Recent reviews by Mixu

Super chill casual fun,... with stealth sections and boss fights???

Was one of best games ever, until I reached one of biggest design mistakes that I can think facing in any game I've ever played. I'm pretty sure that unless that part get's changed, I will not continue the game. And I have not seen any indication that devs would even acknowledge this issue, so I guess it's game over for me. Took about 11h to reach it, so have to sadly say that game isn't worth the money it costs if you think that this issue might bother you. I got this game as a gift so kinda blunts the disappointment.

So what's this design mistake? It's a certain boss fight that I won't name herer to avoid spoilers, but those who have reached should know it. Boss fights in general don't belong to this game in my opinion, but this one is just something else. First of all you have to go through boring mandatory stealth section before it, and I would also argue that stealth has no place in this game. Secondly, while you can repeat it as many times you want, if you quit the game without beating the boss, you have to repeat the stealth section. Funnily only way to quit the game without beating the boss at that point is Alt+F4, really.

The offending boss fight ticks almost all the wrong boxes of bad boss fights. Well, the boss does not have henchmen, so that's a plus. But oh boy. During the fight you are pretty much allowed two mistakes. If you fudge up you only attack window, you need to repeat too long sequence of dodging attacks, all the while losing more and more of precious oxygen. You get two oxygen refills, but trying to get either leaves you very vulnerable. Hitting the boss is not that hard, but you have to hit him way too many times. I haven't beaten him, so don't know how many hits it takes, but I have hit him many times after I thought the fight should already be over. If you want to change your gear, you guessed it, repeat the stealth section.

Look. If I want hard boss fights, I play one of Dark Souls games. Those could be argued to be easier actually, since you don't even have to git gud, you can summon help. With grind, you can improve your ear somewhat but I think my gear is already at point that any upgrade is really expensive. So if you are not good enough, and cannot be bothered to get good enough, your game just ends.

This game is absolutely gorgeus. Probably funny thing to say about a tile based game, but graphics is just one minor part of it. The major part is what it does in your mind. The lore of this game is just so imagination inspiring and the mood that graphics, music (a rarity in a roguelike) and flavor text set is great. To describe the overall tone, probably poorly, think of Dune, Fallout, and Hyperion combined, mixed with general weirdness. Don't ask me to explain, those are just the first things that come to my mind when thinking about what to compare this to.

Depite being a roguelike, a genre notorious for it's usual difficulty, I found this game to be one of the easier of roguelikes to start. It took me more than ten hours on first run to die, and second run is also several hours long at the moment. Just keep an escape route open and run away if needed and you should do fine at start. For those that don't like permadeath, there's also game modes that disable it, so you can play this as a more forgiving rpg. I don't think the mechanics are hard either, unless you are one of those who need to know absolute formulas in every calculation.

Despite being in early access, I haven't noticed any kind of "incompleteness". If you are even vaguely interested, just get it.

While I selected "Yes" to whether I recommend this game or not, my actual answer would be "maybe, with conditions". Game is good, but I'm so frustrated and disappointed that it fails to be great do to some baffling design decisions. Even more so since I think first Pathfinder game had pretty much same issues, but they either failed to fix them or chose not to, and I think it's the latter, and that just frustrates me more.

Pros:
* Absolutely massive amount of variety and possibilities in character building
* Mostly not too complex rule system
* Plot is ok to good, could be better but could very well be worse too
* Some memorable characters
* Great turn based combat system
* There are actual skill checks outside the combat

Cons:
* Bugs. They've ironed most of these out but there are still some minor bugs here and there. For example character might cast "cure minor wounds" spell, walk next to the target, then do nothing and lose the spell. Haven't encountered anything gamebreaking though.
* Not that great game engine. Looks OK at best, but will absolutely try to fry your GPU in some places if you max everything out even while limiting fps from drivers. I recommend turning some effects down (shadows and ambient occlusion if I remember correctly). You won't note a difference in visual quality but will hear the difference in fan noise.
* Terrible Heroes of Might and Magic clone jammed in it. You can turn this off but then you'll miss some loot, and arguably game content, even though it's poor content. You can also turn it to very easy, but this just leads it to still be a massive time sink and bore. They basically took town building and combat from HOMM3 and left everything else like exploring out. Not just that, the combat is really poor version of HOMM3 with less unit variety, less spells, less tactics, less everything.
* Overland map on which you will spend endless amount of hours walking back and forth slowly
* Inflated numbers of attacks. I don't know if this is a thing in first edition pen & paper too, but I find it ridiclous and not fun that both enemies and my characters can often hit like 6-8 times per turn.
* Difficulty. I'll discuss this more next.

