Two Worlds

"Gothic Phantasy World Of Oblivion Wars II: Lord of Rushed Ports"

Two Worlds is a game that promises both a robust single player game and a well designed multiplayer experience......

This was the premise by developer Reality Pump and in many ways it mirrors what SEGA said they would do with Phantasy Star Universe (PSU)......and in much the exact same way it also fails at the same points. That isn't to say that it's a total train wreck....but there's alot wrong here to stand up on either front. Here's my review:

---

Story (3/10)

Story is mostly focused on the Single player experience and less on the multiplayer (outside of just being adventurers) so this category will be on the single player experience.....

The story goes that Aziraal was an incarnate of sorts to the orcish pantheon within the story's game world of Antaloor. He was also a great warlord and military general. However, fame and success caught up with him and he was summarily defeated (and killed) which brought about the surrender of the Orcish invasion of the civilized (i.e. human) lands. As the orcish troops begin to withdraw, a religious group for the orcish people approached the leaders of the human alliance and asked for Aziraal's body back (for more then just a proper burial as you find out later) but are refused. Aziraal is instead hidden in an unmarked tomb deep in human lands and bound there via magical means. Perhaps the rumors about him being a living god made the humans take these extreme measures or perhaps the humans knew exactly what the Orc priests were up to.....it's not clear, but for whatever reason they did it and of course the Orcs are not happy with that one bit.

Fast forward towards a few months before the game begins.....You (as the player) and your sister, Kira, are fleeing across the countryside from an unknown foe.....Kira's been injured (or is sick, it's not clear) but in any case is not in any real condition to travel. So you stop at an abandoned cabin to wait out a rainstorm and rest. While you're off exploring to make sure the area around this cabin is safe, a lone person dressed head to toe in black appears and kidnaps Kira...never to be seen again.

Now, fast forward to the present. You're a merc now....earning your way via odd jobs and typical adventurer stuff. But additionally, you're following clues of Kira's disappearance. The game opens in the village of Kormorin where you're given indication that you may in fact find a clue there to help you find Kira.

Story wise, it's very typical fantasy writing, but it also doesn't help that the storyboarding, writing, and portrayal in general is done in such awful pacing that you have next to no interest in finding out what happens next. Part of this stems from trying to "pull an Oblivion" by making it have a solid story but at the same time be open ended. Instead the beginning of the game is very linear and the later half is open ended so alot of attachment is just thrown by the wayside (the voice acting also does nothing to help this as described below).

---

Graphics (3/10)

Despite being the same score as story this is Two Worlds greatest weakness. You can tell that the goal was a realistic world a la Oblivion or Guild Wars......but failed miserably at it. Characters look like splotchy messes as they move around on the screen during cutscenes (when they move correctly that is). In combat it's a bit better but clipping and jaggies only serve to take the player out of the game world.

Character generation is also mostly a joke. The system supposedly has 3 times to detail choices then Oblivion but in practicality, most of the changes change very, very little and some of them are suspect of not changing anything at all.....this is not a good thing for a game of this type. In the single player mode you can only be human but in multiplayer other races are available.....but in the end they all look exactly the same.

Monsters are equally unimaginative, reminding me more of those from Gothic 3 then any other game. In general, the game reeks of middling design choices. This is quite a shame as the game world itself is 2 or 3 times as big as the Oblivion game world and thus should be ripe for various different ecosystems and thus different monsters. Alas, nothing can stand out as memorable.

Perhaps the worst part of the graphics and it amazes me that this would be an issue in this generation of games is the font choices of the text screens and dialogue boxes. Even on a HD TV at maximum resolution, it's so small and squished together that it's barely readable at all....and you can forget about being able to read just about anything on a non-HD TV. I tested this out by moving my 360 to a non HD TV and literally the only thing I could read was the intro dialogue (which is in a much larger size)...everything else was just a jumble of white on the brown boxes. Rushed and poor design idea indeed.....

The one saving grace is that some of the combat effects such as spells are flashy and pretty, but you won't see it in single player for quite some time as you start out as a merc for hire living off of your blade. But pretty particle effects do not make a game.....

---

Sound (5/10)

Surprisingly, I actually liked the music. Some people complain that it's too ambient however I feel that it's decent for trying to capture that idyllic field for the place you're at. When you're in a dark or evil place the music changes to match suit....otherwise it's happy and typical old European in style.......it's not original, it's not groundbreaking, and I'm not going to run out to buy a soundtrack, but it works for the game and that's something positive.

