Two Worlds II Reviews

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Written by Brother None on January 30th, 2011

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Where Two Worlds II excels is where any good RPG truly should in it's addictive attention paid to swords, shields, dragons, demons, guts and glory. Unlike many other RPGs, in Two Worlds II you can be a jack of all trades. In fact, the game promotes such endeavors. The skill trees for Mages, Warriors and Rangers are quite deep and by the end of the game you can be quite skilled as all three. Not only that, but you can swap between armor and weapon sets at any time with the push of a single button. Want to start out sniping your enemies from afar only to get up close and personal with your mace in their face shortly thereafter? That's not a problem in Two Worlds II and the combat itself is fun and rewarding. (Even at times when the hit detection can seem sub-par) There's an endless variety of baddies to kill and you will soon learn which of your skills and classes is right for each of them.

It is worth noting however that special attention was clearly paid to mages and the game's magic system which currently holds the Guinness world record for most possible spells in a video game. That's not to say being a warrior or ranger isn't fun but you'd be doing yourself a disservice not to explore and utilize Two Worlds II incredibly deep and oft times hilariously good magic system. What do I mean by hilariously good? Well, what do you get when you combine a Conjure Random Junk spell with an Air Shield when you're surrounded by enemies? The answer is by far one of my favorite possible spells in Two Worlds II that I henceforth shall refer to as the, (Corpse Tornado!!)

What I'd love to see in the coming months from Reality Pump is a renewed focus on interface and on making their complicated RPG systems more intuitive. These guys are hard at work on bringing more love to the game - they're not all rushing off to make a sequel immediately. Thing is, I don't think the issue with Two Worlds II right now has anything to do with a lack of content - what they should be focusing on is making that content more accessible. Still, this is a damn fun title if you're interested in a deep action-RPG, especially if you expected very little after the wildly strange, often severely disappointing first game. And if you can get past the rough parts, it's exciting and addictive in all the ways you probably expect out of a good European RPG.

Overall, Two Worlds 2 is a great sequel when compared to the first game of the series, but lacks the polishing and depth of modern day action RPGs. It is definitely an enjoyable game once you get past the previously mentioned gameplay issues, but I still wouldn't drop the sixty bucks. I would rather just rent this title for the experience, or invest more hours into Dragon Age.

The swordplay is frustratingly inaccurate, and hazardous to your health since blocking only prevents 60% of the incoming damage. (It can be upgraded later.) The magic system is deep, but also complicated. I barely grasped the mechanics of creating and casting spells. The system is inventive, but it will take a dedicated player to dig into it. Archery is the third class of combat, and it's probably the best. It's the only type I ever had very much fun with. It's not perfect, but it works well enough. Players draw the bow string with the right trigger then add modifiers like multishot or fire arrow for devastating effects.

The graphics however, are really quite good. You wouldn't expect a game like this to push the boundaries so much for open world games, but it's uniformly gorgeous. I'm not talking about the surface-level "good looking" games that push polygon counts until they're blue in the face. Those games may have sleek presentation, but they're often still ugly as sin. Two Worlds 2 has a world that is colorful and lifelike. I may not have enjoyed every part of this game, but I could always take a break to run off the beaten path and just explore for a while.

I found the story to be surprisingly interesting -- you are a nameless hero rescued from a dungeon by a group of orcs and tasked with saving the world and rescuing your sister from the clutches of the evil Gandohar -- and there is just a hint of humor interspersed throughout (what exactly are those baboons throwing at me?) to keep the mood from becoming too serious. The voice acting is also humorous, but for an entirely different reason altogether.

Too big for your britches Two Worlds II has a lot going on. Plenty of quests, plenty of skills, and a huge expansive land to explore. Unfortunately, when a smaller developer undertakes such a huge task in creating an Oblivion-like title, some things fall through the cracks. In this instance, we're talking about regular drops in frame rates, stuttering and frozen animations, bad lip syncing, enemy AI that doesn't attack, and weird textures that load in and out during play. Fortunately, none of these are a game killer, but they do leave a bad taste in your mouth, especially when playing for two to three hours at a time. As long as you know this going in, it'll help give you a realistic expectation of what type of game you're playing. The nuts and bolts are all there, but there is an extremely noticeable lack of polish.

Teamwork seems essential, as these online chapters are quite difficult; and its nice to have a good balance of player classes. It appears as though the game scales the number of enemies depending on the number of players - which is a good thing. You can also easily split up across any area on the map, as there's no tethering. Players share XP from kills, and it seems the host player sets the difficulty for the map, which makes it easy to power level your friends.

The only major problem I can find with the co-op is the inconsistent length of the missions themselves. While the first few might take 30 to 45 minutes each, the laters missions can take almost two hours each. Normally this wouldn't be so bad...except that there's no way to save mid mission.

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