So the elephant in the room and biggest thing in the game trying to ruin everything, the difficulty level. It starts of pretty good, game being challenging but mostly fair and you have actual solutions to the challenges. But it starts getting worse further you get in the game. Before going into detail I must say that you can tune this very well yourself in the settings, so that's good. Turning enemy stats to minimum you should have no trouble beating any encounter. But pretty much everything else about the difficulty is bad. First of all, game devs have either never played an actual pen&paper rpg, at least never GM'd one, or they have not understood a single thing about what's the point in role playing games. You cannot exercise any kind on role play in your character builds if you want to have even a slight change of getting through the game on "Core rules". Which by the way has nothing to do with p&p rules (granted I only have experience in 2ed), enemies stats are way inflated compared to p&p and encounters don't follow any rulebook guidelines about designing balanced encounters. If you don't min/max you're characters, and do a perfect job at it, you won't have any change in some encounters. Even with good min/maxing, prepare to die all the time. Good GM keeps the party on their toes, throws some challenges, but also a life craft if party struggles. Not so here. This game's GM destroys the party and laughs like this is some Wizardry game or something.

Encounter design in the game is absolutely terrible most of the time. It's like devs went "well we don't know how to design an interesting and challenging encounter, so let's add more levels to each enemy". This means that unless you know beforehand what's coming, and have a solution for it (min/maxed character just designed to counter this kind of enemy), you will have no change of winning in some encounters. You will regularly encounter enemies that have 8 levels more than you do, and you can do nothing about it (except turn down difficulty level). Might be even ten if you happen to go in wrong place too soon, and there's no indication what so ever about area levels. This means your fighters won't hit even with rolling 20, your casters spells get saved every time and your tank get's hit with every attack and dies in four hits. Not fun, at all.

It wouldn't be so bad if the difficulty would be on point on some setting, but it's not. It fluxuates wildly. I mostly play with "slightly lowered enemy stats" and random encounters and minor mobs are usually just about right, but then game throws some impossible boss fights and I need to lower the difficulty, only to bring it back up afterwards, which is tedious. Also "go do something else and come back later with more levels" is not an option on some places.

So the conditions to enjoy this game:
* You enjoy min/maxing over role playing
* You enjoy massive unfair challenges
* OR you are fine with turning down difficulty level either temporarily or permanently
* AND you don't mind constant save scumming (oh please remember to save often and on multiple slots)

If game still sound good to you, go for it. Might even be the best game ever for you. I know it is for some, just not me. I still do enjoy it most of the time, but oh boy does it frustrate me every now and then.

Probably the first game that made me cry (I was drunk, but still...).

I got a discount coupon for this game, saw that it was already on discount and wanted to see if these two can be combined. They could, and I thought game looked vaguely interesting, so I gave it a change. Boy was I wrong, in a good way. Book of Demons is much more than just vaguely interesting.

Positives:
+ Absolutely fantastic and flawlessly executed artstyle. Everything is like in a pop-up-book. Almost nothing is really animated but rigid paper cutout characters spin and bob around and it's cute.
+ Good voice acting.
+ Humor. A certain "dad joke" made me chuckle aloud.
+ Choose your own playtime. At the start of each run you can choose how long it is (with the exception that you cannot make a run go beyond a main boss). More you play, the more accurate estimate game makes on how long a certain run will take.
+ No crap loot (except, well I wont spoil). Everything you pick up either gives you a new ability or improves existing.
+ Addictive
+ Brings out new stuff like enemies at a constant pace to keep things interesting.
+ No real grinding. Well gameplay is similarly repetetive as in other arpgs but you cannot really grind because you constantly move deeper and cannot go back. Also enemies don't respawn on levels.
+ Nice small details like villagers saying "happy winter solstice" when it actually is winter solstice IRL.

Neutral:
* Compared to more traditional ARPGs, doesn't really have much build variety, but on the other hand it keeps the game simple.
* Controller controls seem ok, but I haven't tested them much and I prefer mouse for movement and attacks, keyboard for activated skills.
* Skills and equipment are cards, but there aren't really any card game mechanics. Cards might aswell be regular equipment and skills and it wouldn't change anything.
* Other classes than warrior are locked. You unlock them really quickly, but I see no good reason to lock them at all.

