Review: Two Worlds
“Forsooth knave, thou art about as visually appealing as having pins repeatedly stabbed into myne eyes”, is what I would say had I presumably gone mad from listening to all the awful dialogue in Two Worlds. Fortunately I skipped most of and never actually have to listen to it again until I feel the urge to take up the expansion pack, not only is two worlds the worst sounding game I’ve played (non XBL) on the 360 it’s also the worst looking, its so badly put together from a visual and audio perspective that it looks similar to an N64 or early PS2 game (disturbingly it reminded me of the original Summoner). “The “Two Worlds” developers are sheer perfectionists” quips the games website ( http://www.2-worlds.com) when talking about the upcoming patch, excuse me.. are you on crack? Fortunately if you can get past the games massive graphical and sound flaws theres actually some fun to be had here and while Two Worlds certainly deserves to live in the bargin bin, once its there its certainly worth picking up for some short lived RPG entertainment.
Two Worlds dumps you into the boots of bounty hunter who’s disturbingly large breasted and scantily clad sister has been kidnapped by some seedy hooded guys with no faces which sets him off on a quest to save her. It’s not the most original of storylines and it fails to be so at any point in the plot, you will spend most time in the game doing sidequests as the main story is pretty brief (probably about 4 hours game time max) and the only way of levelling up to do it is to kill monsters and do sidequests. So your character sets forth into the world to bash many wolves with their combat method of choice and spend lengthy periods of time trapsing through empty blocks of terrain getting to new locations. You go to a town, do the sidequests in it (some are simple, some a bit more involved), kill some baddies and level up so your high enough to do the appropriate main plotline bits. It’s simple, and actually quite oddly compelling, in a similar way to how Diablo is compelling in its endless repetition of the same formula Two Worlds as a hack and slash rpg with a few quests is actually pretty entertaining. Forget plot, forget compelling stories what we have here is a straightforward formula to make your guy powerful and find “ph4t l3wt” as people used to say back when I played Everquest. If this sounds boring to you, stay well away as you will probably have more fun stapling your hand to a keyboard than playing two worlds if you dislike simple hack and slash with a pretty dull plot guiding it.
The levelling up and skill tree system is one of the meatier bits of Two Worlds, you can spend points in skills (Diablo style) to get more impressive versions of exsisiting abilities and also find trainers in the world to help you unlock new skills. When you level up or complete quests you get a number of bonus skill points to spend along with points to raise your abilities. You will certainly need them too, as Two Worlds while fairly unforgiving in that when you die you respawn a few feet away will kill you a lot. The last two bosses alone killed me about 20 odd times between them (a process that began to get irritating after a while ) and it took every ability I had unlocked in my 40 levels to actually defeat them without embedding my fist in the TV. Yes be warned that even on easy Two Worlds is frustratingly unforgiving at times and unless you really are a king and queen of grinding you will spend a fair bit of time running circles round monsters shoving weapons up their bums or running away from monsters spontaniously turning to blast them with a spell. There a fairly large amount of differing enemies to run away or around in the game from weakling wolves and run of the mill orcs to huge big fire breathing dragons, demons and stone golems all of whom can have you in pieces around the landscape in under five seconds. Lovely.
Graphical, technical (the games frame rate is awful) and sound issues aside, the other main hinderance to Two Worlds being “good” rather than “fun but mediocre” lies in the fact developers Reality Pump have made a huge world perhaps comporable in size to Oblivions but promptly not put enough content in the game to actually fill the world or even make reaching level 50 a really credible option. To begin with youll be overwhelmed in fairly entertaining side quests but the further south you go the less likely you are to find much to do other than wander aimlessly occasionally being killed by huge enemies. The game world feels empty and lifeless at times, but satisfying and deep at others. The developers seriously needed to put more content into the game to improve the experience for those who play till near the end. The variety of environments (the desert and chinese style town in particular were refreshingly different and fun) just about makes up for this error but it’s certainly still noticable.
To sum up Two Worlds is a game I enjoyed, but a far from perfect one. It was more fun than the considerably more polished Blue Dragon, however it is technically awful and only lasted about 15 hours or so to play through (granted I didnt do everything). What Reality Pump have produced is an RPG that will appeal to hradcore fans of PC RPG’s of the past, but not really to anyone new.
Overall Score 5.5/10
Oh and after watching the final baddie die this is the games end sequence.
Yeh, crap isn’t it?
