

Each requires a number of completed charms to fabricate.

You'll find recipes to make these items throughout the game. These artifacts are immensely powerful items that you'll have to build yourself. There's a new equipment slot on your character sheet that you can use to equip artifacts. To balance out the increased challenge of the monsters and bosses you'll meet, there are a handful of new items that you can use. (Some new pet targeting commands and stances for your pets give you additional control over large groups of pets.) Even better, the new skills come with plenty of great visuals: loads of smoky purple energy effects and flying crystals. The Dream master also gains access to a flying eye pet called the Nightmare that can be used in combat and can also boost the effectiveness of your other pets. Teleportation powers add lots of mobility options and a range of new trance effects act as running buffs that can hurt your enemies and heal you. The Psionic attack is a great boost to your basic weapon attacks and the Distortion power is an awesome ranged attack that can hit multiple enemies at once. This is a very versatile set of skills that permits players to dish out lots of damage to groups of enemies. One of the coolest new additions is the new Dream mastery skill set. While many of the areas are basically dark caves, there are some bright spots here and there, particularly in Elysium, and some truly memorable vistas. There are several new large areas here, each of which is full of interesting quests and terrifying monsters. After the end of the original game, players will find the doorways to Hades open to them. Though we can hardly claim that Titan Quest was too short, Immortal Throne adds a rather sizeable chapter to the game.

It still won't win over anyone who isn't a fan of the basic design but it's a great expansion for fans of the original.

Now the team at Iron Lore has graced us with an enjoyable expansion pack that adds tons of content and smoothes out some of the original. With the title's emphasis on loads of enemies, loads of loot and loads of click-happy combat, Titan Quest was an excellent modern take on the format popularized by Blizzard's action RPG. Last year's Titan Quest received many favorable comparisons to Diablo II and rightly so.
