In the gaming world, where there’s success there’s imitation, and plenty of wannabe upstarts try their hands at someone else’s hit formula. It’s pretty obvious from the moment you turn on Two Worlds that it’s trying to ride the wave of Oblivion’s success. While the title does have its own unique elements, the combination of a rushed production and South Peak’s inexperience with either RPGs or consoles in general mars the end outcome. And while my colleagues around the net would like you to believe it’s trash worthy of a famous New-Mexican landfill, I’m here to say it’s a lot better than most lower budget productions, but where it tries to succeed it often fails.
"While Two Worlds sports its own unique elements, developer inexperience and a rushed production ultimately mar the end outcome."
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To be accurate, Two Worlds can play just as much like Diablo. With its item-stacking formula, stiff archery and third-person perspective... even your inventory’s look and spacing is handled in the same fashion. Everything else, however, from the feel of the lush overworld to the multitudinous voice-over, the subtle soundtrack and Tolkien-esque mythos screams "I want to be like Bethesda." Sadly, it turns out these are mostly poor-man’s imitations.
The story begins when your sister is captured while you’re looking for a resting spot on your travels. A strange man dressed in magnificent attire sets you down a road of tasks he wants you to fulfill if you ever want to see your sister alive again. After completing your first chore, the entire country of Thalmont is open to you. Two Worlds does a good job of setting you down the main path, but you’re free to explore and blaze your own trail through the story. (If you just want to be an evil prick and kill everything, you’re free to do that too). The tasks never go beyond what’s expected, boiling down to fetch-quests and assassinations. Completing these will either award you gold or experience.
The main quest focuses on the two groups fighting for the country’s throne. The Karga Clan, a band of rebels, used to own the ruling seat until a sudden edict by the king of the continent passed the power on to a new ruling house, known as Skeldon. The phrase, "two worlds," actually derives from the player’s choice between these two warring factions. Performing tasks for either side earns their respect and assistance and raising your reputation with one clan will in turn lower it with the other. Branching plotlines depend on what side you choose.
You soon learn to appreciate two things: Two Worlds is absolutely massive, and the enemies are everywhere. If you don’t stick to the roads early on, you are going to be mauled by a pack of wolves or stumble into an eager bandit camp. You don’t really die, but rather respawn at the nearest shrine you’ve discovered.
Once you do manage to pick off a few foes and gain your first level, you’re rewarded with points to put into your stats and your skills. It’s pretty straightforward, you got: Strength, Willpower, Dexterity, and Health. By choosing to specialize towards a particular one you in turn shape what underlying class you are (since you don’t choose one at start – can’t even be female). Strength is more for warriors, Dexterity for thieves... etc.
The thing is most players aren’t going to get an even return unless they go for power, because the gameplay just favors it more. For example, the stealth system is all but broken since one sneak-kill will aggro every other mob around it anyway. The most stealth-kills you can get on a group is pretty much one. So going stealth is highly discouraged and pretty much impossible, actually. At any rate, no matter which stat you choose to specialize in, there’ll be a point where your item-stacking has garnered more stat boosts then most mobs can handle. In the end most will simply own.
The item-stacking system is a lot of fun to mess with. Every item in the game is designated with an ID number. If you have two of the same item in your inventory you have the choice to "stack" them together and make a more powerful version. For instance, stacking a +40 STR sword with a +20 one will result in a +60 STR sword. There’s a neat strategy between deciding to keep stacking an old item or just getting a new one altogether. If you’re lucky enough and find some good matches, some of your old items can trump the newer ones for a long time. But rings will most likely be the bread and butter of your development, as they offer insane stats from the start. Stack too many though and you may end up creating an item out of level range.
The alchemy and magic systems are similar. Stacking ingredients and spells creates more powerful ones. And on that note, there are many different spells to acquire and schools to learn, it’s just too bad most have to be bought first. They look nice though.
At each level you’re awarded skill points. There’s an interesting assortment of skills to play with and cater your avatar to your liking. You can learn how to dual-wield weapons with stats stacking between them, you can learn to pull an enemy’s shield away, kick dirt in their eyes, fire multiple arrows in one blast or just plain raise your critical strikes (guilty). The cool thing is the enemies may have similar skills in a battle. So you have to watch out for dirt in your eyes, too!
"What’s the point of growing your character when the fighting system is flawed?"
