Adds a sense of epic-ness like the old stop-motion Greek legend films.

Bad:

- Bit repetitive, unlocks contained a lot of passives for my class which were sort of impossible to distinguish alongside enemy power creep. Could be better for other classes?