Titan Quest: Ragnarok Review
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Introduction
Titan Quest: Ragnarok is a new DLC for the Titan Quest: Anniversary Edition (released in 2016), which was a remastering of Titan Quest (2006) and Titan Quest: Immortal Throne (2007). It's not often you get a new DLC for a single-player game that's essentially ten years old, but here we are.
If you don't remember Titan Quest, it took the same point-and-click action RPG goodness from Diablo II, and placed it in a world filled with the myths and legends from ancient Greece, Egypt, and the Orient. The titans were the bad guys in the original game, and Hades took on that role in the Immortal Throne DLC. Titan Quest included lots of bosses and enemies to kill, lots of equipment to loot, and lots of maps to explore. I found the game to be a perfectly serviceable action RPG, but I didn't like as much as many others.
Iron Lore Studios developed Titan Quest and Immortal Throne (and then closed their doors in 2008), THQ Nordic handled the remastering for the Anniversary Edition, and now Swedish developer Pieces Interactive has taken over the reins for Ragnarok. Is there any hope for a franchise that has changed hands so many times? Is THQ just milking the engine for a few extra dollars? Does the new DLC provide any entertainment value? Keep reading to find out.
Getting Started
The Ragnarok DLC adds a new act to the Titan Quest campaign -- that's Act V if you're scoring at home. When you create a character for the expansion, you can either start over and play through all of the earlier acts before reaching Ragnarok, or you can create an "accomplished hero" and skip ahead to the new content. Accomplished heroes start out at level 40, they get credit for completing all of the earlier quests (so they receive all of the inventory bags and stat reward bonuses), and they get lots of money so they can buy equipment, but they're blocked from visiting the first four acts of the game (on the normal difficulty), so they're only recommended for players who have seen the earlier content before.
Ragnarok is played in exactly the same way as Titan Quest. You left click to move, you left click on an enemy to perform your normal attack (and keep the mouse button pressed to keep attacking), and you right click on an enemy to perform your main secondary attack. If you have more attacks than that, then you can assign them to hotkeys and trigger them that way. You can also press shift to attack without moving, Q to quaff a health potion, and E to quaff a mana potion. The camera follows your character around, so you don't have to worry about that; all you can do is change the zoom level by using the mouse wheel. Basically, if you've played any of the point-and-click action RPGs that are descendants of the Diablos (like Sacred or Dungeon Siege II or Torchlight, to name just a few) then you should be able to jump right in.
Characters in the game are defined by three attributes: Strength (for heavy melee weapons), Dexterity (for lighter melee weapons and bows), and Intelligence (for spells and skills). They also gain access to two masteries (aka classes): one at level 2, and an optional one at level 8. Then when characters level, they get 2 points for their attributes and 3 points for their skills and spells. It's a fun system that gives you plenty of ways to build a character, and Ragnarok only gives you more options.