Negatives:
- Only 3 characters. I have played about 6 hours and haven't even touched anything but warrior yet, but eventually I might want more variance.
- Movement system is a bit tricky and it took quite a long time for me to grow accustomed to it (using mouse now to move). Basically you move on rails, forwards or backwards, turning at intersections. You can move with mouse, or use wasd (or controller) but since it's isometric and paths are at 45 degree angles, wasd controls are bit unclear on what is up, down, left or right.
- Levels are randomly generated and thus kinda similar.
- Voice lines get repetetive occasionally.

This game is an example of being better than it's parts combined. Cannot really explain why but it really is excellent. My GOTY2018 but then again it is only game released in 2018 that I have played. Even if I had played other 2018 games, this would give them a hard challenge to top. On a price that I got it (about 5€), it's a no-brainer. On full price it's a positive maybe, but only because I haven't yet had a change to play it enough to see if there's enough content compared to price.

I have Ashes of Malmouth DLC but don't have Crucible DLC. This review is mostly based on base game, although I mention some things that are in DLC but I try to keep it clear what's on which.

Pros:
+ Titan Quest character system perfected. You pick two character classes (called masteries in game) with their own skill trees and then pick the skills you want from both (need to unlock them first by leveling the mastery). Synergy possibilities are multiple and interesting. Upgradable character stats are narrowed down to three (physique, cunning, spirit), which is good, although physique is maybe too good for any character.
+ Insane amount of possible character builds.
+ Devotions. These are a separate skill tree that you unlock by cleansing shrines in game. It's full of passive bonuses and chance activated skills that are bind to other skills. For example my molotov cocktail skill has a chance to spawn a mini-volcano when enemies are hit by it and my hellhound has a chance to spawn a fiery vortex around it when it attacks. How awesome is that?
+ Beautiful. Hard to believe this is upgraded Titan Quest engine (as far as I know)
+ Runs pretty great, even on older machines (again afaik)
+ Complex if you want to dive in mechanics, but that's not really neccessary if you don't want to.
+ Hand built environments instead of procedural generation, which means that environments have nice variety and they look natural.
+ All the addictiveness of an ARPG you might expect (killing, looting, character building, etc.)
+ Loading screens only when fast traveling or going to dungeon or leaving a dungeon.

Cons:
- No procedurally generated environments means that game has some repetetiveness if you play multiple characters. There's some randomness if which paths are blocked, but that seems pretty unneccessary to me, and doesn't really add anything.
- Bosses are not that great. Too often there's too much stuff on screen and their attacks don't have clear tells so you can't rely on your skills to dodge them that much, but have to rely more on your characters defenses to survive and skills to heal. Your mileage may vary but I think Torchlight 2's bosses are better.
- Devotion window is a bit confusing and hard to use. Planning your path through it could use some help, color coding for example.
- Some brief frameskipping when loading new areas. Nothing serious though.
- Unneccessary limiting of some features that would be more at home in a free-to-play game, for example you need to buy stash upgrades, and unlock inventory pages through progressing in plot. Not a biggie but feels totally unneccessary.
- Some respeccing is paygated behind the DLC. You can respec skills but respeccing devotions and character stats is available only in Ashes of Malmouth if I remember correctly.
- For some reason autopickup does not pick up components (gear upgrade material), while I don't see any reason not to pick up every component.
- Inventory and stashes could use better sorting options and a search function
- No bestiary and you can only see monster's type in game, not abilities.
- Bit uneven difficulty, especially later (although I cannot remember if I encountered those uneven spots in base game or DLC content). Mostly a bit too easy even on veteran but hands your butt to you hard on some spots if your character build is lacking in some way. On one hand this let's you beat the game with less than perfect build, but if you really want to put your build to the test, you need to complete game a couple of times. I think this is the case in most ARPGs though.

Neutral points:
* Plot and lore. I haven't personally followed it too much, but what little I have, seems ok. Vast majority of it is text only though.
* Grimdark environments. I prefer more colorful and bright environments of Titan Quest, but it's such a matter of taste that I don't consider it a minus.
* Faster pace compared to Titan Quest leads to faster player exhaustion. I cannot really picture myself playing this for three hours straight in a semi comatose state like I did with Titan Quest, but on the other hand some might find slower pace boring.
* You cannot open doors, only break them. I have to mention this because it's so funny how you enter peoples homes by bashing their doors in and they're like "This is ok". This is most notable on DLC though.

