Two Worlds

"Too bad for Two Worlds"

After putting Two Worlds into my 360 and playing for 20 minutes, a thought flashed through my head that continued until I reached the end. Thank God I only rented. With a mix of sub-par visuals, a lackluster plot, and more bugs than Virginia in August, I have the distinct feeling I'm not the only one that is grateful for renting this garbage over buying it outright. Welcome to Antaloor, and onward to the breakdown.

GAMEPLAY


At the core it's your typical hack-n-slash RPG. Kill these baddies, loot, sell, upgrade, repeat. We've probably all been through the routine, so when another comes out we look for the new innovations. While this does have a fair amount of interesting ideas, not soon after experiencing them you'll come to realize they're more frustration than anything else. Even some basic ideas fail to execute properly, leaving you frustrated more than anything else. Sidequests are rudimentary and yawn-inducing, usually requiring you give an NPC one certain item, or in some cases, give multiple NPC's items in order to finish one quest, and in others asking you to eliminate said pests or fellow NPC's. In one faction you merely have to make a series of *deliveries* to nearly max out your standing. No killing, no retrieving an item. Talk to one NPC, go to the next town and talk to the next NPC. Very disappointing. Factions themselves are hardly worth the effort, aside from 2 being central to the main story. Otherwise your only driving factor is the 50% discount that a factions' merchants will give you. In fact, either rising, falling, or eliminating the head of any of the factions has virtually 0 repercussions. The only thing it will affect is your discount at the shops. Your actions up until the very last plot point affect the world in any sort of way whatsoever. Killing an entire city doesn't change a single thing except you now have one less spot to buy and sell. Mounts are also in this game, and are just as shoddy as the rest of Antaloor. You'll find yourself often running off the road or your mount suddenly turning in a direction you didn't ask it to, attempting to avoid an obstacle that didn't need to be avoided. Or you may find yourself chased by the city guard because your horse hit an NPC and harmed them while trotting. I often found myself just spending the extra time running to avoid the frustration of dealing with a horse. Although they can be used as pack horses, the idea doesn't stick so well. As you'll find teleporting (once you find and activate the teleports) to be more convenient, your horse stays in the same original location. So you have all manner of goods in a place that you'll have to manually take to a city. And that's not to say running didn't have it's own frustrations. The control works well enough, but the main character (who is nameless the entire game) runs about as slow as a 5 year old. And while you can gallop past the enemies on the road, while running you have to confront every single one. The menu screen is just terrible, and navigating is a royal pain in the ass. Some genius decided to put the tutorial text over the weight limit, so you have to guess as to how much more weight you can carry. Your mini-map is useless due to the small size and the lousy location icon tagged to your character. Dying is no qualm in this game, because when your health drops to 0 you're revived at a shrine. Which litter the entire world, so you're never very far from the enemy that just killed you, allowing you to continue/finish the job. Oh, and there's no autosave, so remember to bring that menu up often, or face immense frustration at having to restart from your last manual save. I enjoyed the rate of leveling this game gives you, as you'll never have to go too long without gaining strength. And since creatures aren't scaled to your level, feel free to kill those grizzlies after you've beefed up your character. Just don't get too confident in your bear slaying abilities, as some enemies will destroy you in one swing. It was a nice touch I felt added an actual reason to level up, aside from the fact it's the mainstay of your objective in an RPG. Because trust me, the ending shouldn't be your main objective. After wading through trash, you'd think you'd at least be treated to a decent ending. Not the case here. It's a huge letdown to see what you get once it's all said and done.

COMBAT

Combat is one of the fairly decent parts of the game, but in no way is it outstanding in any way. Magic plays in with 5 schools; Water, Fire, Earth, Air, and Necromancy. Your spells are handled in a spellbook menu as "cards". And the more cards you have, the more you can stack on one of the 3 available magic slots to raise the potency of said magic spell. There are also "booster" cards, which are add ons to your individually selected magic spells. Giving you more power out of missile spells, longer duration for summoning and buffs, or even lowering mana cost. Some of the 5th level spells are certainly fun to use, but are extremely hit and miss finding them. Usually merchants stock only the first 3 levels regularly. And booster cards are just as difficult to find. Targeting with your magic combat is poor, as you can hardly see the reticule at times and end up firing off a spell to no effect. Missile spells also work poorly, as their speed is slow enough for your opponent to sidestep your magic and take no harm. Summoning is a mix bag, where sometimes I found the creature to be very effective, and other times I found it to be useless outside occupying one or 2 enemies. Buffs are useful when you're at lower levels, but I found as I leveled further I only needed 1 particular one, and used it sparingly, leaving magic mostly untouched. Archery is in a similar bag to magic, except your arrow moves a great deal faster. But all aiming is automatic, so your target has to be running at you, directly in front of you, or sitting still to hit. Otherwise the arrow flies right behind them and you end up waiting until you get a shot. Which leaves melee combat, which works well enough for being the core of the game. Weapons are abundant, and similar weapons can be combined to stack attributes such as damage and elemental attack strength. Armor can also be combined, so many times you may find that you won't need to always spend your money on new equipment after each quest or in each town. And if you pay close attention, the Swords of the Ancients series from fantasy weapon designer Kit Rae make an appearance, and are usually worth getting a hold of.

