Two Worlds - Review
Added October 10th, 2007 by Jason Stafford
What do you get when you cross Diablo II with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion? If you said “The best RPG ever,” you'd arguably be correct. At least you would be in theory. Polish developer Reality Pump borrows liberally from Blizzard and Bethesda's respective masterpieces to seek that magical place where the two titles converge. The result is a game whose overall experience, much like its moniker, exists in two places at the same time.
Two Worlds chronicles the adventure of a mercenary in the world of Antaloor, three hundred years after a war between Orcs and humans resulting in the banishment of the Orc god Aziraal. Our hapless and unnamed hero, who will henceforth be referred to as Dunderhead, searches for his younger sister Kyra, who has recently disappeared at the hands of nefarious villains. Though the game begins with a character generator wherein the manual promises will allow you to “really go to town” with, in reality it's a stifled version of Oblivion's fantastic generator. You'll be able to alter features such as arm and leg length, lips, hair color, and other characteristics, but the results aren't very satisfying. Options for certain features, such as the color or style of Dunderhead's hair, are unfortunately very limited.
The restrictive feature set of the character generator would be more disappointing if Two Worlds boasted more eye candy. The first apparent downfall of Two Worlds is that Antaloor and all its living creatures big and small are ugly. Butt ugly. Character models are horrendously designed. Textures are unbelievably garish, hailing back to a time when gamers thought about their consoles in terms of bits. It doesn't help that there isn't a lot of variety in the bland environments and inhabitants. Though there are loads of NPCs strewn all over the world, you can almost count the number of character models on your fingers. In the end, no matter what you do with the character generator, Dunderhead will be just as ugly as everything else around him.
One would think that with horrible textures and character models the game would at least be capable of running silky smooth with the 360's hardware backing it up. Two Worlds begrudgingly throws another curve-ball of ocular affronts. While the game boasts an impressive sight range, the actual draw distance is laughable. At least it is if you find the idea of every single plant spawning into life only yards from you amusing. Characters miraculously popping into existence and jaggies aren't entirely uncommon either. Two Worlds also suffers from clipping issues, allowing characters to break whatever flimsy laws of physics exist in Antaloor and walk into rocks, benches, or any number of physical objects. Literally getting stuck between a rock and a hard place is always an infuriating experience, and it's not surprising for it to happen more than once. The game constantly runs at an inconsistent frame-rate, with the only moments of peace existing in caves with the camera positioned directly in front of Dunderhead with nothing else visible so the game can stop pushing itself to render objects.
Within its rather large open world, Two Worlds boasts a number of cities, villages and other locales filled with frightfully similar NPCs. Despite the never-ending sea of déja-vù from talking to someone you swear you just talked to, Two Worlds at least lends a moderate helping hand. NPCs will display an icon which makes it a breeze to identify why they exist. Whether they're a merchant, someone who will give a quest, a trainer who will teach you new skills, a skill changer, or one of the hundreds of obligatory meaningless persons is just a matter of looking at the resulting icon. This thankfully eliminates having to talk to dozens of characters to sift through which ones will buy your loot and who will give you a task to complete.
Quests abound in Two Worlds and form a focal point for much of the game's purpose. Though meandering about Antaloor aimlessly is certainly one open option, why not give some reason to those hours of wandering? You'll hunt things down for people, talk to someone, deliver packages, kill some monsters or whatever else is asked of you. Actually, that's all you'll really do. While none of the quests are particularly inventive or interesting, many of them will at least give you a reason to get out and make something of yourself.
Two Worlds boasts a number of different factions that you can build your reputation with. While this is a neat idea on paper, and certainly borrows from the strong foundations laid down in The Elder Scrolls, what results is a system of quests that will quickly max out your fame within a particular social circle with no real benefits. There's never a feeling of accomplishment for maxing out this respect, as it's quickly completed. Starting certain quests does rely on having a high reputation within a faction, so there's at least some initiative to do caste specific quests, no matter how minute. As luck would have it there are teleport devices all over the world to hop throughout Antaloor to do these quests, allowing you to quickly move back and forth between teleport devices that you've previously discovered. You can also acquire teleport stones, portable teleportation items that you can set anywhere you are. This makes hopping to town to sell loot highly convenient, and they can even be returned to and picked up for later use.
When NPCs aren't assaulting your visual senses, they're bound to offend your ears. Not only does Two Worlds come fully equipped with a horribly written script brimming with overused Ye Olde English Phrases, but it's packing a roster of some of the worst voice actors you've never heard of, and for good reason. While the stories of the world and its peoples' problems are never presented in a particularly engaging fashion, the terrible writing and vocal delivery ensure without a shadow of a doubt that you won't care about their plight, let alone the overarching main quest Dunderhead has to face if he wants to save his sister. Prithee, how does writing this bad get done? 'Tis not a great story of great import for an RPG? Forsooth, 'tis apparently the best they could do. The score, while nowhere near as awful as the voice acting, still isn't very noteworthy. A few of the tracks admittedly stand out, but for the most part the music sounds forced, as if the developers knew they had to have some music and quickly threw some together.