My pros and cons seem to match each other by their size, but don't be fooled. This is an awesome game, my favourite ARPG of this type by far, and goes pretty high on my list of favourite games of any kind. I couldn't recommend this game more if you're seeking a Diablo style ARPG. It's not even AAA priced and quite often in sale, if not in Steam, then in Humble Store or GOG (that version does not go to Steam though).

Got it for free. Recommended price otherwise 5€ at most and only if you really like this kind of game. Please note that I only have played under 2 hours when writing this. Might get better later but somehow I doubt it.

Pros:
+ Looks nice. Not anything special though.
+ Some environments are somewhat original.
+ Runs mostly flawlessly (exceptions mentioned in cons), no drops in framerate (vsynced 60 fps with GTX1060) as should be expected since this is not a new game.
+ Fun if brainless shooting.
+ Good weapon design, even basic shotgun has secondary fire mode that freezes enemies and most weapons are not anything you find in real life.
+ Visual design of enemies is good and enemies look nice and often funny.

Cons:
- Having to collect souls by first killing the enemy, then waiting for his soul to spawn, and then grabbing the soul, is really tedious. If you take too much time the soul disappears. Collecting souls is not mandatory however.
- Poor level design. Every level is just a repeating series of closed arenas and enemies almost always spawn in without existing on the level beforehand. First level was full of crap to get stuck on, second level was just huge empty halls.
- Scripting bugs and errors in level design. It's complete possible and likely that you get stuck because you bypass some script trigger and then doors won't open and enemies won't spawn. Has already happened twice to me and I haven't even played full two hours of this at the time of writing this review.
- Dull bosses. Just shoot them in the face while they throw crap at you or punch you. You get no visual feedback of damage except a diminishing healthbar in UI. No real need to dodge their attacks (or any real change really).
- Does the difficulty all wrong. Mostly dying because I'm getting stuck on either level features (like tombstones), enemies, or stuff enemies drop when they die (really). Did I already mention enemies regularly spawn right next to you, maybe behind your back? Switched to easiest which is really easy but at least I don't get killed by BS.
- Dumb enemies. Almost all just beeline to you and only have melee attack. Some shoot. That's it so far. Did I already mention that they often spawn right next to you?
- Story is told poorly. I don't know if this is supposed to be a sequel or something storywise, but I felt like I was dropped in the middle of the plot without much explaning.
- Some technical glitches like horrible LOD changes in some places. I literally whitnessed a vase changing it's model at least three times in front of me. Also moving to a new area on level sometimes makes game hang for half a second. Sometimes demon-mode leaves a white line at the bottom of the screen.
- Apparently (judging by other reviews) lacks the content of previous Painkiller games which this game is supposed to be a remake of. Reason: DLCs.

All in all, this game is OK but feels amateurish and/or rushed, and frustrates you every now and then. I would not and did not pay for it. Still, I think I might finish this, unless it's too long or get's even more frustrating with it's bugs. Or I just uninstall and try Shadow Warrior (which I also got for free), remains to be seen.

Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm is surprisingly approachable "hardcore" strategy. By hardcore I mean it aims for realism, it's still no War in the East in amount of detail and that's just fine. Flashpoint Campaigns that kind of games in sheer playability hands down.

Pros:

+ Relatively easy to play. I might not be the best guy to judge the UI since I have played quite a lot of strategy games which usually have quite bad UI's and thus have build up a tolerance, but I guess Flashpoint Campaigns UI is ok in that department.
+ No unneccessary micromanagement. You give orders to troops and then they (try to) fill those orders by themselves. You don't have to move them every turn, they move by themselves. More hex based games should do this.
+ Because of the former point, scenarios move at a nice pace, and playing isn't taxing.
+ Innovative electronic warfare system. Give too much orders in too short a time and enemy pinpoints your HQ by radio locating (works both ways). This discourages micromanagement.
+ Campaigns are not just bunch of scenarious in a row. You keep your core units between scenarious and get varying amount of temporary support. I don't think there's any kind of variance or branching in campaigns though (haven't played any campaign twice yet)
+ Wego-system with a twist. That means both sides give order simultaneously at the beginning of the scenario, but alternate after that with varying lenghts of time between turns (shorter is better). Generally Soviet side get's less turns with longer time in between, but this can vary even within a scenario. Number of orders per turn is limited too (iirc optional). Kill enemy HQs and they get less orders and longer turn delays.
+ Editors. I'm not personally really into making my own scenarios and campaigns, but you can if you want to.

