Titan Quest Review (PC, PS4, Mobile) (also on Xbox One, Nintendo Switch)
Developer: Iron Lore Entertainment / THQ Nordic (Anniversary Edition)
Publisher: THQ Nordic
Released: June 26, 2006 (PC) / March 20, 2018 (PS4) / 2016 (Mobile)
ESRB: T for Teen

Titan Quest is one of my all-time favorite games. It’s also part of the reason this website exists in its current form. This is the game that the Titan part of Titanquisitor comes from (the quisitor part comes from Warhammer 40K: Inquisitor Martyr). So you’re not getting a detached, journalistic take here on this twenty-year-old game. You’re getting the honest opinion of someone who has sunk hundreds of hours into this game across multiple platforms and would gladly do it again, and loves the game despite its flaws and doesn’t hold them against it.

With that said, this review still has to be honest about the PS4 version specifically, which gets a four out of five and probably doesn’t deserve it, but I love it, so I will do it anyway. It’s my review. The game itself? Five out of five. Exalted. Best in class. And the class is the entire ARPG genre.

The Diablo 2 Conversation

Every time Titan Quest comes up in conversation, somebody brings up Diablo 2. You know the speech. Diablo 2 is the greatest ARPG ever made. It’s untouchable. It defined the genre. And look, I’m not here to disrespect Diablo 2. It’s a masterpiece.

But Titan Quest is better.

I know that’s a fight-starter, so let me explain. Everything Diablo 2 does well, Titan Quest does just as well or better, and then it adds things Diablo 2 never bothered with. You don’t need town portal scrolls. You don’t need identify scrolls. Potions stack. There are multiple inventory bags instead of one cramped grid. These aren’t luxury features; they’re quality of life improvements that should have existed in Diablo 2 byt this point and still don’t (most of them anyway). Titan Quest came out five years later and had the good sense to fix them.

Then there’s the mastery system, which is where Titan Quest separates itself completely. You pick one mastery early in the game and a second mastery just a few levels later, and the combination of those two determines your class. There are eight masteries in the base game. That means there are twenty-eight possible class combinations. Do you want to be a Harbinger, combining the raw physical power of Warfare with the occult brutality of Dream? A Stormcaller who blends Earth and Storm into an elemental nightmare? A Conqueror who turns Defense and Warfare into an unstoppable tank? Every single combination plays differently. No two builds feel the same. The Anniversary Edition and the three subsequent DLCs added even more masteries, pushing the replay value to a level that no other game in the genre can touch.

A Handcrafted World Worth Returning To

Here’s something I’ve come to appreciate more as I’ve gotten older: the world of Titan Quest doesn’t change. The enemies are always in the same places. The encounters are the same every time. The layouts are fixed.

For a lot of modern gamers, that sounds like a knock. The industry has spent the last decade praising procedurally generated content as some kind of design triumph. Randomized maps, randomized enemy spawns, randomized everything. And I get the appeal. But Titan Quest’s approach does something that randomized design can’t: it creates encounters you can study, learn, master, and then run through with a completely different build to see how the experience changes. This mob gave me fits last time on this build, but was a breeze this time on this other build.

The game takes you through Ancient Greece, Egypt, China, and eventually the Underworld. Every region has distinct mythology, enemy types, and visual identity. Satyrs and Centaurs give way to Mummies and Undead, which give way to Terracotta Warriors and Jade-infused monsters. The handcrafted design means the world feels intentional, not generated. It was made by people who cared about what you were walking through.

I also love that loot matters in Titan Quest. On a normal playthrough, you aren’t swimming in legendary gear because you won’t even see it. You’re working for it. When a purple item drops in later difficulties for the first time, it means something. The game doesn’t hand you power, it makes you earn it, and earning it with a different class combination each time is what keeps me coming back. And the endgame is simply playing through the campaign again on a greater difficulty (there are three). It’s such a refreshing design to go back to it coming from what has become the genre norm of seasons and blasting maps.

The Pace Is the Point

Titan Quest is slower than modern ARPGs, and I mean that as the highest possible compliment.

Play Diablo 3, Diablo 4, or Path of Exile for a few hours, and you know what you’re doing. You’re managing chaos. Enemies swarm the screen by the dozens. Effects, colors, numbers, and animations blur together into a wall of noise. Those games can be a blast, but they’re also brainrot in the most honest definition of the word. You’re reacting, not thinking. You get to the point, fairly quickly, where you’re nuking the entire screen and dying in one-shot to something you couldn’t see.

Titan Quest isn’t like that. Encounters are deliberate. Enemies come at you in manageable groups. The screen doesn’t turn into a fireworks show where you can’t tell what’s happening. Every fight has weight to it. When you position your character, use a skill at the right moment, and walk away from a tough group of monsters with your health intact, it feels earned. When you don’t, you notice what you did wrong. The game is always communicating with you, and it’s never trying to overwhelm you into not noticing that it isn’t saying anything interesting.

The slower, more deliberate pace isn’t for everyone in this day and age of short attention spans and fried dopamine sensors. But I like the slower style. I like the fast-paced chaos of Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 2, as well, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes I like to just come back to Titan Quest and slow down a little bit and enjoy the actual game.

