Good Morning Folks. Over the weekend Titan Quest 2 released into early access, which is effectively a paid demo client of the game that covers either the tutorial and first act, or first two acts depending on how the game categorizes these things. I’ve heard that the final game will be roughly five times as long as this current version and at this point I have put about eight hours into three different characters. I’ve had a bit of a fraught relationship with TQ2 thus far, because honestly… melee and bow characters felt a bit clunky. However since all of the streamers seemed to be playing the same build, I decided to give it a shot and found playing a caster considerably more enjoyable. The above screenshot is from an earlier test of the game back in March when I tried to play a melee character. Interestingly enough… my original character from that test was preserved into this early access period.
I think a lot of the clunk is due to the fact that we only have four masteries in the game, and not a lot of them have much synergy. In the original game your character was made up of any two masteries out of a total of eleven. In this game you have to carve out your character with only access to Warfare (Melee/Ranged and Weapon Damage), Rogue (Melee and Ailment/Crit Damage), Storm (Cold and Lightning Damage), and Earth (Physical and Fire Damage). I quickly decided that melee attacks felt a bit clunky, and with all of the required dodging… it might not be good standing in point blank range with encounters. However there really does not seem to be a lot of what I would expect to support bow attacks. There are a few options, for example there is a buff in the Earth tree that gives you an aura that deals more physical or fire damage, son in theory that could be useful. Half of the Warfare specific attacks though are point back melee attacks so that didn’t really work out either.
You are also juggling attributes which are required to equip various gear sets. You spend points in one of four primary attributes, and doing so levels at least two other attributes at the same time. So for example if you spend points in Knowledge, you are also gaining Cunning and Resolve. If you dump points into Vigor you are earning all three secondary attributes. On my caster character I have mostly alternated between Knowledge and Vigor with a few points into Might so that I could keep wearing the armor based caster gear called “Inlaid” as I moved up through the levels. Weirdly this was also enough points for me to keep using a melee two handed axe in my offhand. One of the huge positives of the game is that other than mastery choices, you can pretty much respec your character at any time either through going to a specific shrine and completely resetting your character… or through just hitting respec mode button at the bottom of the skills screen and spending gold to apply the changes.
I did not want to record a full version of one of my normal videos, but I did record a bit to show Ace last night how the gameplay felt. This is me tooling around in a higher level area than I am and killing fish people. You can see the Ice Shards gameplay style where I have poured points into both getting multiple shards and having the shards home in on targets. The content in the early access version of the game seems to end around level 20, and all of the areas are locked to a specific level range. I wandered up into level 15 areas when I was level 12… and it was mostly fine but things just took a long time to kill. I fought at level 18 boss at level 13 and it was also fine…. but again just took a long time to grind it down. It is a much slower game than the modern standard, which is either a good or bad thing depending on your point of view. I will likely try and play this when it goes live, but it will never be a primary game for me because I am too used to the speed of Path of Exile at this point.
This is very much a game in the same family as Path of Exile II, where it wants you to make methodical choices and dodge all of the attacks. You will never feel super powerful even on the lowest difficulty version of the game. The original Titan Quest was very much attempting to clone the type of gameplay that Diablo II had, and Titan Quest II is just a much prettier version of that same methodology. Either this sounds like a great time to you, or it does not. It will not compete seriously with games like Path of Exile, Last Epoch, and even Torchlight Infinite because that audience wants a much faster paced game. It will however be a very recognizable experience to anyone who played a lot of the original Titan Quest. If you want a slower and by reference grindier experience then this is probably right down your alley. My hope is that it feels less clunky the more masteries that get added into the package, because like I said right now there does not seem to be a lot of good synergy for buildcraft. The Elementalist Ice Shards build is so popular because it really feels like one of the few truly viable options if you want a specific type of gameplay.
The game world itself is really beautiful, and the soundtrack sufficiently haunting. The orchestral palette of the game reminds me a lot of The Witcher 3 with its mournful use of strings. There are a number of interesting locations, but most of what I have seen so far is large open fields, cliffs, and swampy regions which are lovingly rendered… but also somewhat generic. There are however a bunch of really cool touches like the foot tracks in the dusty roads, or places where a string of ants is crossing the path in front of you. It reminds me quite a bit of the sort of look and feel that the first game was trying to go for, and since the world is crafted and not generated… there can be a wealth of detail put into it. However this also means that much like an MMORPG, once you memorize the layout of the zone you will be mentally optimizing your pathing through it and ignoring all of these details on future playthroughs. I have already seen myself doing this with some of the early areas since I am three character deep into the tutorial.
Early Access was $24 right now on steam, and that seemed like a reasonable risk to take in order to buy my way into the game. I did not really enjoy the play test from March, but having shifted to playing a caster I am enjoying the experience much more. There are a few more side quests that I could do, but effectively at 8 hours in, I have completed everything that is currently in the early access release. If you were more dedicated to a single character you could easily complete everything that is to do in 5 hours or less. So really think of this as a demo of the game more than a true early access, and we have no clue what sort of release cadence they will have going forward. I don’t think there is much more content in this version of the game than the play test that was released six months ago. They expect to release the full version of the game in Q4 of 2026, so we still have a very long time until then. Honestly unless you are just burning to play this… I would probably wait until there is a bit more meat on these bones.
There is enjoyment to be had… but you are probably better off just playing Last Epoch Season 3 on the 21st, or Path of Exile II 0.3.0 on the 29th of the month if you are dying to scratch that ARPG itch. If you want a great single player experience, there is always Grim Dawn which is just about to release another expansion. If you can stomach a game that is a few decades old at this point there is also the original Titan Quest, but it has definitely got graphics and gameplay from its era. Buying into the early access gets you the final release of the game, so there is at least that which is a positive. We will also be able to test new content as it goes into the game, however I am not entirely certain how much of that I will be doing. I think it will probably be a solid game on release once it has had a bit longer to bake in the oven.
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