Cons:

- Only one time period and setting. Because visuals are simple, and thus new units don't demand a lot of graphics, I would have hoped that there would be more variance. I believe there are mods that expand the setting, but base game itself is just cold war gone hot in Germany in the 80's.
- No skirmish mode/random battle
- For such simple looks, game doesn't run that well. For me at least, playing bigger scenarios for a long time makes game behave kinda sluggish in turn resolution. It has no real effect on playing but doesn't look nice.
- Unit information is not very informative. For example armor and firepower is represented as numbers but there is no information on what those numbers mean. Not a big deal if you're somewhat familiar with the equipment of the era.
- Not enough information on combat resolution. If my unit shoots the enemy but doesn't kill anything, why is that? Did it not hit or did the hit have no effect?
- Occasionally it's somewhat difficult to know why something happens the way it happens. For example why aren't my guys returning fire when fired upon. Usually reason can be found out (for example different sensor quality) but it's not always obvious.
- Supply is abstract and not very realistic. There are no real supply lines or supply carrying units. Combat units just resupply and depending on whether they are in contact with HQ and not in direct combat (or something like that), they get supplies at some rate. Could be seen as a pro (and for me it kinda is), but if supply management is your thing, look elsewhere.
- A bit awkward scale. This is probably a matter of taste, but for me 500m per hex doesn't work perfectly. I don't know if it's the graphics or what but I constantly underestimate distances and have to remind myself of the 500m per hex scale. For example a tank platoon shooting an enemy 4 hexes away looks like it's shooting an enemy right next to it, but it's actually 2km away.
- Scenarios can be wildly unbalanced. Usually the reds can have as many as five times the number of tanks than NATO has (not to mention other troops). It's realistic and not a problem on single player but I can see it could be a problem in multiplayer.
- Let me choose scenario first, side later. This is no big deal but still mildly annoying when several scenarios have a recommanded side.

It seems my cons list is longer than my pros list but don't let that fool you. Flashpoint Campaigns is an absolutely excellent game. While it may look complex on pictures, it is actually not much more complex than for example Combat Mission series (maybe even less, haven't played that series since Barbarossa to Berlin). I think this could also be recommended as a stepping stone from casual to serious wargaming, even price is kinda reasonable compared to many other serious wargames (and there's always Steam-sales). Interest and some knowledge in Cold War era warfare is recommended though.

First of all, I'm a long time Armored Warfare player. Steam doesn't let you review a game unless you play it on Steam, so I downloaded it a second time (I play with separate client) just to write this review. That's how much I care about this came.

Second, I'm trying to be as honest as I can here, so I tell both the positives and the negatives. You can make your own mind if the games worth a try.

Third, comparisons to other tank based F2P games cannot be avoided, mostly I'm talking about World of Tanks.

By the way. Obsidian made the game, but isn't the developer anymore. Now it's handled by My.com (Mail.ru).

Positives:
+ Actually a fair F2P business model. AW does not have stupid gold sinks. You can have as many tanks in your garage as you like, no limited slots. Tank crews stick to the tanks, and commanders can move freely between them, so no costly retraining. Gold is mostly used for premium time and premium tanks.
+ Plenty of free premium time from events and daily login bonuses (I hope that's a thing in Steam release too). I currently have about 190 days of unused premium time consumables, though I had a years worth of paid premium before, so they stacked up during that.
+ No gold ammo. It means that you can't pay for more penetration or damage. Ammo upgrades exist but they are only small upgrades and price doesn't skyrocket.
+ Quick progression, or for me atleast it has been quick. There are lot's of events with large bonuses and you can stack your boosters with them. In comparison I have three tier tens in AW while in World of Warships I only have one tier nine and no tier tens, even though I believe I've played more WoWS than AW.
+ Essential features like WoT's Sixth Sense (get a warning when you've been seen) are given for free and not hidden behind stupid long experience grind. This means veterans don't have unfair advantage over new players.
+ In general, no pay-to-win. Even premium tanks get nerfs if they need them (and buffs too). Wargaming take heed, you can nerf premium tanks without lawsuits and demands of refund!
+ Fresh new game mechanics like missiles, smoke, wheeled vehicles and target designation.
+ Three game modes: PvP, PvE and Global Operations (GLOPS) which is large map PvP mode with changing objectives, respawns and some bots thrown in. Especially Global Operation is really fun with no camping (if players just would realize that camping doesn't win games in GLOPS).
+ Extremely varied techtrees without much paper tanks (cannot actually think more than one upcoming tank that didn't have at least a single vehicle built in real life)
+ Dynamic gameplay. More simply put, no super sluggish slow tanks like all WoT heavies (except maybe IS-7 which is a low tier gift premium).
+ Low RNG. You actually hit what you aim at, with pretty much any vehicle.
+ No one-shots. You cannot kill a full health vehicle with one shot, unless you set it on fire and it doesn't use a fire extinguisher fo a while (fires are quite rare anyway). Guess what, KV-2 isn't actually a funny tank, but a stupid lottery machine.
+ No artillery (except in PvE and not on bots). Artillery hasn't been a big problem for me in WoT, and I liked how AW originally implemented it (accurate but low damage), but they removed it from PvP and GLOPS because apparently most players didn't want them at all.

