WorthPlaying gives IT 9/10!

[Cironir]

WorthPlaying's reviewer seems to have enjoyed Immortal Throne, and awarded it a score of 9 of 10. Read the review.

[Infares]

Hopefully THQ is listening.

[Cironir]

He really seemed to like it! So much, in fact, that we forgive him "Typhus" and his opinion that rogue/hunting is "underpowered". It's nice to read reviews from people who actually did play the full game, and he did, or he'd not have noticed the rubber-banding!

[Infares]

"I guess it's pretty clear by now that I love Immortal Throne. I like to think that this isn't just my blind love of the franchise, and that it's merely observation of a well executed add-on. Just about every aspect of the game has been polished — the multiplayer server browser is much more comprehensive now, there is a handy little real-time clock in the character window to help you keep track of how many hours you have left before the sun comes up, there are new pet options that allow you to control minion behavior, the caravan allows you to transfer items between characters so you can twink yourself (sounds dirty, doesn't it?), and there's even a convenient item filter that will prevent you from accidentally picking up vendor trash while you're clicking all over the place in a battle. Also, the music score is every bit as powerful as Titan Quest: a Hollywood film-score composition with professional quality production values. Whoever wrote this knows their music, as well as their music software. The voice acting is just as superb as before, too. In short, there is effectively nothing in Immortal Throne that isn't as good, or better, than the basic game, which makes this an absolute must-have release. There is simply no other action-RPG in existence today that's as good Titan Quest, and Immortal Throne makes the best even better."

Yeah he played it.

[JMD]

Yeah, that's pretty kickass.

[Poinas]

"By the time I managed to wrap up the final quests, I had rolled over to level 50. Not bad, considering that the normal level at which I was playing..."

"The artifacts seem to come in two tiers."

"For example, one of the formulae I have (I've yet to complete a greater artifact) is for an item called a "Soul Prism." Its description lists Necromancy as an ability bestowed by the artifact; every single time you take melee damage while you're wearing the Soul Prism, you will summon skeletons that fight for you, up to a maximum of six!"

[Infares]

Eh, so maybe he didn't test everything, but we'll call the review good as it sits.

Good publicity for Iron Lore isn't a bad thing, even if some of it's incorrect.

[xxlebox]

Originally Posted by Poinas

"For example, one of the formulae I have (I've yet to complete a greater artifact) is for an item called a "Soul Prism." Its description lists Necromancy as an ability bestowed by the artifact; every single time you take melee damage while you're wearing the Soul Prism, you will summon skeletons that fight for you, up to a maximum of six!"

hmm.. I don't think he'll be happy when he sees how it really works.

[Cironir]

He may not have played it as heavily as some of us, granted, and he probably doesn't have the time to read the forums for hours every day, but I still feel the review shows that the guy actually played the game and didn't just talk about superficial aspects like most of the other review. I think he probably played at least ten hours, likely more, while the average reviewer may have only looked at it for a couple of hours. Or, like in some cases, reviewed a pre-release development version and criticised bugs that weren't even in the release version, even though they had been told by IL that they would be fixed.

I think it's nice that someone actually sat down and played the game. TQ has not had an easy time with reviews because it's not hyped, the marketing has been underwhelming and a lot of reviewers never went beyond "it's like Diablo 2, with a few differences". Let's face it, Diablo and Diablo 2 didn't invent the genre and they basically were very heavily "inspired" by text-only games such as Nethack. Diablo, the first one, was essentially just a graphical rogue-like game. And all those shooters that are coming out weekly, I don't constantly read that they are basically the same as Wolfenstein or Doom with a few new features added -- but that is what they actually are, and we played those over a decade ago. There's not been a "modern" shooter that I felt was more innovative or more fun than, say, Hexen or Heretic. One of the troubles with PC games, perhaps video games in general, is that the graphics improve, but the gameplay doesn't.