However, in the department of sounds that is where the good points stop......sound effects in contrast sound out of synch and many times just very weak and pathetic. Monsters make many of the same or similar sounds to each other and lots of times it's almost like there's an ever so slight delay between when they are supposed to make a noise and when they actually do. Weapon effects don't sound realistic at all and even spell effects are underwhelming. It all feels like it was just rushed filler noises that they forgot to replace before the game released. A very poor showing indeed.....

But for as bad as the sound effects are, they are nothing compared to the voice acting......it's so bad you can almost see someone's ears bleed just by listening to it. You can almost hear the lack of interest in their voices as they read their parts off to the microphone. Not only is it unbelievable, but it's also in a faux old English style which also sometimes makes it hard to understand. Stereotypes aside, this was a bad choice in general. You'll have next to no interest in any of these people including your own character and that's something that won't fly in this day and age of "epic 200 hour story telling voiced on just about everything".

So for as good as the music is, the sound department in general takes a nosedive here as well.

---

Gameplay (6/10)

Gameplay is a little better the rest of the subjects I've covered. In an attempt to create both the "robust single player" and "solid multiplayer" experiences they opted for a hybrid PSU and Diablo II scheme of gameplay....but that's a nice way of saying "3D Hack And Slash". Mind you there's nothing wrong with this game style but it's not the innovation that many believed it would. Monsters in the world do not level up to you as say in Oblivion (which was the single biggest complaint in the game). As such you can go off and kill bunnies at level 1 and then later come back at level 10 and those same bunnies will still be level 1 cannon fodder....if they are still there that is, as monsters don't respawn as you kill them (in a multiplayer game though all you have to do is respawn a new game with your pre-existing character should be in need of them, more on that later). It's actually a positive change from the Oblivion concept and lends itself to giving the notion that you do have a long term and meaningful effect on the world environment.

There are some imbalances in the game however.....for starters, in single player you're almost forced to be a sword fighter as training is usually required to be anything else and it requires a trip to a location further along in the game. Pigeonholing is never a good thing but it's inexcusable in a single player game that promises "robust gaming options". In multiplayer, however, a different and more serious issue arises....depending on the type of game you play (Co-Op or PvP) two fundamental components break down....First you are unable to buff or heal anyone else in your party....especially in a Co-Op game this is a huge issue as then party mechanics break down and it almost encourages cookie cutter builds (favoring taking Air Magic on almost every build which is your main source of heal spells in the game). I can understand not wanting to force someone to not take a person because "their party requires a healer" but I don't believe that was the reason why they did that.......instead what I do believe is that they used the single player template and applied it to each individual character that plays......because in single player you are usually alone you have to rely on yourself and thus this is also true in multiplayer. Basically they didn't want to put code in for allied targeting of a positive nature and that really breaks the party dynamic down, thus ruining the experience. On the PvP front, not all classes are balanced to each other. This is not an unheard of issue for even the best of multiplayer online games (as World of Warcraft can attest with a slew of Warlock jokes) but it's more pronounced here. It's obvious that multiplayer (or at least PvP multiplayer) was more of a design afterthought then as a main component of their core game design.

It should also be pointed that that all game modes have their own characters queue assigned to them. This means that your single player character won't be joining in online and that you're going to need separate characters for PvP and PvE modes. I actually agree with this stance as it allows you to focus your builds more on the gameplay at hand instead of someone who has to strike a balance between the two (like WoW)....though I do think there could of been better choices made with this mechanic (perhaps using Guild War's skill system as an example to allow for you to change builds on the fly for the same character).

---

To sum it up, this is a game that borrows heavily from a number of other games and then just got rushed out to production before everything could be finished. In fact the whole game screams "Rushed"......game glitches, graphical glitches, poor presentation, afterthought game play designs....it all adds up to a poorly released product. I'd imaging that this may do better on the PC (as that is in fact the original version) just because this game seems perfect for a mod community to spring up from it. But on the 360 and under the watchful eye of Microsoft, this will never happen which means that it has to stand on it's own and honestly, this game just doesn't have the legs to do it. With two other big name RPGs released at around the same time as this, coupled with two other competing online multiplayer RPGs on the system and the ever darkening shadow of Oblivion to have to also contend with....it's highly unlikely that this will satisfy the "next level of gaming" crowd of Xbox Live or 360 owners in general.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 09/26/07

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