Titan Quest demo

Fileplanet now has the demo for Titan Quest, so I downloaded, installed, and played it for a while. Titan Quest is the "new Diablo", point-and-click action RPG. You move by clicking the mouse somewhere, and you hit a monster by clicking the mouse on it. You have a red health bar, filled up with red potions, and a blue energy bar, filled up with blue potions. Gameplay is simple, fun, but not very innovative. If you liked Diablo, Sacred, and/or Dungeon Siege, you will probably like Titan Quest, and should at least try out the demo.

Interestingly the developers seem to have played World of Warcraft as well as Diablo. There are quest NPCs with golden exclamation marks over their heads, and a hotkey bar for special attacks. There is a hearthstone, although that one is even better than WoW's, because you can teleport back to where you ported from.

Teleporting to the city and back into battle is unfortunately necessary far too often, because your inventory is quite small. I hope later in the game you get bags or a mule like in Dungeon Siege, because if the inventory stays this small for all of the game, I won't like it. What I find especially annoying in all these games is that one item doesn't take 1 slot, but has a form, being for example 3 slots high and 1 slot wide, or 2 x 2 slots. So if your inventory is full, you have to start reorganizing, spending time to stack your loot in an orderly fashion, eliminating wasted space. As you can't even turn an item sideways, you can't eliminate all wasted slots. In a 4 x 4 area you can only put four 3 x 1 torches, with the slots at the bottom staying empty. The other annoying thing is the lack of an "gather all loot" button, there are only buttons to make the loot visible, and then you need to click on all pieces you want to collect. Which means that you'll spend far too much time gathering loot, sorting your inventory, teleporting back and forth to sell loot, and similar non-heroic activities.

Why will people buy Titan Quest? Well, the graphics are rather nice. And instead of classic elves and orcs fantasy setting, the game plays in mythological Greece, with you battling satyrs and other beasts from Greek mythology. That doesn't really make a big difference, I failed to find a reference to fireball hurling sorcerers in Herod, so many elements of the game are just taken from fantasy settings.

Anyway, the big advantage is that you can download the demo for free, and try before you buy. Fortunately "free trial" offers are becoming more and more frequent even for MMORPGs. No review or test score can replace playing a game a while for yourself, and seeing whether you like it.