SKILLS

I gave skills their own area simply because it's worth knowing where to spend your hard earned points. Some skills are extremely helpful to your character, such as Parry, Defensive Combat, Lockpicking, Strong Hand, and Stone Skin. But some aren't worth investing your points in. Swimming speed is useless, as you won't be fording any rivers or lakes, or participating in the Antaloor Olympics. Similarly, the Unhorse skill is not worth spending your points on, as you're the only person in the entire game on a horse. So unless you're planning on playing on PVP, I'd skip that one. Alchemy is also a useless one, as your potions are usually dependant on the ingredients you use. Stealing is amusing, but equally useless as you'll normally end up with more available loot than you have strength or room to carry. So you'll be in no shortage of potions or money very often. Magic is the most costly, but unless you feel like fleshing out as a mage, it's not worth the 15 skill points per school to master. If you're looking to make a Ranger/Archer type character, the 4 passive archery skills are absolute must-have skills. Once mastered you'll be able to drop a group of bandits or beasties from yards away, provided they're running straight for you and your bow has enough distance and strength. Sneaking and Death Strike are fun to play with, but enemies will come in packs of 3 almost 80% of the time. So you'll end up facing the other 2 in normal combat soon enough. Berserking isn't a very useful skill in my opinion, as the increased damage intake doesn't get offset well enough for me to want to use it. Swordbreaking is also not very useful, as a broken sword can't be sold once the enemy is dead. And also only works 8% of the time when maxed out. Horse riding is one of those skills that could be useful if you actually want to stay on your horse despite frustrating control issues. The rest are situational, so pick your weapon and then your poison.

VISUAL

While standing atop the Earth Claw tower, I overlooked the surrounding forest while the sun set in the west, casting shadows across the black tower and the ground below. The lighting and shadow effects are quite enjoyable, as well as water movement when you go for an agonizingly slow swim. As you walk or ride, your exact shadow is mirrored. Wearing a robe with dual swords? It will show your silhouette accurately on the ground behind you. Your armor also looks very nice, providing you don't pay attention to how your plate armor moves with the characters neck during conversations. The good visual effects are offset by the bad, with houses and cities being painfully repetitive inside and out. And I hope you're not a vain gamer, as the look of all the people in Antaloor would require a 3 beer minimum. Faces are ugly as sin, and the terrain when you're not overlooking it from a raised viewpoint is graphically terrible for a next-gen system. It looks like half the game is Xbox, and the other half Xbox 360.

AUDIO

The music in Two Worlds is fairly irritating. In fact, unless you're curious to hear the conversation the character is engaged in (which can be humorous a few times) you could play the whole game on mute and be better off for it. You'll hear battle music in the middle of a city, or while on a road with no enemies in sight. Birds chirp while the sun shines and adds life to the forested Highlands, but also chirp during the instantaneous downpours the game throws in for good measure. Or sometimes when there are no trees at all. And going back to the conversations, the voice acting is laughable. Many of the NPC's sounded like the people who did the voice recording were only paid 5 dollars for their trouble, so quite often they sound monotonous and uninspired. The entire game uses a slightly less strict version of Old English, so if you can't stand words like "prithee", "methinks", "mayhap", or "perchance", you should mute the game the entire time you play.

OVERALL

This could have been a very solid game that, while not pushing any real boundaries or living up to the hype as an "Oblivion killer", would have been an entertaining and respectable title in it's own right. Instead, SouthPeak has foisted this horrible dredge of a game that should have spent more time getting bugs fixed and adding some final polish to the product, or in the trash can. Like a two-tone paint job on a car, Two Worlds has some good, some bad, but ends up looking ugly.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 09/07/07

Game Release: Two Worlds (US, 08/23/07)