At first glance, Titans of Illumia looks like a typical JRPG. But not really, because it's also an open world RPG with an emphasis on exloration and a lot of unusual mechanics. So, how does it work? Well, it has certain issues, but more on that later.

Storywise, you begin playing as some blue haired woman, whose default name I don't remember (I gave all the characters my own silly names) and then live out the memories of three other people. Those are: some Mage that got lost, a brawler-type lady that lost her memories and has a track record of constantly losing against the local thugs running the slums and some aristocrat with priest powers that has a dead girlfriend or something.

Their sequences all have the same basic structure: short personal stories of varying length (the aristocrat pretty much only has one cutscene, while the others have a bit longer ones), "you want something, so come to the church to get it", "you have to prove yourself worthy by passing the trials in the catacombs first", "mwahahahaha, this was all a trap, you fool"! The catacombs dungeon, which you have to pass during every character's introductory story, gets seriously old, especially since you have to play through all of their stories one after the other to get to the next part of the game.

Now, the dungeon has a slightly different puzzle for each character, but seeing as you have to go through it multiple times in quick succession, this is nowhere near enough. Especially since when it comes to the story, you aren't seeing anything new, just seeing the third character get tricked by a villain for the third time in the exact same way with slightly different dialogue. Really gives you the feeling of "been there, done that." It might have been better to focus more on the origin stories of the different characters and then they meet up later in a different way. Or just have longer personal stories for each character and then they team up for the church catacombs dungeon later.

Now, you can explore a bit even during the introductory sequences, especially with the mage, who starts outside the capital city and has to make his way there first, but seeing as you only have one character with terrible gear, there's not much point to it anyway.

After you finish all the stories, including Blue Hair Lady's personal journey through everyone's favorite catacomb dungeon (ugh), then the game proper starts. Our heroes band together to get revenge on the villain for making them walk through the catacombs four times doing all that evil stuff. You get a quest to comfront him in the castle, but you are free to explore and do whatever you want. And you have to find a way inside the castle first, you can't just barge in there.

Now, to talk about the mechanics of the game. There's multiple classes in the game, each of your four heroes can switch between two different ones and you can find additional classes to unlock out in the world. There's sidequests in the world, hidden items to discover and unlock, random amounts of gold you can pick up from wardrobes, crafting and a lot of other things. It's open world, so you can travel wherever you want. So, what's the issue?

Well, there's a problem with a lack of direction. Sure, you can go where you want, but it's pretty hard to determine where you should go at any given time. Chances are, you won't find anything of value or you wander into an area where the monsters wipe out your party in one hit.

One issue with this is the fact that your party doesn't level up. That's right, you stay at level 1 and monsters only give you gold. The only way to get stronger is to get better gear. But there's only so much you can buy in town, so you have to find new crafting recipes to craft better stuff. And those items need special ingredients that you have find and you don't know where etc. You see where I'm going with this? You want to get stronger, but the way to accomplish that isn't really obvious.

You can also only save in towns, not dungeons, so any exploration carries a big risk, where you could lose hours of progress if you've wandered somewhere you dhouldn't or just got unlucky. Now, the game doesn't have a game over, but you lose a substantial part of your gold and get teleported to the church in the capital city while all the monsters respawn, so it really feels like all of your efforts were for naught.

After the opening was finally over, I immediately set out for the castle. I a pretty nice sequence, I've managed to figure out that the way inside is through the sewers and managed to find the key to them with the help of some NPCs. Yet despite my best efforts, I didn't manage to find the correct path to the castle from the sewers, despite wandering there for what felt like hours. Maybe I'm just bad at lever puzzles, who knows. After being defeated by some guards and my subsequent attempts to venture into the sewers ended in more fruitless searching, I've decided to put the main quest on hold for a bit and upgrade my party a bit.

I found an ice cave dungeon, which went on for a very long time, had many winding passages and a "fall through weak ice" mechanic. But then my party was defeated by some strong mob and I lost what seemed like everything I've gained in that cave, plus a part of the gold I had previously. Deeming it a failure, I ventured there again and this time, I've retreated from the cave before I could fall prey to the monsters again due to potions running out.

Then I bought everyone the best gear in town. Feeling pretty confident, I looked for some sidequests. I've finished two minor ones that didn't give much of a reward, then I found an interesting one, that involved investigating dark depth filled with unspeakable horrors. So, after some investigation, I've located the entrance to said are, which turned out to be almost completely devoid of light. It also turned out to be filled with horribly strong undead monsters that downed my party in one hit, despite being outfitted with the best they could get at this point.

Seeing this, I've decided to look for a way to upgrade my gear further. THe merchants sold some crafting recipes, but the items made with them seemed like sidegrades at best. There was some talking about the dwarves being great crafters, so I've decided to look for the dwarf city. But first, I've explored the area to the east. I've reach a snowy city, where the party was immediately thrown in the dungeons, because they thought they were spies. Well, a cutscene later and it's all clear.

I haven't found much of value in the town during my cursory search and feared that the area might be a bit too difficult for me at this point, so I've decided to check out the western part of the island first. I found a mine, which I've figured out might lead to the dwarves. Then I've discovered that it's actually a bandit hideout. Oh well, there was a talk of getting rid of the bandits too, so I've figured that there might be some goodies there too or maybe some interesting sidequest.

So, the party went through the mine, solving minecart puzzles and defeating hordes of bandits. And then, after about half an hour... they find the way forward blocked by some bandit NPC. He says he won't let them deeper inside the bandit hideout. And that's it. The way forward is barred by this one NPC guarding the door, despite the fact that the party probably defeated 80% of the bandits in the mines on the way there and this one shouldn't be much of an issue. I guess that this is a part of some later quest, but it really discourages exploration. That's when I've finally decided to call it quits.

Despite playing the game for hours, I didn't feel like I've accomplished anything of value. The story basically just started, my party still felt weak and despite defeating a lot of monsters, I had nothing but at that point useless gold and some minor items to show for it.

Titans of Illumia has an issue where it somehow manages to be both too open and too linear at the same time in places. The opening was way too long and linear, but the worst thing about it was that it was too repetitive. Then the game goes to the other extreme and suddenly, you are overwhelmed with options, but get little direction.

Things like the random bandit who won't let you pass deeper inside the mines, despite you defeating hordes of his comrades in the mines in order to get to him are a bit too artifical gateways for this type of game in my opinion. I still would have played it longer if it weren't for the "no saving in the dungeons" thing, or if the dungeons atleast had save points. I love open world RPGs, but this one just didn't click with me.

Now, Titans of Illumia isn't a bad game. Despite being very critical of it, I can recognize its qualities and I did get some enjoyment out of it. It's probably not for me, but I'm certain there are people who will love this game. It has a lot of polish when it comes to some gameplay aspects, loads of things to do, some great mapping and some interesting concepts to explore. But there are still things that could be done better.