Though an NPC and his twenty twin brothers around the world may bid you to eradicate various creatures for them, fortunately the enemy roster is at least marginally higher than its NPC count. With standard forest fauna, undead denizens, dastardly bandits, various races of humanoid and quasi-humanoid beasts and a number of other foes, there are plenty of baddies to contend with. While each enemy is as technically ugly as the NPCs that came before them, combat tends to be the big draw in open-world RPGs such as Two Worlds.
One of the key elements of the combat is how you develop Dunderhead's skills so he can attempt to hold himself in battle. There are three main “class” ideas, unsurprisingly being Conan, Mr. Wizard, or Convicted Felon. Wry humor aside, Two Worlds' available roster of skills doesn't try to break the mold in any fashion, and instead results in a forced hodgepodge of skills that you'll undoubtedly turn to in the hopes of making combat less problematic and more fun. You'll thankfully be given plenty of skill points throughout your adventure, through quests and killing enemies, so Dunderhead can borrow facets of each “class's” skills. Stringently staying in one type of character build is not only wholly unfulfilling, but it makes combat even more aggravating than it is already.
Melee fighters will find themselves struggling with a system that's entirely hack-'n'-slash, pounding the right trigger until Dunderhead or his foe dies. Though weapons are plentiful and come in all manner of clubs, swords, polearms, axes and other deadly instruments, weapons all behave similarly. No matter the type of weapon, Dunderhead attacks rather quickly, even when using a two-handed axe. The poorly developed weapon mechanics make weapon choice a matter of deciding whether to use a weapon and shield, dual-wield weapons after locating a necessary NPC and paying to learn the skill, or unleashing two-handed fury. After that choice is made, always opt for whatever does the most damage. Though weapons can do bludgeoning, piercing or slashing damage, or a mixture of two types, the result is always the same. Certain damage types are touted to be more effective against particular monsters, but it ultimately doesn't matter. Weapons and armor can be “doubled up,” giving them a boost in power. It's a nice system, allowing you to take identical weapons and armor and make improved versions of them. Improved gear can hold you over for quite a while, and when you eventually get new gear, you can just start doubling that to make it even better still.
You'll need the best equipment you can get, because Two Worlds is a very challenging game, even on the default difficulty. The beginning of Two Worlds is a true test of patience, as even mundane boars will mow through you like so much slop. This vehemence on killing Dunderhead would presumably lessen as more powerful equipment and abilities are acquired, but it doesn't. The game tends to throw large number of enemies at you, and unless Dunderhead's level far surpasses that of his aggressors, his health is going to drop fast. Even when properly leveled and equipped, certain monsters are able to one-shot Dunderhead. A quick press of the B button initiates a back jump, essentially making Dunderhead immune to damage for a moment as he dodges out of the way. This makes combat with single individuals far too easy, even against enemies that can one-shot kill you. Though Dunderhead's sure to die quite a few times, he'll instantly respawn at the nearest shrine, which are strewn all over Antaloor, so there isn't a caveat to death outside of having to get back to where you were felled.
If you don't want to die instantly, there are a few options available. Bows are plentiful in Two Worlds, but they're awfully implemented. Dunderhead can't figure out how to shoot a bow and walk at the same time, so archers are relegated to standing in place as they take aim and loose arrows. The targeting system is equally frustrating, as the game will automatically and erratically choose a target for you, forcing Dunderhead to stand in place with arrow notched until the game decides to select a bad guy to shoot at. The best thing about combat in Two Worlds is easily its traps. With a variety of spring-traps and bombs available, it can be quite entertaining to set up an impenetrable wall of traps and loose a few arrows to lure enemies into your snares. It's very Vietcong, and suffice to say it's very effective at making Dunderhead survive a battle for more than two seconds early on in the game. Easily the most beneficial of these are holding traps, which trap an enemy for an amount of time when tripped, rendering them helpless to your assault. Though the usefulness of traps begins to wane after having leveled a bit, it's still a novel and beneficial feature.
Magic can also be lobbed at baddies from a safe distance, with many of the same problems as using a bow, as well as a few new ones of its own. Magic cards are equipped on one of three slots on an amulet, forcing only three spells to be usable at any given time. This is unbelievably restrictive, even more so for characters focusing on using magic. Each spell slot has three additional slots available for spell booster cards, which can reduce mana cost or increase the spell's effectiveness. Cards can be stacked, increasing the overall effectiveness of the spell itself or the booster effect, which is a nice touch.
It's a shame that for every step forward, Two Worlds takes about five steps back. With a vast game world teaming with quests, loads of weapons and equipment to try out, and a number of skills to learn and play around with, there's plenty to do in Two Worlds. Of course, that's all assuming that you can handle the technical cesspool in which the game is mired. Horrible character models and textures, chugging frame-rate and other technical issues, uninspired and unbalanced combat, often clunky controls, a tacked on and awful multi-player aspect all rounded off with a terrible script and even worse voice acting that tell a bland story that doesn't carry its own weight all quell the few high points the game brings to the table.
