Titan Quest Anniversary Edition

A nice package of the original game and it’s first expansion. They did a lot of minor tweaks and balance changes and added new, improved GUI and an increased game-speed option. There are also some minor content additions in the form of optional mini-bosses. This release have also added some steam integration. The achievements are mostly dull, tired and counter-productive. The best ones are for one-time most-effective use of the skill or ones pointing towards optional advanced bosses. The worst ones are working against the core gameplay feature of mixing different classes. Also it was free for the owners of the originals.

Ragnarök

Nordic has a peculiar scheme for monetization of the nostalgia. While everyone make sloppy re-releases and faux-HD remasters, the Nordic just makes minor quality of life patches and contracts a new DLC for the target property. One of which is this ten years late expansion to the Anniversary Edition.

First of all it significantly expands the stash. But still not making it unlimited to obsolete the TQVault (now with AE).
The new character class can nicely synergize, but don’t introduce anything new, just re-skins of other spells.
All new items looks good enough up close, but their icons stand out as cheap. If you compare them to the originals — you’ll see that they lack cell-shading and high contrast.
New NPC are voiced okay, but all enemies are just awful, and considering how much is there of them, you will hear them a lot.
New relics (etc) are the best part. We finally have XP boosters of which you can have a lot, and first relic for summoners.
Thrown weapons are plainly screwed up — they are not integrated in the base game, so until north you can only buy them. They are having half the range of a bow, but use the same character AI, so you get shot at while your dood just stands in place, instead of closing in.
Dyes being changed into local outfits is kinda ok, but I don’t think I like all of them or care that much.

New levels are amateur, there are a lot of places where you can miss the turn and will not know where to go. In an H&SARPG. Then, there is a ton of backtracking and bad placements of main quest NPCs. Resurrection wells are often placed right in the spawns of the enemies, so if you die just once, you can easily lose a million of EXP in a span of one minute, being repeatedly ganked on respawn.

Writing. You can easily say the difference between original uptight pompous tales of gods and heroes and new stories of sexual harassment, atrocities of war, adultery, respecting women minorities local tribes, the creation myths of kraut and cows and unending pants “jokes”. Not that it’s that much worse, at least it’s using real norse mythology names. But still, it’s not the same and it is less fitting for the setting.

Well. I don’t think this expansion is that good by itself, but it adds a new act and generally expands a good game. It probably is not worth the current asked price and it handles co-op in a disrespectful way, by just kicking DLC-less hobos out. But it is not ruining the base game and is fruitful for high-level EXP grinding.