Titan Quest II

Another Victim of ♥♥♥♥♥♥ Modern Sequal of Glorious Original Game. I have so many notes on this one. I was so ungodly excited to play this, I grew up on Titan Quest 1, it might just be my favourite game of all time. I had really high hopes, spoiler alert, that were smushed into doo doo. I found the game so instantly disapointing - I ranted my boyfriends ear off for hours. There has been few times I have been so let down that it actually blindsided me; this was one of them. I was so angry, infact, I needed to wait a whole year to even post this review. Lo and behold, lets get right into it, my LIST: - Predominantly Game-of-Thronesy British Voice actors, making world feel considerably less Greek than the original. Why is modern media allergic to non-English accents? - Most abilties being instant cast, they feel less powerful than the OG game, you end up bottlenecked by energy/mana - The masteries are so generic and bland, so modifiable, that it makes your choice of mastery feel less impactful to your desired build. You can choose any mastery and build what you want. Its boring, its flavourless, your choices are obscelete. - Gear and skills are generic, and for the most part only give tiny percentages to certain things rather than impactful / flavourful new builds or meaningful upgrades. Every single reward, level up, new gear, feels extremely unrewarding and boring. - No way (that i could find) to view ailment (ailments were never explained, too) chance, bleed chance, stagger chance, etc. Still don't fully understand them. - Damage and speed is shown... but not dps... anywhere... or flat crit chance? - Mastery points should not have been split up into passive, active, and divinity. Divinity points giving NOTHING other than access to the next teir, and being their own seperate points system, means there is no weight or choice or reward when speccing them into one mastery or the other. Passive points being handed out each level in the same amount as active, despite having a much lesser weighting, felt strange. - Far more passives than actives, but they all felt like they did the same thing, multiple of same-feeling passives, small %dmg type increases.... - Crit chance isnt explained anywhere. within a couple levels I had 150% crit chance on a single ability (sweeping attack) does it make a difference to damage or anything? - Abilities and modifiers felt far less weighty than previous game. Points used to matter VERY MUCH and each one increased an abilities power considerably, and you had to weigh your choice of speccing into the mastery tier, points now dont feel as important. builds feel so flexible and modifiable that it takes away the challenge of pros and cons of certain builds, and reward/motivation for having a unique character/challenge of parameters. seems to be no increase to damage or armour when speccing into attributes? doesnt feel as important now, just for gear requirements. I used to be excited for level ups to spend points, now i dont even bother to do it every level, as it feels like a chore to read through all the similarly-flavoured options that all give me the same incremental microboost that somehow applies to every possible build - TQ1 felt like you built your character around a few skills, that felt very impactful. Skills all feel so similar now due to modifiers, and sharing skill points with the core abilities also makes the skill points feel weaker, i.e slightly upgrade primary attack, or get a whole new ability. - graphics have minor flickering issues in moving water, and it can be a little blurry/hard to see at times or distinguish assets. very blurry when moving. - every single thing felt flavourless, the quests felt uninspired, the rewards were meagre; I am truly sad to say that this game was Not Fun to play. TLDR: Game Bland. No meaningful choices. No flavour of Masteries from previous game. It's like AI drew a picture of TQ 1, but made it copy its homework from "Modern Top Down RPG Formula" and remove anything vagely bold or interesting. Sad.