Negatives:
- Bugs. Game breaking stuff get's fixed rapidly, but less serious bugs tend to stick around for a long time. Every major patch seems to break as much stuff as it fixes, though micropatches are quite quick to arrive.
- Poor event management. It's a common joke on forums that 0% of events have worked as advertised. Wrong bonuses, wrong timetables, no counters for event conditions (sometimes they exist, sometimes don't), handing out rewards take forever and so on.
- PvE is currently a bit of a mess. It's too easy in general and every attempt to increase difficulty has been just putting more and more braindead bots in missions. Low tier is mostly ok, but high tier PvE is full of bots that just spam missiles with pixel perfect aim. Missions lack creativity and mostly consist of moving down hordes of bots.
- PvP is more or less just the same as WoT. Too much camping. Balance between vehicles is questionable, main battle tanks are univerally good pick, but other vehicle classes suffer on most maps (balance is better in GLOPS as there is more to do with scouts and snipers).
- Poor PvP maps, and not that great PvE maps either (GLOPS is mostly fine). Too small and too much corridors. There's even a map called Narrows, I kid you not. Unarmored low health vehicles have a hard time surviving.
- Win X games in mode Y requirements in events. This is my pet peeve in F2P games. Please do not make requirements that you cannot fill in every match. Grinding without progress isn't fun.
- Plenty of premiums are just reskins of regular tanks, although that kinda makes them balanced. There are unique premiums also.
- Lot's of great ideas but bad implementation. Good example is commander skill revamp just before steam release. Skill trees are a good idea but why do they have empty slots that don't give skill but take away your points? Why are the trees very similar with each commander? Why are unrelated skills put next to each other so you cannot make a coherent build?
- Low player population. You do get games on weekends and evenings but middle of the week during working hours not so much. But that's what Steam release is here to fix right?

So there you have. To me this is the reason I don't play WoT anymore. After AW WoT just feels so outdated with it's slowness. Please give it a try (and stick around for a while) and make your own mind. Check out the game's forums[aw.my.com] too, they're quite active.

TQ is an addictive and fun arpg, if you invest some time in it before passing judgement.

Pros:
Pretty good class and skill system. Has depth without going to ridiculous complexity like Path of Exile
Looks good for despite being quite old originally
Runs almost flawlessly
Still get's updated every now and then, even got a big DLC just recently
Addictive at best
Multiple possibilities for a build. You pick two masteries (read classes) from 9, making 36 combinations (45 if you count single classes too).
Free fast travel to town and back
Mediterranian setting is fresh compared to generic fantasy in so many games

Cons:
Starts really slow. Took me about 10h before I really got hooked and still had a long break later. Might be character dependant.
Leveling is somewhat slow (not much but a little)
Lacks bling in effects. Skills start of pretty lackluster and only get a little flashier later. Again, might be build dependent.
Doesn't really reinvent the wheel in gameplay. Kill monsters, collect loot, build your character, rinse and repeat.
No autocast AFAIK, except for skills on left and right mouse button. That means you first need to press skill button, then click on target, instead of just pointing at a target and pressing skill button.
Some bosses have been more tedious than difficult. Yet again might be build dependent.
Mostly too easy on normal and you get higher difficulties only after finishing the game once.
No mule to autosell your loot like pets in Torchlight series.

I haven't played multiplayer, so if that's your thing, check some other reviews also.

Note that I got AE for free as an owner of the original, and got original Titan Quest in some bundle.