The PC Version Is the Definitive Version

If you can play Titan Quest Anniversary Edition on PC, that’s where you want to be. The Anniversary Edition is the version to get, period. It’s a massive overhaul of the original 2006 release that improved multiplayer, fixed bugs, rebalanced skills and items, and generally made everything about the game better. And THQ Nordic continued to support it with paid expansions over the years, the PC version has gotten everything. And it’s complete now since Titan Quest II is the focus in Early Access.

Immortal Throne takes you into the Underworld and adds the Dream mastery. Ragnarök sends you to the Norse realm and adds the Rune mastery. Atlantis adds a shorter but enjoyable chapter involving Poseidon and the corrupted city. Eternal Embers, the fourth and final expansion, takes you to the Far East and adds the Neidan mastery, which is a fascinating alchemy-based skill tree built around potions and elemental attacks.

All four expansions are available on PC. All four add meaningful content. Most add a new mastery, which means more class combinations, more builds, more reasons to replay. The Anniversary Edition combined with all three DLCs is one of the most content-rich ARPG packages you can buy, and it regularly goes on sale for pennies on the dollar. If you don’t own it, what the hell are you waiting for? They practically give it away.

The Mobile Version Deserves More Credit

The mobile port, developed by DotEmu (and later HandyGames) and published by THQ Nordic, is genuinely good. I don’t say that as a backhanded compliment with a “for a mobile game” qualifier attached to it. Titan Quest on mobile is one of the only games I’ve actually been able to enjoy on a phone. I still play it from time to time to enjoy Titan Quest on the go.

The touch controls are handled well enough that the combat doesn’t feel broken, which is the main thing you’re worried about with a game that was designed for a mouse and keyboard. The content is intact. The mastery system works. For the amount of game you’re getting on a device you already have in your pocket, the mobile version earns its place.

The PS4 Version: Great Game, Real Problems

The PS4 version was ported by Black Forest Games and released in March 2018, and I want to be honest about what it is and isn’t.

It’s still Titan Quest. The core game, the mastery system, the handcrafted world, the encounters, the loot system, all of it is there. Playing it on a couch with a controller is a legitimate way to experience this game, and it’s how I play it most often these days because I prefer consoles. Controllers work well with isometric ARPGs, and whoever handled the port understood that.

But the PS4 version (and that goes for all console versions) has genuine problems that have never been fixed.

The most painful is the relic inventory bug. Relics and charms are items you find and combine to create socketed bonuses for your gear. They’re an important part of builds, especially in later playthroughs. On PS4, relics can go missing from your storage vault. They simply disappear, and to make it worse, you lose like half of your relic vault stash with no way of getting it back. I’m not even sure what triggers it. For a game where inventory management and build crafting are central to the experience, losing relics you spent hours farming isn’t a minor inconvenience. It’s a gut punch, and it’s still happening.

The PS4 version also doesn’t have a game speed option. The PC and mobile versions lets you speed up gameplay, which matters when you’re replaying content on higher difficulties. On PS4, you’re locked into the default speed. I said earlier that Titan Quest’s pace is a feature, not a bug, and I stand by that. But not having the option is still a limitation as sometimes you just want to speed the game up a little bit.

The biggest missing piece is Eternal Embers. The fourth expansion never came to PS4. Ragnarök and Atlantis both made it to consoles in 2020, but Eternal Embers and the Neidan mastery stayed on PC. If you want the full Titan Quest experience, the PS4 version isn’t it.

Despite all of that, I still play the PS4 version regularly. The core game is strong enough that its limitations don’t kill it. But they do matter, and if you’re choosing between platforms, the PC version isn’t a close call.

The Bottom Line on Titan Quest

Titan Quest is one of the best games ever made. It’s not a nostalgia take or a hot take or a contrarian position. It’s a game that was excellent in 2006 and remains excellent now because it was built on solid design principles that haven’t aged. The mastery system gives it replay value that most modern ARPGs would kill for. The handcrafted world gives it a sense of place that procedural generation can’t replicate. The deliberate pace makes every build feel meaningful in a way that chaos-screen games don’t allow. The quality of life improvements over Diablo 2 were ahead of their time.

On PC with the Anniversary Edition and all four expansions, there’s nothing else like it. Save for maybe Titan Quest II in Early Access, but even that isn’t the classic experience.

The PS4 version gets four out of five. And I’ll admit that that’s heavily generous because the console versions do have serious issues that never got fixed. The relic glitch, the missing Eternal Embers content, and the lack of a speed option are real problems that keep it from a five in addition to various other issues. The issues, while annoying, especially the relic vault bug, hurts but doesn’t render the game completely unplayable.

Titan Quest, as a game across all platforms, gets a five out of five: EXALTED.

You can stay informed on the development process of Titan Quest II by checking out our tag archives here. If you enjoy Titan Quest, I’m going to start getting some guides up on the site over the next couple of months, so check back for that. For more game reviews, click here.

Agree, disagree, or think I got it completely wrong? Say so in the comments or over at the Vortex Effect forums.