Titan Quest II demo impressions

     The Titan Quest II "Playtest" turns out to be a full on demo. This isn't a typical Early Access or Open Beta. This is a finely polished demo to tell you, "Come, play our game. We're ready for you."

     All of the first impressions were no surprise, the trailers and gameplay previews already available make it obvious the game is gorgeous. The music and sound effects are also excellent and the controls are impressively smooth and comfortable. 

     I had to rebind some keys, the default settings weren't my preferred but they were mostly okay. The keybind options are really nice and allow full customization (plenty of games don't). Titan Quest II controls with the normal left-click movement, it also has W, A, S, D controls via rebinds, and it also has a "force move" keybind, all of which can be combined together for very smooth gameplay. 

     The most surprising thing to me about the gameplay was the movement and animation pacing. The slower animations and movement made even the easy enemies that die quickly feel "normal." I didn't find myself running super fast through the environments while aoe spamming everything to instant-death as most of these arpgs have been doing for a long time now. I have recently spoken on my disappointment in gameplay balance in most of the games in this genre while discussing Dragonkin: The Banished and Marvel Heroes. This demo feels very good with enemy balance to me.

     Titan Quest II's HUD display and interface is so beautiful! One thing that bugs me about a lot of games is the interface being covered with icons that are too big, unnecessary information, and just all around being super ugly. The interface here is so nice to look at. The text font is nice. The backgrounds of information screens such as the quest log or NPC dialogue are very nice. The health bars look good and clean. This is the most impressive interface I can remember seeing in a very, very long time. Hogwarts Legacy's interface is also really nice!

     One thing I noticed about the combat as the Mage type class is that the Staff weapon felt a bit sluggish and weak by default. While playing more though, I noticed too late that the skill tree has many deep options and customizability allowing you to change the gameplay of not only your spells but your main weapon as well. I have not experimented with the Staff build yet and I'm not sure I will during this demo but I kind of want to. I was already invested enough into Lightning and didn't feel like respecing. (Get rid of the money cost of respecing, that has always been a silly game mechanic). Once I noticed that you could actually put talent tree points into the main weapon, I have an idea that the Staff weapon can turn out to be pretty incredible on its own with the upgrades. They looked super badass. Update: I tried it, didn't really like it. As a basic attack weapon, the Staff could use some fixins such as a basic faster attack speed to start with or possibly higher base damage.

     With the lightning spell I chose and with skill points spent, I ended up turning a single lightning pillar into a multi-strike lightning zone which is just awesome. I could write a long thing on the skill system alone in the demo but that's not something I want to do. It would take awhile to really get into and I just don't want to for the demo. Go play it. I find it very impressive and look forward to toying with many more builds when the game releases. It is possible I may change my mind and go play more. If I do and try out multiple builds, I may be back to speak on that in a different post.

     The exploration in Titan Quest II is also rewarding. This always stands out to me when a game actually rewards you for exploring. I have played many games where I run around the open world and find nothing, making exploration pointless. Then there are other games that just tell you where everything is so exploration kind of  loses it's feeling of being special. In just the demo alone here, there are hidden doors and hidden switches that open hidden doors and hidden pathways that you can stumble upon. The visual transition from caves to outdoors and vice versa is also a beautiful sight to see.

     Something I would like to see added to the game is a "mark as junk" and "sell all junk" type of option. I don't know if that is already planned but it wasn't here in the demo so I'm just throwing that out there.

     I can't believe this game is going to launch in Early Access. It makes me wonder how much work still needs to be done. This demo is truly impressive all around. Gameplay, music, sound effects, visuals, story, game settings, everything is so damn good man. 

     I totally forgot to mention that the inventory space is really nice as well. Roomy enough, not too big, not too small, seems just right. Oh yeah, and you can actually zoom the camera in and out fluidly!!! Do you know how many isometric arpgs like this just have one or two camera angles?!??!?! It's most of them! Ugh! Including stupid Diablo IV. The camera is great in this!

     For any of you that love isometric arpgs, please do yourself a favor and go buy and play Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem. Seriously.

      My money situation is very tight right now. I'm really hoping and planning to get into this game on day one of Early Access. My vlog is below if interested. I don't share too many extra thoughts there that I didn't say here. Thanks for reading. Game on.