Titan Quest: Atlantis Review

Launching content for the almost 13-year-old action RPG seemingly out of nowhere is becoming a recurring theme for THQ Nordic; with the release of Titan Quest: Atlantis mimicking the similarly out of nowhere release of their previous expansion Titan Quest: Ragnarök.

Atlantis, unsurprisingly, takes our intrepid hero on an adventure across the Mediterranean to the legendary island as you click your way through hordes of enemies. Once again developed by Pieces Interactive, who were responsible for the previous expansion Ragnarök, it’s a little more focused than their previous entry.

The new campaign is accessible from just outside Rhodes, a friendly NPC named Marinos starting your odyssey by sending you on the hunt for the Journal of Herakles which details the whereabouts of the mythical landmass. The campaign adds half a dozen new zones ranging from the sun bleached stone and buildings of Gadir to the red sand of the Atlas Mountains and the jungles and temples of Atlantis itself.

It’s not a huge campaign, especially compared to Ragnarök, but it is a more interesting one to experience. The environment variety alone makes just seeing the next area pull you from one encounter to the next. There are a surprising amount of new enemy types for you to kill as you fight your way to Atlantis as well which also helps keep things moving.

Unlike the previous expansion, Atlantis doesn’t bring with it a new mastery, Titan Quest’s take on classes, but it does add a new tier of skill for all existing masteries for a total of 20 new skills. Typically a mix of both active and passive perks, these additions give you a new attack or ability to consider when building your character whilst also adding something new to a signature skill.

The Warfare mastery for example gets a new attack, Slam, that strikes all foes in front of them and also gets Lasting Legacy which can extend the lifetime for the ancestral warriors summoned via the Ancestral Horn skill. Some of the new options feel a little lacklustre but overall the new active skills are interesting and enable interesting new options for building a character.

As well as providing the new Atlantis campaign, it also adds a wave-based survival mode that takes place in the depths of Tartarus that you can attempt at any time. It sees you facing off against multiple waves of enemies with each wave having random modifiers applied to keep things interesting. After surviving each set of enemies you’ll take on a boss and then choose to either accept a reward or gamble it to keep going for the chance of better loot.

This is certainly an unexpected addition but definitely welcome as having more diversity in your options when it comes to monster murder is always welcome. Like the main game, this can also be played with up to six players cooperatively which is always a good time.

Tartarus is the only area where I discovered some polish issues though. Some areas in the map had holes in their collision, allowing me to “fall” behind the scenery. This occurred to me on stair tiles in a few of the areas in Tartarus, I could get back out again so it’s not game-breaking but it’s definitely a concern, hopefully these will be patched soon.

The game itself has received a few tweaks, with a couple of new graphical options like Ambient Occlusion, that adds visible shade where objects meet, and a Colour Grading option that enhances the contrast and helps the colours pop. Another small addition includes the long requested Quick Cast function which allows casting targeted spells where your cursor is rather than requiring you to supply a target after using them.

Just like Ragnarök, Titan Quest: Atlantis is a solid expansion to the game. It doesn’t drastically change the experience, but gives you new places to explore, new weapons and armour to collect and new enemies to murder. If what you are after is more Titan Quest then this is exactly that, and some slight polish issues aside it’s an enjoyable time.