Titan Quest 2 Early Access Thoughts

I have sunk a good couple of hundred hours into Iron Lore Entertainment’s original Titan Quest, long before the game was even on Steam. In fact, I still have my original install disks and manuals, complete with CD-Keys on them. When they revealed in 2023 that we were finally getting a full-blown sequel at long last, a couple of years back, I was thrilled to dive back into this ARPG series, and finally, Titan Quest 2’s early access has begun. Having tackled the currently available story content, here are my thoughts so far on the team’s latest Greek-inspired lootfest.

Titan Quest 2 puts you in the role of a character on the run from the god Nemesis, who, after laying waste to Sparta two decades before, is seeking your destruction, believing you to be the only obstacle that could bring about her end. As this is still very early access, only about five hours' worth of story content is playable, but even in that, Titan Quest 2 was able to tease me with enough plot threads to intrigue and leave me wanting more. Even in that short amount of time, I escaped the destruction of my home, fought and proved myself against gods, explored the mysterious realms of gods, and killed crabs. A LOT of crabs. 

The feature that I have always loved the most with the original Titan Quest title was its flexibility in how it approaches classes and skills, letting you pick two “schools” of skills, and mix-and-match the skills from both. This more open-ended approach has always appealed more to me than simply selecting “Barbarian”, “Wizard” or “Thief” from a character creation menu, and I was thrilled to see it return here in the sequel. Currently, only four schools are available: Warfare, Rogue, Storm, and Earth. Additional updates will bring more, with the team promising at least six for the version 1.0 release.

For my playthrough, I went with a Warfare and Storm combo, creating the Tempest class. A big tanky melee bruiser that gets in close and keeps smacking enemies until they die. On level up, you get three types of skill points to spend: Divinity points, which can be used to increase a respective school to unlock higher-tiered skills, Active skills, which are the various special attacks or spells, and Passive skills, which apply various buffs. At any time, for a price, you can respec your character and reallocate your points in the schools you have picked, and at least at present, this doesn’t extend to changing the specific schools you have picked, however.

Considering it has been almost two decades since the first game was released (all the way back in 2006), this new title features a wealth of improvements and additions to put it more in line with modern titles, in addition to just looking a lot better, too. Staying on the skill train, Titan Quest 2 expands greatly on the more open-ended nature that I mentioned previously, pulling in skill modifiers and extra skills that games like Diablo and Path of Exile have made popular. As you invest more of your points into a specific active or passive skill, they will not only increase in power and functionality, but you will also unlock slots that allow you to slot in extra properties into the skill.

One of my most-used skills in my Tempest character, the Heavy Strike, for example, you could add the ability for the skill to have a second follow-up swing every time I used it, or my Storm Armor could freeze enemies and call down lightning bolts at a set interval. Many of these extra properties could also be leveled further for increased benefit,s too. I'm really excited to explore the Earth and Rouge trees and see what they offer, and I’m looking forward to what other new schools will be coming down the pipeline. However, as neat as these are, they also feel a bit par for the course in ARPGs nowadays. What really took me by surprise and has wowed me, though, is that this same approach of investing points and adding modifiers has extended past just your special abilities, and you can enhance even the more mundane and basic abilities of your character, such as your basic attack for both your first AND second weapon sets.

On the surface, being able to level up and add modifiers to your basic attacks, and new-to-Titan Quest mechanics like the dash and barrier (more on these in a moment), shouldn’t be as exciting as improving the visually bombastic skills. Still, perhaps because I haven’t encountered this before, I find this to be really interesting. For example, leveling the “Hamstring” modifier on my basic attacks lets my plain old attack slow enemies I hit for a second by 30%, or I can change my Dodge movement action, which by default has my character dashing away, into a teleport, which lets me get out of harms way, even if I am rooted or locked down to a spot. 

Circling back around on those new mechanics, Titan Quest 2 feels like a modern ARPG, with systems that can be found elsewhere, such as the dash and barrier mechanics mentioned a moment ago. Dashing allows you to quickly move out of harm's way of large enemy attacks, the biggest ones usually telegraphed via markings, and a barrier that can be activated to soak up a certain amount of damage. Taking a page out of Path of Exile 2 and Diablo 4’s playbook, Titan Quest 2 allows you to play using the standard mouse-click approach or WASD movement, which I opted for, though both feel equally comfortable and usable.While I may be singing praise for Titan Quest so far, this is still a title that is just stepping out into early access, and as such, has areas that I am hopeful to see addressed going forward.  Perhaps the biggest annoyance right now is the lack of enemy variety and the almost non-existent appearance of special mobs while exploring. I touched on it very briefly at the start, that I killed a lot of crabs during my five hours with the available story, but I can only recount maybe five types of enemies I fought during that time, with the crustecans being the majority. Spiders, fish people, birds, and angry cultists rounded out my experience, with no recollection of any special mob versions of them popping up during that time. 

There is a special sort of excitement I get when I stumble on a special enemy in an ARPG, wondering if a cool new magic item will drop, or what mixture of abilities they will have to contend with. This excitement just isn’t there (yet) in Titan Quest 2, with those dicey encounters relegated currently to mini-bosses I would encounter during side quests, like the four fishman commanders I had to kill. I’m hoping one of the early updates that come in early access adds in these challenging surprises to stumble on while out exploring.

Titan Quest 2’s early access hasn’t done anything to diminish my excitement for the full release, and only added to the anticipation. Even with this small glimpse, I’ve struggled against bosses, been awestruck by areas I have explored, and theory-crafted character build ideas, leaving me chomping at the bit to see what happens next. 

Titan Quest 2 is now available in Early Access on Steam.