Yep, Titan Quest. I had a few other very in-depth RPGs earmarked for the final May Millennials slot of 2020 - and believe me when I say I'll have zero problems finding another four '00s CRPGs for next year if I go this route again - but I opted instead for a well-regarded if a little antiquated (in several senses of the term) loot RPG just so I could mindlessly run around killing things and grab colored treasure while listening to podcasts. After the intense focus required for Gothic II (the nail-biting duels) and Arcanum (trying and failing to figure out what the heck its deal was) I needed something a bit lighter to see out the month. Hell, to see out this particular pandemic situation we've all been imprisoned by. Two months of this shit has me plenty frazzled already without me adding to my anxious woes by grappling with an ancient RPG that was originally released alongside a manual the size of a phonebook.

It also doesn't hurt that Titan Quest received a big graphical remaster semi-lately, and an additional expansion campaign to go with it. Like the God of War and the Assassin's Creed franchises, Titan Quest's developers saw it was best to follow up a Spartan carving their way through Ancient Greek mythology with a visit to the primordial Scandinavian hinterlands with all its Aesir, Dark Elves, and Jotun skulking around the nine realms. Sadly, I won't be covering Titan Quest: Ragnarok today - we don't do "timely" here on May Millennials - but I can at least talk about my early experiences with the core game, or specifically the enhanced modern iteration of same.

Any worries I may have had regarding betraying the integrity of this feature by covering a 2016 release based on a 2006 game were immediately assuaged by how Titan Quest absolutely still plays like a 14-year-old Diablo clone. Not necessarily for the worse, mind you, as it has a purity to its design that hearkens more to Diablo II than Diablo III, for which much more emphasis was put on the more fanservice-y meta aspects of the genre like NG+ loops and ever-increasing loot rarity. The console version of Titan Quest doesn't quite acquit itself as much as I would like, but my time with the game eventually improved after finding a way to bind skills to the face buttons instead of the D-pad (the former is so much more preferable, and yet seems to be an afterthought seeing that the UI to do so was practically buried; possibly a later patch added it in?) and while I sit here impatiently tapping my fingers maybe I'll begrudgingly admit the load times between town portals aren't that much longer than they perhaps ought to be for a decade-plus old game, but even if I'm enjoying the game more now after having adjusted to its quirks there's definitely parts of this port that feel just a little bit sloppy. See the screenshot below as an example.

As for Titan Quest itself, I've been pleasantly surprised by a few of the game's unique choices when it comes to character development in particular. For one, you don't initially pick a class, just the name and gender. When you level up for the first time, possibly after trying a few of the different weapons, you then decide on a "Mastery": a skill tree that might focus on a few weapon types or a few spell trees, and one or more of the three primary stats of strength, dexterity, and intelligence. I wanted a ranged character so I opted for the Hunting Mastery, which has a set of skills for both the bow and the spear. The game has instantaneous loadout switching, so I'm inclined to have a melee spear and shield set just in case enemies get too close, but am otherwise focusing on the bow and its related skills for the time being. New, stronger skills within a Mastery can be accessed by improving the Mastery's core skill, which is a passive boost of the most vital stats for that particular build and also handily serves as an example for your direct stat distribution (done separately). What's more, you get an additional Mastery at a later level, presenting a whole heap of possible combinations to explore. I'm considering bolstering my archery damage with another martial-focused discipline, but there's something to be said for branching out into one of the magical schools to append elemental damage to my arrows. Something to consider as I edge ever closer to unlocking that boon.

Everything else just feels like perfectly perfunctory loot RPG gameplay. Plenty of stuff to find and equip and craft, large roaming packs of monsters to crowd-control, both health and mana regenerate on their own to get you back in the fray (albeit pretty slowly unless you've been focusing on equipment with regen boosts or have a stack of potions handy), and the game likes to pepper in the occasional "hero" monster among the rabble to keep you on your toes or toss out a cave or similar side-area full of treasure to distract you from taking the critical path to the next hub portal/vendor/storage zone and the next primary quest of the game's story progression. It feels like I'm going to eventually leave Greece, seeing as the entire country only makes up "Act 1" of the in-game world map and chapter selection, so I'm curious to see where else the game might go. I mean, where else has Titans to slay? Tennessee?

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I’m curious how some of the boss battles hold up, which were pretty broken in its initial release. There were also a ton of problems wit( its body physics, if I’m remembering correctly. Used to be buggy and unpolished, but it was a spectacular game regardless. Really want to revisit it someday.