Two Worlds unashamedly presents players with a landscape fairly inspired by Oblivion. A sprawling open world in which orcs and humans war with each other while other creatures, such as Wyvern and more everyday forest dwellers, such as wolves and bears, hamper travellers' journeys across the land of Antaloor. You play as a young mercenary. His sister kidnapped, he sets out on somewhat of a rescue mission. As fate would have it the two of them are unknowingly embroiled in a plot involving dead orcish gods, clandestine organizations and their own hidden powers.
Two Worlds has you begin the game as a general purpose character. To start off you are able to modify the way you look within a limited set of parameters. Hair, eyes and body shape can be defined similarly to what we’re seeing in the majority of contemporary RPGs. There are a decent amount of options, but by no means do these rival the most complex character creation systems. The possibility of playing a female protagonist is also absent.
A central tenet of the RPG genre is its levelling of various skill trees and defining of the players classes. As you have no distinct strengths to begin the game with, it is up to you to decide what style of character you want to become, as you prescribe points to skills upon levelling up throughout the game. This is done using the usual 'completing quests and killing bad guys' method of experience harvesting in order to level up.
Two World's melee combat is slightly dull.
Many aspects of Two Worlds' user interface will feel familiar to players. Played in the third person, the keyboard is used to move, whilst the mouse shifts the camera. There’s assignable numerical hotkey based actions, such as spell casting and the use of potions etc. similar to World of Warcraft’s. The inventory system is similar in visual style to Oblivion’s, displaying all the goodies you’ve picked up along the way quite clearly, their details popping up as you mouse over them.
Not only are there weapons to be picked up and bought but Two Worlds' tools of the trade can be modified to become more effective. Along the way you’ll be able to gather up gems in order to further temper your sharpened steel against foes by adding these and their elemental powers to your swords and bows.
Far from the oft abused adjective that is ‘visceral’, combat in Two Worlds is a fairly bland affair. The developers have chosen to go with a system in which much of the dodging and precision of your sword swings are handled behind the scenes. Strength, dexterity, other key attributes and supplementary skills that assist in dodging and hitting all coming together in the background to determine the outcome of each second of battle. Unfortunately the programming alchemy that occurs behind the wizards curtain leaves you as the player simply clicking over and over again to randomly swing your sword and run from enemies as your health depletes. This results in some pretty unappealing gameplay. Along with this there are times when the enemy’s AI seems slightly below par, giving up the chase quickly, or standing still as you hack away at them.
"Man it's hard to dance in this getup".
With a vastness just shy of the Oblivion’s, Two Worlds offers some expansive areas to explore. On a reasonable PC some of the sightseeing that can be done is pretty impressive. The game doesn’t require what we once heard referred to as a ‘ninja bastard PC from hell’ to draw out this kind of experience either, although on the highest settings a pretty decent machine is needed. Draw distances are the game’s greatest visual asset, offering many occasions when you may feel like simply sitting atop your horse and gazing at the walled cities on the horizon. However there were a couple of moments where odd visual anomalies occurred such as flashing trees which did detract slightly from our immersion in the world.
There is plenty to do within the game. You’ll find yourself traversing the immense land of Antaloor for both quests and plain old exploration. As far as tasks offered up to you by the inhabitants of Two Worlds there’s plenty to keep you busy. The game also contains a factions system meaning that assisting certain people can change the way that some tasks can be completed.
The open world game’s greatest strength also holds the potential to become its greatest enemy. Put plainly these playgrounds are great to simply ‘muck around’ in, but attempt to bring in a weighty narrative and there is a large chance of it suffering as a result of the distractions along the way. From Shenmue to Oblivion these types of games have struggled to maintain the dramatic impact their plots intend, as players lap up the freedom their worlds give them to explore and interact. Two Worlds suffers from the same issues. With a plot involving a reasonable set of secrets and factions it is easy to lose sight of the main goals.
"Yeah, the dermatologist is just up that hill over there.
Quests can sometimes suffer from an incredibly traditional 'receive quest, complete task, return to quest giver for reward' style. Although many of these serve to flesh out the mythos of the game there are several that in no way relate to the core story or anything else beyond gaining skills and levelling. The developer promises the ability to quest and compete with others at the same time in online multiplayer gaming. PVP and horse races are also to be a part of this experience, although at the time of writing this is unavailable and unable to be reviewed.
Horses have recently become a problematic mode of transport for many gamers. We’ve seen quite a few people getting upset with the creature they had at first viewed as a friend and speedy mode of traversing the world at hand. Two World’s steeds are no different. Sometimes it feels as though your mount is the one holding your reigns rather than the other way around. We also experienced a few situations when the stupid beast would get themselves wedged in between the polygons that make up Antaloor, unable to get out, and leaving us stranded in the middle of nowhere.
Whilst it doesn't really venture outside currently established boundaries of the fantasy based open world genre, Two Worlds does offer some fun, reasonably enjoyable gameplay. Its flaws are minor but unfortunately amplified by the fact that they’re poking out of a game which joins a series of titles in the same style. The addition of a fairly substantial multiplayer component may change things slightly, but at its core it is still the same game as the single-player. Two Worlds should satisfy those pining for some fantasy RPG action, but that said there are a great deal of titles doing a better, and more interesting, job of providing for this need.
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