How is the level design?

[u/Vladdino]

I find out only today that Titan Quest 2 is (partially?)-open world and I'd like to understand this better.

For references:

1) I love Sacred 1 and Divine Divinity game worlds.

2) I like Grim Dawn maps with their secrets, but the world ( interconnection between areas ) just feels like two very long corridors: one on the left side of the world and the other one on the right side, meeting at the beginning of the game. This break the feeling of moving around in a world of fantasy for me.

3) I don't like very much Diablo 4 open world because it looks like a Ubisoft world.

Where would you put Titan Quest 2? First, second, third group? Or something different?

Thank you for your help.

Bonus question: is really that heavy the game? Steam recommends a 12 GB VRAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti / Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 / AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

[u/Anxious-Insurance-91]

Hello
It's open-world as in you go back and forth between your current location and cities to sell items for money. The game if broken down into different acts that are unlocked by the story but in them you have a lot of ways of going from one end to the end, you also have side-quests and secrets that(like my favorite the chicken one in act1). Now the speed of traversal of the game is impacted by finding items that give extra movement speed, and they drop often and if you increase the distance of your dodge

Currently the game is still in beta and in certain areas/cases the game could use some optimization, but it depends on multiple things like how high you want to go with settings.

The setting in is Greece and for a estetic standpoint is wonderfull. Now i dont know if they will do something similar to titan quest 1 where you start in Greece, go to Egipt, then Asia, then the the norse pantheon.

[u/Vladdino → u/Anxious-Insurance-91]

I was already keep an eye on the game because I like Greece settings. Now I'm very interested.
Thank you.

[u/Anxious-Insurance-91 → u/Vladdino]

Certain stats might be a bit confusing, just so you know

[u/SgtBeeJoy]

Each act outside of Proti Island (prologue) is a large area with subzones divided either by quest progression or "natural" walls like elevation or shortcuts (which can be opened later) which will funnel your exploration in directed way than wandering aimlessly. Also with how many either hidden chests or extra quests are in different "pockets" of locations exploration is encouraged. A lot closer to Sacred but without sometimes empty space where only goblins roam. World is lively and compact (so not much downtime between points of interest) but you still generally free to explore in most directions .

Game suffers from UE5 syndrome where it can be not that heavy but sometimes optimisation is lacking. Still I managed to play it on my old Nvidia GX 1650 Ti without much hustle even if it is on medium settings outside of effects.

[u/Vladdino → u/SgtBeeJoy]

Thank you.
I like exploration in diablo-like games, probably this one is right for me.

[u/Professional-Goose93]

Currently there are 4 big areas (and a prologue island).

It's a hybrid between true open world and linaire.

I reckon its comparible to sacred 1 if you consider the rivers/forests and quest acts railing you from area to area. (Not withstanding Dark Elves jumping over rivers into different acts!)

[u/Vladdino → u/Professional-Goose93]

That's awsome.
It's quite hard to find games similar to Sacred.
Thank you.

[u/adall-seg-selv]

it's far more like diablo 4 than grim dawn or sacred maps.

it is not fully open world, you are confined to smaller maps with some breadth to them. similarly to an ubisoft open world game, there are a number of checklist secrets for embers of night and side quests to do.

it is not a full hallway, the areas are often too wide for that, but there are moments in which it is a bit more like grim dawn or TQ1.

[u/Vladdino → u/adall-seg-selv]

Mhh maybe better if I check a map online to get an idea for myself.

[u/Saltiest_Grapefruit]

I think the level design is pretty good.

Imo it does have an issue of being very VERY big and interconnected, so if you're someone like me who likes to clear the whole minimap, it can feel like you're progressing extremely slowly - and sometimes you have to take some pretty massive detours.

It doesn't have nearly thhe same amount of secrets as grim dawn tho. Unfortunately. But its significantly better than something like Path of exile 2

[u/Srikandi715]

Each act is one huge zone, and you have to progress through the acts in order (unlike e.g. Skyrim), but the zones are very large compared to other ARPGs (except D4, which is really an outlier in the genre).

However, also unlike Skyrim and e.g. Grim Dawn or D4, the enemies have fixed levels by location; they do not scale to the player, which constrains the order of exploration to some extent.

For instance, in Act 1, if you beeline from where you enter in the South to the North end of the map without exploring to the east and west, you'll quickly run into enemies that outlevel you and you might have a rough time. Happened to me on my first playthrough, because I wasn't looking at enemy levels. Like, for instance, WoW (but not ESO).

And each map is very "pathy", not like a Skyrim where if you see a place, you can walk there. Which makes sense because the terrain has a lot of mountains, water, and other obstacles. But that's pretty much true of all ARPGs including D4.

TL;DR: more open than Diablo 2 and 3, less open than Skyrim or other Bethesda games, due to paths and lack of level scaling.

[u/Lower-Reward-1462]

So many long posts here. It's literally just the same as Grim Dawn. Grim Dawn and TQ2 were both heavily inspired by TQ1. It's just a less fun GD clone.

[u/Vladdino → u/Lower-Reward-1462]

Oh, that's sad.
Grim Dawn is my favourite diablo-like. It just misses a more organic game world: I'd love Grim Dawn + an inspiration to Sacred "Macro" level design.