Titan Quest Review

We begin our journey into Titan Quest during the times of Greek Gods, Titans, and all those magical creatures that have inspired games for as long as I can remember. You play as a warrior in this action role-playing hack-and-slash game that borrows gameplay mechanics from hits like Diablo, Baldur’s Gate, or Divinity: Original Sin. Your journey will span across vast lands, including Ancient Greece, Egypt, and even all the way to China in a quest to defeat the Titans that have escaped their prison. The base game has been around since 2006 and actually began production way back in 2004 with Randall Wallace as the scriptwriter. Including its expansions, the game has sold around 1 million copies thus far, and the Switch version should only add to that.

As you walk through the world, there is a “fog of war” that will obscure the world and map as you explore. This aids in keeping track of where you have and haven’t traversed, but of course it can hide dangers lurking around in the shadows. You’ll want to check every nook and cranny to find treasures and new places to explore like caves. You’re free to equip your character with equipment you find most useful, but I preferred a melee combination of weapon and shield with a bow and arrow for ranged combat to take out enemies from a distance.

Defeating enemies and completing quests will award you with experience points which then give you Attribute Points that you can spend to increase your avatar’s Health, Energy, Strength, Intelligence, and Dexterity. As with most titles in this genre, there is a HUGE amount of dropped items (loot) you can pick up from fallen enemies, chests, and even piles of bones. Your weapon/item inventory is stored on a grid where some items like a ring or potion only take up one square whereas larger ones can take up a 2 by 4 block, so inventory management comes into effect early on in the game. Villages and camps may have merchants where you can sell and purchase items to help you on your voyage as well. There are also items you can pick up that you can combine with weapons or armor to make those items more powerful. You will also come across shops that allow you to separate these item melds at a varying degree of cost. As you fight your way through the journey you will want to upgrade your arsenal as often as you can. Some items will require you to be a certain level to be able to use them, which is par for the course in these types of games.

You will come across many characters that you can aid in side quests to help your avatar level up and earn more gold to make purchases. It does take a long time to walk through the world, so the developers set up portals in villages and certain places so that you can fast travel between them. Something I didn’t realize until a few hours in is that you can also set up a portable portal for those times when maybe your inventory is full and you’d either like to store it with an inventory bank or sell it off to a merchant. Your inventory fills up quite often, so this feature saves a lot of time backtracking to previous destinations.

The menu system is a cluster of things you can access and can be overwhelming at first. In fact, when I first booted the game up and started to play I started to become fatigued at the scale of the game and decided to wait until the next day to play it. There is a lot to do and explore, which is a good thing, especially if you’re looking for a title to dedicate a lot of time to. Even though Titan Quest has been available on PC and other platforms over the years, the Switch version is sure to garner new players. There aren’t a whole lot of games like this on Nintendo’s platforms, so this is a great place to start! Plus the game supports up to 6 players online for co-op play making it even more fun of an experience.

The graphics are dated to a point, but they still look very lovely. The character designs are solid and borrow heavily from mythology, so expect to see lots of creatures like harpies, centaurs, and the undead. Bosses provide a challenge along with stumbling into a hornet’s nest of enemies on accident. Each non-playable character is voiced by an actor and is nice to not have to read if you don’t want to. The music isn’t really anything special, but much better than no music at all. You will hear birds and various noises as you explore and they add to the ambiance of the world.

I’m not sure how many hours the average player will spend getting through the story, but it will depend mostly upon how many side quests and how much exploring you will be willing to do. I find uncovering as much of the map from the fog of war as I can to be just as much fun as progressing through the story. Unlike some games on the Switch, this one is best played when you have a few hours to spend with it at a time to keep your bearings and to stay on task.

Titan Quest is much more enjoyable of an experience than I anticipated. I love the fact that, with the Switch, I can play anywhere and planning out that time to play isn’t quite as important as it would be for a console or PC experience. I will keep pointing this out for as long as I can because it’s really the beauty of the system and the number one reason I was interested in getting one. The words and such can appear small on the system screen, but not impossible to read. If you do have trouble seeing things up close, perhaps a good pair of reading glasses can help you here. I know I must wear them thanks to my aging eyes; probably all those years of sitting too close to the TV that my mother warned me about. This one’s a good fit for Nintendo’s hybrid and one that should appeal to a vast range of gamers.

Review Guidelines & Scoring

Titan Quest was reviewed using a final retail Nintendo Switch download code provided by the publisher.

Jay Kittelson

Jay has been an avid gamer since the Intellivision days.  His hobbies include building PCs, 3D modeling and printing, and spending time with his children and dog.