I took a chance with this title since many recommend it. With a developer that is completely unknown and the makers of the first two worlds, I had no expectations whatsoever and just went for it. Is it the best RPG I’ve ever played? Not even close. There are so many issues, glitches and problems that could frustrate the hell out of any RPG lover but the unique gameplay features and how huge this world is outweighs the games issues making it a decent game to spend X in-game RPG hours.
Two Worlds 2
Developer: Reality Pump
Publisher: Topware Interactive
Platform: Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC
You start off with you and your sister captured by Gandohar. A group of orcs save only you and find out they need you for a bigger plan to bring the big baddie down at the same time-saving your sister. And that’s where everything starts. The whole escape with the Orcs is the tutorial to get you familiar with the game. After the escape you’re pretty much free to explore the world. And boy is this world map huge! You’re tasked to do a quest related to the main story but with such a huge world and numerous side quests, I was easily sidetracked. The story is dull as any common RPG stories can get and was easily forgettable. The side quests pick up the slack though giving some interesting stories or hilarious and unusual requests.
There are so many side quests that it’s ridiculous. There are bulletin boards to pick up quests, NPCs with requests, and guilds that can give you more quests with their own bulletin board. This game is a handful and I asked myself at one point in the game “when is it going to end??” since I was still in Chapter 1. There are reputations to certain guilds but it doesn’t give any rewards to keep noted if you’re in a certain reputation with a certain guild. Voice acting can be laughable at times, especially the store owners but some are decent enough that won’t force you to cringe when you hear the dialogue.Some of the conversations are quite entertaining.
Like in other Open World games you have the option to kill NPCs(but not the ones with quests) and you get hunted down. Whats funny is they forget about it when you go off somewhere else for an hours or two. I attempt to pickpocket, fail and get caught. Run away and after an hour everybody likes me again. Aside from stealing or killing innocent NPCs you can join in a game of dice or a Guitar Hero-ish music mini game. You have a couple of songs you can play on different instruments and each instrument plays different. It's actually pretty tough and fast but can be rewarded with money if done properly.
Character customization is pretty much the biggest highlight in the game. When did you have a game where you can break down certain useless items to get raw materials to upgrade your current equipment? Or fuse certain crystals to add certain effects to your armor or weapons like fire damage to your sword and have fire coming out of your sword. Magic is also pretty unique with the ability to create your own magic. You have the freedom to make anything.
The magic is a card system where you pick a main element and combine other cards to determine if the spell will be an area effect or a missile, damaging, healing, a buff, all depending on what cards you mix with. There are 5 kinds of magic, Air, Fire, Water, Earth, and Necromancy. Each giving different spells when added with modifier cards and carrier cards . Spending points in a specific mastery means you can stack more cards on that specific magic, the more fire cards you stack on a spell, the more damage. The magic tutorial isn't enough to fully understand the system since its quite complex but when you get the hang of it, the spells you make can be quite satisfying.You can literally spend hours tampering with the magic system, upgrading your weapons and fusing crystals to equipment to best fit your character.
You can even create your own potions with alchemy from all the parts u get from fallen animals and monsters. just have at least 2 items that can be placed in the cauldron and you can make a potion. Each item that is for alchemy tells you what it gives to the potion like a longer duration of the buff or magic resistance etc.Customization is everywhere in this game, you can even pigments to change your armors color giving some uniqueness to your character. Customization is great but the inventory interface can be confusing when you start carrying a lot of items. Items are separate from equipment, items, to alchemy items. While all the items are sorted based on the type of item, its still very difficult to find the specific item you need in your inventory.
Leveling up may seem simple at first but it gets a bit complex when you have access to all abilities in each tree. You have 6 trees to put your ability points. There are 3 trees that improve your combat and while the other 3 help in crafting defense and you being sneaky. Combat skills are pretty neat with skills like fire arrow or battle shout giving each tree a different feel.Progression isn’t straight forward, especially when you’re halfway into the game and ability points are harder to come by. They also have a neat feature where you can swap equipment right away regardless if you’re in combat or not. So being a mix of either magic with warrior skills or ranger is possible, it all depends how you allocate your ability points.
Combat can really be clunky and frustrating especially for rangers and mages, struggling with the aiming of the game rather than the enemy. Enemy AI is flat-out dumb and can be easily exploited. like I was able to kill a tough monster because it got stuck on a chair or I had instances where they just stand still and take my blows. You can either be a melee guy, an archer, a mage or even a mixed. No matter what you pick, you will feel a sense of frustration in combat. The skills in the game makes the game more interesting but tend to get repetitive later in the game with the constant spamming of the skills since they just do more damage overall. Combat may feel bad but there are a lot of option on how to take on your enemies be it from afar or up close. You can even lay traps to have a little bit of tactics to make things easier or to your advantage. But with the laughable AI, just pick what weapon you want to use and beat the crap out of it.
The world is Massive and beautiful. In the first part the game you are introduced to a desert setting that all looks amazing from the cities to the dungeons waiting to be explored. As you spend hours in this setting everything becomes familiar to you but as you move forward in the main story, the game takes you into a whole new setting that seems to be another world altogether. A city covered inspired by an eastern setting covered by trees and plants give the game a different feel altogether after how many hours spent on the last area. It’s a good touch and kept me interested in doing all those damn side quests. You have to give credit to Topware Interactive for creating such a good-looking game and keeping the setting fresh as you move on.
It’s also surprisingly easy to travel. Just like Elder Scrolls travel feature where you skip the boring traveling part, Two Worlds 2 gives you the ability to teleport from one place to another making it very convenient to travel. When you travel a loading screen sometimes appear but I’ve experience a couple of times where my character appears to the location but unable to move, loading without the loading screen seeing everything appear right in front of me.
Believe it or not, this open world game has its very own online feature. You get to create a character separate from your campaign mode and join 7 other players in going through a quest that’s at least an hour-long. They are called Adventures and you have around 7 of them to experience with friends. These quests are in-tuned to be tackled as a group since there are waves of enemies in each area of the quest. It’s pretty lengthy and addicting.
There’s also other modes such as death match duels and crystal capture which is pretty much like capture the flag. I wasn’t too impressed with these modes since some skills in the game can be quite overpowered and I don’t feel the urge to be really good in pvp in this game. That isn’t what I was looking for in this game so it feels more like a filler to me just give the impression that there’s a lot of online content. The last mode is village more where you can actually make your own village. It’s pretty simple, spend your money to make certain houses to get you income and create shops so you can visit them if there certain items that your character might need. There’s village moral so you’re occasionally tasked to get rid of a certain problem the village is having like a group of spiders or a hive of bees to keep the moral up and money going. You can also invite friends to your village so they can purchase certain items.
Online was a surprise and was fun while it lasted. When I finished the adventure quests I kept on playing them. Replayability is present if you are the loot whore type of person, pushing to get your character stronger and stronger.
This is a very ambitious game with features that top-notch developers haven’t bothered to implement. The Character Customization, the massive world, the impressive magic system, and online features covers what the game lacks making it decent enough for any RPG fan to enjoy. It lacks polish. Even with the glitches and issues with combat I still enjoyed Two Worlds 2 for what it’s worth. It may look bad from the outside, but when you start giving it a chance and went past the tutorial part of the game, it will surprise you in many ways for the good.
Score: 75/100
Pros:
- Massive world to explore
- Deep Character Customization, complex magic system
- Amazing Graphics
- Online features
Cons:
- Major glitches and issues that lead to crashes
- Useless Main story
- Clunky user interface
- Frustrating Combat mechanics
Wow, I gotta say this looks beast.
