Okay, I have been replaying the campaign missions on titan after the announcement of retold, and found that while the story and gameplay for the most part holds up, the AI and in some parts, the modifiers made to increase difficulty to make up for it are not so much. Some missions are easily cheesed due to an exploit that they definitely should have accounted for while others have their difficulty ramped up too much in comparison to surrounding missions. Not to mention, most of the difficulty comes in at the beginning where due to the AI getting heavy and champion tier units at the beginning while you are stuck with tier 1 forces you to turtle up quickly and hold the line until you can steamroll the opposition, which goes against the intended design of several missions, which are intended to be played aggressively. Furthermore, several missions clearly have had more thought put into higher difficulties than others.
Here are some things I would change:
- More events exclusive to higher difficulties- sure the tower blocking you from your first goldmine and chickens along with serpents slowing your access to fish on the second level consequences is a **** move, but at least it shows more effort than buffing early waves with champion tier units.
- Champion tier units in when you are still using basic ones in higher difficulties only encourages turtling. My suggestion is to limit the strength of starting enemy units to a degree and ramp them up significantly over time, eventually giving the aI combinations of techs not legal to the player if they dally to long.
- This will be especially necessary if they update the base AI, as without the means to funnel the aI in a more favorable direction, high tier units in the early game can become nigh impossible to deal with.
- The two worst of these are 23- The Dwarven Forge and 24- Not from Around Here. Having to deal with tier 4 myth units and siege that respawn faster than you can take them down is just plain overwhelming. This is especially bad in The dwarven Forge, where enemies are empowered by MONSTEROUS RAGE, saddles you with Freya instead of Forsetti, denying you buffed up Hessirs to even the odds with the giants (especially in the claustrophobic environment of the mines), better ranged support in the form of Trolls, and saddling the player with a useless god power for the level in the form of Forest Fire while only benefiting your cavalry to a small degree (only good against the siege the giants take with them in later waves, but only if you can reach them) and giving more mobile healing. However, if you manage to clear out the mines, all the challenge disappears. Also, I have encountered a glitch in 24 where if you skip the opening cutscene, you lose your starting god powers.
- Several levels are easily cheesed regardless of difficulty – in mission 18 – A long way from Home the enemy ‘scouts your base” via the god power Vision. You are playing as Isis, which means you can block this via building a monument next to your Town Center, giving you free reign until you engage the enemy. Similarly in mission 30 – All is not Lost, you can hold off on engaging the enemy indefinitely and build up by not building a town center.
- This one is universal to all difficulties, not just Titan, but in missions 18 – A Long way From Home, and 23 – The Dwarven Forge can incentivize the player to clear out the enemy bases first before engaging with the primary objective, at which point, the challenge is lost. This is especially disappointing in the Forge level where you get cool new techs to play around with and there are several tunnels to off the map where enemies look like they could emerge from, but never do.