Titan Quest: Eternal Embers Review (MaDDoT)
Titan Quest: Eternal Embers (2021)
I bought all the DLC content during the Winter Sale and I can say without a doubt I regret getting this expansion. Atlantis and Ragnarok is fine, those are fun and enjoyable, but this one? No. Just no. The pack was the most expensive item I bought during the sale, and trust me when I say you can buy a lot of good games for less (ironically base game Titan Quest comes to mind). Complaining about the price is not something I normally complain about, but this one hurts.
So for some reason they thought it would be a good idea to start this expansion off at legendary difficulty - Something you can only do if you beat the base game on Legendary. To do this, you must complete the game on normal difficulty, again on epic difficulty and then one last time on legendary difficulty. As you can imagine this is something that takes time to achieve. Legendary is not a cake walk in the park, legendary difficulty is something you have to work for, grind for and plan around a bit as it is challenging. Your resistances get lowered with each difficulty - less resistances means you take more damage from that source, more damage means you die faster, this doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell you this. Now by starting the game off on Legendary, you can imagine you start with NOTHING - they give you a set to start off with, but I rolled my eyes when I knew this was coming. The set is not good. The set is not something you could plan around with your character build. A fixed set also means only certain class combinations will shine, although this was always the case with Titan Quest - some classes are just better together then other. They also give you access to two classes, of course you gonna max out the stat skilltree that provide stats cause you know, legendary difficulty (need that extra health and stats to actually equip the gear they give you) and all that leaving little space for actual class spells - the stuff you need to beat the game with.
Beating this expansion this way is possible, but lets be real - is this actually a fun way to play the game? I would argue no. If you beat legendary difficulty once, you will see and notice it's actually pretty hard to do and time consuming. Farming legendary weapons for your build, farming those materials to craft the divine artefact you want to use. It takes time. Just dropping in the world like this feels weird and out of place. Perhaps a choice in the gear you start with? Trust me, you die in about 4 to 5 hits depending on what your are playing.
Some other things I wish I knew about before buying, I had to get this information from other Steam reviews so make of that what you will - the map looks amazing but its basically empty maps with little quests or story, just endless mindless monsters hanging around to murder you over and over again. Going forward I will be reading more about a product before mindlessly buying a known branded product.
So last thing - I own the original Titan Quest and the expansion on Dvd (those relics you used to put into something called a "disc reader" to make them work). Me and my friends have many, many hours in this game, much more then my Steam time will ever truly reflect. I know and understand the mechanics of the game. I even remember a time my friend visited me, I woke up the morning only to see the guy busy farming a boss for better gear for us. Time and dedication is what makes this game fun, even better with friends. This expansion robs you of that experience, giving you one that's frustrating instead. Perhaps I really just don't like the way this expansion is handled - It might be something you enjoy. If you want to give it a shot, wait for the price to go way down.
4/10