Torchlight Demo Vs. Titan Quest Demo

Before Dragon Age: Origins came out, I was looking for something to play to tide me over. It was about two weeks until the release, and I didn't want to spend a ton of money. I noticed that Torchlight was being released on Steam very soon. Torchlight, from Runic Games, the makers of Mythos. I was in one of the early/middle betas of Mythos, and I enjoyed the game very much. For those who do not know, Mythos was originally created as a scaled down test engine for Hellgate: London. The developers were having so much fun playing Mythos, that Flagship decided to dedicate one developer to the game, and actually release it. To continue the history lesson Flagship Studios was founded by Bill Roper, and contained much of the former Blizzard North team that left when Vivendi took over Blizzard. Blizzard North is best known for Diablo and Diablo II. So, as you can expect Mythos was a Diablo clone, also, Torchlight is also a Diablo clone. Torchlight feels very similar to Mythos, I can only assume much of the code has been reused, since Runic contains some of the former members of Flagship. Is it me, or does it feel like I am writing a soap opera here?

So, I head over to my old WoW guild forums to see what was going on with Torchlight, and if people were going to play it or not. I started a thread seeing how much interest there was, and to find out what people have heard about the game. Most people were interested, but with Dragon Age and Modern Warfare 2 so close, they didn't want to spend the twenty dollars only to stop playing a week later. One person recommended looking at Titan Quest, another Diablo Clone. He seemed to like it and it had some interesting dynamics. I decided that since I had a week to kill, and didn't want to spend money, that I would download the demo of each and see how they are.

Torchlight absolutely feels a lot like Mythos, the classes are Vanquisher(Rogue/Archer), Destroyer(Warrior) and Alchemist(Mage), which granted is the generic "We need 3 classes" line up, but they play very similar to the classes of the like in Mythos. Now, I might be going out on a limb here, but I highly doubt there is a large number of people out there who played Mythos. So my basic rundown of Mythos is as follows. The game was very fun, they did a good job, but it felt incomplete. The game was incomplete though, it never made it out of early betas before Flagship died, so it was exactly what you would expect. Torchlight, on the other hand does feel complete. A decent story begins to unfold in the demo, and the game play is very smooth and very easy to get caught up in, much like Diablo. They did some very interesting things with the game. The first of all is that every player gets a pet. You can choose between a Cat or a Dog. I am a cat man myself, but something about bringing a cat into dungeons to kill undead doesn't seem very bad ass, so I chose a Dog. The pet fights with you, and since all classes have the pet the game balanced for that, the pet isn't exceptionally game breaking but helps out from time to time. The absolutely best part of the pet is that he has a pack that can hold items, on top of your inventory. There is a small button up at the top of your screen that sends the pet back to town, and any items in his pack, he will sell and bring the money back. One of the slightly annoying things about the Diablo Series was that every 20-30 minutes, if not sooner, you had to run back to town and sell off the items that are filling up your inventory. It is one of the most innovative features that the game offers. It may not sound like much, but it allows for less breaking in actual play time.

Titan Quest is almost three years old, and some how, I didn't pick it up on my radar until recently. Titan Quest is another Diablo clone, but it is set in a world of Greek Mythology and History. Since the game is a little older, the graphics are a little dated, but the game it self isn't. Titan Quest takes the basic Diablo play style and add some improvements. One of the more useful ones is that you have three keys to see what items have dropped from monsters. The first will display all items, the second will display all items that are not gray(low quality), and the first will show all items that are better than white(non-magical) items. This becomes very useful as your inventory fills up, and you no longer want to pick up items that will only serve as vendor fodder. Titan Quest also does away with scrolls of town portal and identification of items. When an item drops, you can see all the stats on it, without spending money to identify it, or using a scroll. On top of that, you can create an unlimited amount of town portals while out in the world, this frees much inventory slots that are used to hold these portals. The class system of the game is very interesting. They have nine unique classes which you can play, and you are allowed to choose a second class later in the game, the combinations are endless on the number of classes. Of course, some of the class combinations are going to be weaker than the others, there is no way they could balance 9^2-1 classes, and actually release the game. If you are just looking for some fun without min/maxing the game, choose a class combination that seems fun for you. If you are looking to min/max, then by all means, you can.

Both Torchlight and Titan Quest were fun games. The Demo for Torchlight felt longer, and I felt like I got much more of an impression of the game. Titan Quest left me satisfied, but it didn't really open the game up to me. Torchlight did, the demo did a good job conveying the entirety of the game. I will more than likely purchase both games, Torchlight is single player only, which accounts for a lot of the reason it was released at twenty dollars, which is a very good price for the game. Titan Quest is also twenty dollars on steam, plus it's expansion. Once I am done with Dragon Age: Origins, I can see myself picking up Torchlight first. I will most likely pick up Titan Quest if I have friends to play with. Overall, I would recommend both games, both very fun. I am sure we will see more Diablo clones in the coming years until Diablo III comes out in 2097. Until then, the genre is still alive, and very fun. If I had to choose one or the other, based on the demo, it would be Torchlight.

I can't believe I made an entire blog post where Hellgate: London was mentioned and I didn't bash it. Well, Hellgate: London sucked asshole. It was horribly buggy, and it felt insanely tedious. What really kills me is the amount of hype and expectations around the game. It may have been the biggest disappointment ever. When the game wasn't crashing, it was repetitive. By nature, Diablo clones are the exact same thing over and over, but Hellgate: London didn't have the magic of all the other Diablo clones, maybe they were trying to hard, maybe they tried to do too much, or maybe it was just shitty. At the end of the day, I was sorely disappointed by this game. I'd tell you not to buy it, but Flagship is dead, and the game is owned by some Korean company now, Hanbisoft, I believe. Either way, I am not sure you could even get it in the US, if you were a glutton for punishment.