Titan Quest: Anniversary Edition Now Available on Steam, and Owners of the Original Get it Free

[Eric the Orange]

Does it still have that issue where with the Immortal Throne expansion you can not highlight anything and thus can not pick anything up?

*Just played, still can't pick up items. Game is unplayable for me.

You know you push either X Alt or Z to highlight stuff right?

 

[Denamic]

Heh the original titan quest burned up video cards unless you throttled the frame rate to vsync

But the game was still great

Like with the uncapped FPS in the SC2 menu screen, that will only burn cards that doesn't have enough cooling, be it from poor ventilation, not enough cooling paste, or a dust-caked or shitty heatsink.

 

[BakedZnake]

As wonderful as this news is, as I put far too many hours into Titan Quest from when it launched until about three years ago, I wonder how much this will divert attention away from its spiritual (and mechanical) successor, Grim Dawn.

Grim Dawn is great, everyone. It takes the best parts of Titan Quest (class combinations, interesting and varied equipment, brilliant sound design, etc.) and finds ways to improve each one, all with a fascinating and marvelous setting.

Grim Dawn sure looks like it practically took assets from TQ, the gfx are seriously outdated with various shades of brown filters permanently on.

 

[BakedZnake]

Well, that's both good and bad news to me.
I own the TQ/IT on physical discs and I avoid the DRM that is Steam like the plague..
Still, updating and enhancing a classic game for free (or for limelight in regards to a sequel) is awesome.
Though I have to wonder, is the final TQ boss just before IT still a huge motherloving pain in the ni'kta?

Grim Dawn is nowhere near as good as TQ/IT. Mostly because it feels more like a chore, it's so darn far between "portals".
That and other things as well that detract from the game.

Go and get it on GoG or contact THQ customer services. Also unless you're on Linux, Windows and mac os are practically DRM

 

[The_State]

Grim Dawn sure looks like it practically took assets from TQ, the gfx are seriously outdated with various shades of brown filters permanently on.

While I do agree that aestheticism is one feature of Grim Dawn that is inferior to Titan Quest, I feel that your pointing that out exclusively rather slants your description of the game. I could find your argument a lot more compelling if you discussed anything relating to the actual gameplay rather than what it looks like.

Because you're right. Grim Dawn does lack that mythic charm and overall artistic theme that was so very well handled in Titan Quest. But it does so many other things better. From the way augments are handled, to making Relics a viable mechanic, to the Devotion system and the much more interesting unique effects on equipment pickups. And then there's the much more satisfying experience curve, where you can actually gain levels and expand your character at a pace that remains engaging, even in the higher levels.

 

[The_State]

I personally enjoyed Titan Quest more then Grim Dawn to be honest. I also have the original physical discs, but I picked up the steam versions a few years ago (so I didn't have to use the discs anymore), as well.

TQ was quite a good game for it's time, and is still enjoyable now. I personally like the flow/story etc better then Grim Dawn which feels more chaotic to me. I also felt more of a range of builds in TQ, where in Grim Dawn I felt more like I would generally only choose 1 attack type as my primary, and sometimes...sometimes an AoE or alt attak to go with it (along with many buffs etc).

Grim dawn was VERY playable with only 1 button in many cases....seemed to have less strategy needed for most fights, and especially your first time through even on elite difficulty (which there is literally no reason to play except for a bigger "challenge"....but that challenge is just giving more health to everything), it's EXTREMELY easy.

TQ on the other hand had quite a bit of challenge your first play through, had many different builds you could make, even with the same two class choices, and the class choices seemed more varied as well (to me), with more of them working well together. In Grim dawn it seems more like there are 2 or 3 possible choices for each class that really work. In TQ almost any combo could work well, at least till you got dream and just about everything seemed to work better in combo with dream.

My suggestion for new players, avoid dream. Even while playing the expansion, focus on the other combos and save dream for the end after playing other builds. It's hard to switch back to another combo once you have started using dream, or at least it was for me.

