Two Worlds II Review
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While depth in a Role Playing Game is almost never seen as a bad thing, Two Worlds II will practically drown you in its complexities when you first start playing. Not only are the first few hours of the Two Worlds II cliché and slow paced, but they also act as one long tutorial for getting you familiarized with the games seemingly vast number of intricacies and options, many of which are rather unintuitive and poorly explained. Once you finally begin to wrap your head around the multitudes of poorly designed menus and bewildering mechanics in the game you will find them all to be highly functional, but getting to this stage can be something of a confusing grind.
The hellish labyrinth was totally worth the loot
Two Worlds II kicks off with you getting broken out of a castle dungeon by some mysterious individuals who want to help you and your sister out of your predicament. The evil wizard Gandohar has chosen your sister to be the vessel of a daemon, and you are being held captive by him as well. Once you have been broken out, you will find that there is a large group of people intent on conspiring against him, and you spend the game trying to get your sister back and defeat the evil mage. This is an almost painfully overdone setup, and the main plot of the game is indeed very uninteresting and predictable. Luckily there are loads of side stories throughout the vast environments of the game that will prove to be much more interesting. You will help out a village in the middle of a desperate drought, investigate a series of unusual murders, and look into a underground escort service located within a seemingly prestigious university.
Large underground ruins make for great exploration
The different locations in the game are all varied, and all have their own unique flavours. The first main area you spend time in is a scorching desert, which has a strong Assassins Creed vibe to it as you gallop around on horseback and run through cramped middle-eastern flavoured cities. From there you will travel through Japanese-inspired towns located in the midst of a jungle, a swamp that has been cursed, and a barren wasteland that seems to have had a very tumultuous past. Each location is full of people who are all eager to give you quests or sell you some randomized gear, or in some cases even a house. While there is no fast travel system to move between locations in the substantial game world, there are teleport platforms scattered around that you can use and travel to once they are discovered.
Once the games lengthy, and highly necessary, tutorial is behind you, your time will be spent talking to people, exploring and engaging in combat with both men and beasts. Two Worlds II is a fairly hardcore experience in that there is no level scaling in the world around you; every single person and beast is at a set level, and if you try and kill something or someone that is much higher level than you death will come quickly. Early on this rigid levelling structure can prove to be problematic, as you will need to kill a group of wolf-like creatures called Varns in order to proceed. Many will find this fight impossible, but it forces you to get used to the games combat system which is great for both magic, ranged and melee combat. You will often have to fight higher level enemies when in a new area, and in these situations the combat can be extremely deliberate and tactical. At other times, you will learn that the only means of surviving is running away, something you will be doing a lot of in your travels. Unfortunately the enemy AI is not very good at all, and sometimes foes will flip out and start attacking a wall or some non-existent enemy on the other side of the room.
Sneaking around in daylight is possible, but not recommended
While the basic combat is fairly straightforward for each type, you will also gradually unlock special abilities that can be used in conjunction with your standard attacks. Think Dragon Age Origins, but you have complete control over your character and no ability to pause the game. You will find that certain combinations of attacks will be useful in different scenarios. Different enemy types will also be resistant to different kinds of damage; for example, the undead are resistant to blunt weapons but susceptible to the sharp edge of a blade. If you are using melee combat as your primary means of dealing with enemies, you will be able to choose between any number of weapon combinations, again just like Dragon Age Origins. Weapon and Shield, two handed weapons or duel-wielded weapons are all viable options in this game. Different weapons will have different advantages and disadvantages, so you can’t blast your way through the game with a single super-sword. Ranged combat with a bow-and-arrow is a bit more straightforward, although there are still some special abilities you can use like multi-arrow and poison arrow. Magic, on the other hand, is more complex. You can craft your own spells of which there are seemingly endless combinations. You will then switch between ranged attacks and close-range area effect attacks.
Leisurely swim? Or brilliant flanking maneuver…
Another feature of Two Worlds II is the comprehensive crafting system. Almost everything you pick up can be broken down into raw materials, which can then be used to upgrade current weapons. How much you can upgrade these weapons depends on your crafting skill, which can be increased when you level up. Early on you will gain levels extremely rapidly, but once you get to level 25 or so the process begins to slow down. You can choose to put points into strength, which governs damage with melee weapons, endurance, which governs health, accuracy, which governs damage with ranged weapons, and mana, which governs your magical powers. From here, further skill points can be put into several different categories which vary depending on what kind of combat you are specializing in. A melee specialist might put points into his special attacks, while someone who specializes in stealth might put points into sneaking and lock-picking.
Whenever your character has his weapons holstered, he will slowly regain health, but during combat you will need to rely on potions to keep your character going. You can make your own potions with the games fairly straightforward but very versatile alchemy system; any two ingredients can be combined to create an almost infinite variety of potions that you will come to rely on to get though more difficult fights. Early on there are loads of ingredients that will instantly renew your characters health, but later on these potions and ingredients are hard to come by, which means they should be conserved as much as possible. You will also create potions that bolster your characters strength, endurance, poison resistance; almost any manner of other skill-altering you can think of.
Whatever it is, I’m going to flee from it
The singleplayer portion of the game is a good length with the average playthrough taking 30-40 hours. If you rush through the game and stick to the storyline you can probably finish in as little of twenty hours, but this would be foolish to do since the best parts of the game are in the sidequests, and the later parts of the game will be incredibly difficult if you aren’t high enough level. Once you finish the storyline you can continue completing sidequests in the game world. If you enjoy the gameplay you might think about a second playthrough focusing on a different skill. In addition to the robust singleplayer component is a fairly substantial multiplayer offering. Competitive modes like duels probably aren’t worth your time, but the fairly lengthy co-op campaign can be a lot of fun if you play with friends. There isn’t much of a story in this campaign, but the looting and fighting is as fun as ever.
Visually, Two Worlds II is a mixed bag. Environments look good, with some good lighting and shadow effects, but the textures aren’t very sharp, and everything is a bit fuzzy looking. The flip side of this is that the game runs fantastically, very stable frame rates and no graphical glitches to speak of. There is a solid physics engine to back the game up, with ragdolls slumping impressively and debris getting scattered when hit. The audio is also somewhat inconsistent, the voice acting ranges from decent to terrible, and the sound design is adequate but still leaves something to be desired. The music, on the other hand, is fantastic, changing from location to location and whenever you enter combat. I found the music in the game getting stuck in my head long after I stopped playing.
Our hero enters The Matrix
When it comes down to it Two Worlds II is a solid game with more depth and complexity than you might expect from such a basic premise. The first few hours of the singleplayer will likely be a turn off for many since it is both slow and full of tutorials, but once you figure out all of the mechanics everything is highly functional. Anyone looking for a lengthy and immersive RPG should definitely check out Two Worlds II, as long as you can ignore some fairly insignificant faults and a steep learning curve.