The original Titan Quest released last year to great acclaim, and with very good reason. It was the return of an action role-playing game, a new series that very nearly filled the gap left by Diablo's abandonment. Set in a fantastic blend of true history and mythology, Titan Quest sends one hero through ancient Greece, Egypt, and the Orient in a stunning tale of power struggles. The gods and titans of Grecian legend cause havoc for the poor mortals of the world, and it comes down to one hero to set the balance straight. While this was an amazing game and a very fun adventure, there were some problems and some modern features that felt noticeably absent. Iron Lore set out to repair this oversight, and to tack on some of their favorite ideas that couldn't fit into the original title while they were at it. The result of their labors does more than any traditional expansion pack does; Immortal Throne makes the whole game worth playing through all over again.

Titan Quest: Immortal Throne does what every expansion pack should do. It brings a new land to explore, a new set of bad guys to take on, a bit more story to follow along and even a new class to offer a different take on things. Immortal Throne won't be set apart as a stunning example for these things, though it does them extremely well. Immortal Throne sits above the vast majority of expansions because of how it changes the original title.

First off, Immortal Throne (IT from now on) includes the features that everyone thought the original Titan Quest was missing. Things like an auto-arrange button for the inventory and an aggression setting for pets. These are by no means above and beyond, but are very much needed and a very strong addition. Then Iron Lore went out of their way to make things better. Titan Quest has very nice visuals, but those came at a cost. Many low and even mid-range computers have had a horrible time getting Titan Quest to run at an acceptable frame rate, if it runs at all. Iron Lore has added several new options to the graphical options in IT, allowing players to tweak the visuals down to whatever level they need, disabling special post-effects and shadows if necessary to make the game run about a hundred times better on low-end PCs than it previously did. Even with these settings disabled, the game still shines nicely, though a few water and web effects look odd.

Iron Lore designed a class system that was built on the shoulders of the giants before them, but they did it their own way, making a multi-class system that stands out as one of the best class systems in any game in years. Traditional skill trees for each class exist, and pumping points into an overall ability for that class's specialty opens up new skills. For example, throwing four points into the overall Earth Mastery ability might open up two new fire spell attacks. In a nice twist, these Mastery points increase the character's base attributes, mana and health. IT adds a new class to multi-class with this, though doing so requires starting a character from scratch.