Maybe I enjoy Grim Dawn more because that's pretty much how I played Titan Quest. I picked one primary ability and one secondary with a few passives or auras to improve them. I will agree that the early portions of GD become absolutely trivial after you've been through them once, which is to the game's detriment. And the veteran difficulty makes the majority of the normal game more engaging, it makes bossfights a disaster. They've missed the middle ground that was more aptly tread in TQ (until you came across an area that contradicted your primary damage type. Try using a poison or lifesteal build in an undead area...). But even then, by my third playthrough of TQ, I'd pretty much stopped dying in the first two acts of the game except against certain bosses.

And it is possible to build characters who use more than a primary and secondary ability in GD. I built an arcanist/shaman who had two active abilities beyond the basic left and right click skills. I know that the shadowblade has quite a few viable actives as well that work with multiple styles of play.

I will agree, though, that Grim Dawn's story is less engaging. I appreciate the world it's set in, but the plot itself is pretty crummy. If it were just about building up the setllement at Devil's Crossing, radiating to different areas, but keeping the same core city, that would have been fine. But by the time you make it to Homestead and are expected to care about that more than Devil's Crossing, I was less interested. The story isn't as cohesive or unified as it's predecessor.

 

[Callate]

Given that it wasn't all that long ago Titan Quest was available for pennies from a Humble Bundle, that's pretty damn generous of them. Good show.

 

[Eric the Orange]

I personally enjoyed Titan Quest more then Grim Dawn to be honest. I also have the original physical discs, but I picked up the steam versions a few years ago (so I didn't have to use the discs anymore), as well.

TQ was quite a good game for it's time, and is still enjoyable now. I personally like the flow/story etc better then Grim Dawn which feels more chaotic to me. I also felt more of a range of builds in TQ, where in Grim Dawn I felt more like I would generally only choose 1 attack type as my primary, and sometimes...sometimes an AoE or alt attak to go with it (along with many buffs etc).

Grim dawn was VERY playable with only 1 button in many cases....seemed to have less strategy needed for most fights, and especially your first time through even on elite difficulty (which there is literally no reason to play except for a bigger "challenge"....but that challenge is just giving more health to everything), it's EXTREMELY easy.

TQ on the other hand had quite a bit of challenge your first play through, had many different builds you could make, even with the same two class choices, and the class choices seemed more varied as well (to me), with more of them working well together. In Grim dawn it seems more like there are 2 or 3 possible choices for each class that really work. In TQ almost any combo could work well, at least till you got dream and just about everything seemed to work better in combo with dream.

My suggestion for new players, avoid dream. Even while playing the expansion, focus on the other combos and save dream for the end after playing other builds. It's hard to switch back to another combo once you have started using dream, or at least it was for me.

I agree on some points but disagree on others.

For one Grim Dawn is definitely unbalanced at lower levels. It seems like they spent all their time balancing for end game, so that depending how you put your points you can either breeze through everything without trying or have a long and terrible slog of a game at low levels. As opposed to Titan Quest where at least in my experience no build makes the game such a cake walk or such a slog.

As far as 1 or 2 skill builds. That seems to be the norm for all Diablo 2 like games where they let you allocate points. The games that come to mind for me are Diablo 2, Torchlight 1 and 2, Titan Quest, Grim Dawn, and Path of Exile. In all those games it seems to make the most sense to choose only 1 or 2 active skills and put all your effort into those (at least from what I've played. Perhaps I'm missing the best builds.). The only exception that come to mind is Diablo 3 because their are no skill points to spend so you can't just dump them all into a couple of skills.

Also Grim Dawn has several basic ease of use changes that weren't really around When Titan Quest was made. For example auto gold pickup, or greater loot filtering (who keeps picking up yellows after act 1). These things have become more standard in more recent games like these and the lack of them does make TQ feel a bit more clunky to play.