TITAN QUEST II HANDS-ON PREVIEW: A PROMISING START

While we are still a ways out from charging headlong back to the world of Titan Quest, I recently had the opportunity to participate in a closed playtest for Titan Quest II.

- Matt Keith

Balancing the Familiar and Fresh

For fans of Titan Quest, the announcement of the long-awaited sequel Titan Quest II last year was a day to celebrate. The original, which introduced some innovative mechanics, such as the dual class system to the ARPG genre, has long been considered one of the genre's staples.

While the playtest encompassed only a small portion of the first chapter of the upcoming ARPG, it was a wonderful opportunity to dip my toes back into the fantastical world of Ancient Greece. As a fan of the original, I was quite excited to see Grimlore Games take on the world of Titan Quest. As a quick note, the playtest doesn't represent the finished product and we were only given a small bit of all Titan Quest II has to offer.

Firing up the playtest for the first time, I was greeted with a quick cutscene that gave context to the setting and narrative. After soaking in the visual spectacle, the game opened to a title card and character creator. At the moment, the term character creator might be a bit misleading. It is, in fact, more of a character selector with several prebuilt characters (both male and female) to choose from. While there were no sliders to adjust, there was a nice array of diverse character models to choose from. After selecting a name, my character was pulled right into the action.

The first observation upon entering the world is how detailed and beautiful it is. Grimlore has done an excellent job at balancing the look and feel of the original