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But what’s the point of worrying about your growth when the fighting system is flawed anyway. Enemies always attack in threes, or groups of threes, so there’s always another to agro off of your archery, which by the way you can’t manually aim. No matter what level, every mob tends to act the same. They run at you if you come near, but you can always outrun them. If you choose to fight, you enter into a pretty damn tedious cycle of moving in, attacking, then dodging and attacking some more. The only real challenge arises when enemies surround and overwhelm you, but you soon learn skills to overcome that as well. It can be fun to take your over-powered avatar around and just wail on everything, but the fighting system never truly feels rewarding because there just isn’t much skill to it. And once you acquire certain spells, you can all but freeze enemies in place while you wail on them some more. The enemy AI is so poor, there were times where I could stand just feet in front of them and they could not see me.
...then there’s the horses. The steeds in this game feature some of the worst controls I’ve ever witnessed for a quadruped. It’s all fine if you’re just galloping straight, but trying to turn the damn thing causes you to slide along some invisible barrier and you usually end up facing the wrong direction. Yeah just try aiming at an enemy while doing that. Simply put: Stay far away from the four-foots unless you need to get somewhere quick.
But why bother at all when you can teleport?
Finally, a silver lining. The teleport system in Two Worlds is truly excellent. Start out by finding two teleports, thus linking them; find more and link more. It really eases crossing the huge landscape and the brilliance of it all is in the execution. Simply walk up and click on a port and pick your destination on the map. You can even acquire the means to open up portals on the spot, and three seconds of loading is all it takes to get your avatar from one end to the other.
Two Worlds’ programmers have done a terrific job at cutting down load times. The transition from outdoor to in is seamless and for the most part nothing’s broken up into separately-loading areas. The most you’ll wait in-game is 3 seconds at ports and 5 to 10 when reloading a game. That’s it. Granted there’s some hiccups when out in the wild where the game stutters for a few seconds while loading new data, but it’s not any worse than how Oblivion does so.
A recent downloadable patch for the 360 version has fixed a few of the gripes many players had. The "control help" text no longer covers the inventory screen, and your place on the map is now displayed with a big green arrow and can be spotted easily. Finally it seems the overall framerate has improved, although there doesn’t seem to be any noticeable effect in towns.
The game looks quite nice for the most part. Textures are crisp and most everything casts a shadow that shifts with the time of day. Several sleek designs for the armor sets means you won’t be starving for new ways to make your character look cool either. The overworld spans on for miles and the draw distance for the mountains is insane... it’s just too bad several of the man-made structures and characters pop in and out of view at random. And while most of the models get the job done, the animation just does not fare so well. Characters stiffly stride from one spot to the next and the horses’ trots just look unfinished entirely. For all the plusses, the visual package ends up feeling unbalanced and undone.
The soundtrack, though, is pretty and often conveys the proper mood, but it’s probably nothing you’re going to remember. However it’s likely the only aspect of the game that comes without any serious flaws attached to it. The game also brags about having more than 100 voice actors. It’s believable when you realize the quality is C-movie fare at best. Add to that the villagers tend to ramble on and on. While it’s admirable how much they have to say, it’s often pointless. Not to mention the forced "olde" English. By the time you’re ready to turn the game off you just might be letting some "verily" and "mayhaps" slip out amongst daily conversation with your friends. You’re henceforth warned.
"There was a lot of potential here, but every plus on the score sheet is met with unprofessional oversight."
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Two Worlds is one of the toughest games to review in recent memory. There’s actually a lot of potential here. But for every plus on the score sheet there’s some little unprofessional oversight that pulls it right back down. I didn’t even get into all of it – there’s just not enough room to say everything. In the end the title often feels unfinished, unpolished and beta-like. Perhaps what’s even worse is the fact that this is the game with ALL the current PC patches applied, and it still has problems. If you’re not careful or didn’t know any better you could, say, end up angering a village for good, which means every time you enter, you’ll be attacked on spot. As of this writing there’s no practical way to gain a village’s confidence back. Now that’s a serious flaw. You can essentially break the main quest without so much as a warning.
South Peak promises to fix these issues, and there are planned expansions already, and should these make a difference in any way we’ll let you know. Until then it’s hard to recommend this game to anyone but those who are completely done with Oblivion or those keeping their fingers crossed for the next Diablo. In either case most will be disappointed. Rent it first, and see if it’s your thing, because there are actually several better options out there.
