Two Worlds

A bounty hunter and a lady (his sister), Kira, riding on horseback through a storm. She falls from the horse, bleeding from a wound. The man goes to find shelter and a mysterious figure approaches the woman. “So you thought you could run from me?” comes the menacing voice. The scene shifts back to the hunter, who is returning with news that shelter may be available. The only problem is his sister is gone. And thus begins his journey, working through the world, taking what jobs he can, always on the lookout for his sister.

In several ways Two Worlds trods the familiar landscape of role-playing games, namely in trying to achieve the depth of Bethesda’s blockbuster title Oblivion. And, at unexpected times, it moves into new immersive elements. But even as the game tries to lure you into its massive content, there are the elements, like the cutscenes, that totally ruin the mood.

The game is the braintrust of Reality Pump, and published by Southpeak Games. The world of Antaloor is massive, and there are more than enough quests to keep busy for a long, long time. But when you actually get down to the root of the game, the very elements that the development team tried to put into the game to give it character are its biggest detractors.

For example, the dialogue written for the game is terrible, laboring under the attempt to sound medieval when all it does is sound ludicrous. Adding to the problems is the voice acting. The main character comes across as surly and arrogant, and the rest of the dialogue work is unconvincing and delivery devoid of feeling.

The graphics runs from poor cutscenes to pop-in elements and clipping problems. While all this may sound like a game that should be avoided, it is quite the contrary. Two Worlds is a robust role-playing game that has a lot of depth, from the crafting elements (alchemy) to the combat and way you can level up your character. With an open-ended quest system, and the choice to take and/or complete quests, players will find a lot to enjoy about this game as well as the opportunity to invest a lot of hours playing it.

But back to the bad side of this game – the cut scenes. This is definitely one of the few times when the cut scene elements take a back seat to the game-play graphics. Cut-scene characters have eyes that scan side to side constantly, giving the game a very strange look. The mouth animations are also very bad in the cut scenes. The dialogue is rife with words that attempt to sound medieval – like “pray tell,” “dost” and “thou” – but fails to use them in the proper context. They are there just for flavor, but it is like adding salt and pepper to chocolate pudding – the mix is terribly wrong. The cut scene graphics are a little fuzzy and the animation is stilted – like walking robots. But that is not to say the game does not have a bit of eye candy.

Where Two Worlds shines is in the gameplay visuals. This is a huge step up from the cut scenes. The settings on the host machine were pushed up and the resolution was bumped to 1440x900 and the game looked very good. Details were visible on equipment and you could see shadows dance across the ground as trees were caught in the gentle wind.

The game itself treads off familiar themes. There was an evil power that died (Aziraal) and to quell the orc wars, the body was buried in a secret place. But that was years ago and now dark magic seems to be invading the land. Your bounty hunter is caught up in the situation and will be the one to ultimately determine the fate of the world.

When you launch the game, you get into the character customization. But don’t expect it to be overly deep. Not only is it not that deep, but you will find that –despite your best efforts – you will encounter NPCs that could be your twin.

The game does allow for some nice open-ended gameplay. There are the quests, of course, but players can freely explore the countryside and collect items from the environment, as well as loot the corpses of the crushed enemies. You will run across non-playing characters (NPCs) and you must sheath weapons before they will talk to you. Death is a mere inconvenience and does not seem to come with any penalty. And you respawn at portals that are scattered throughout the land.

Combat is handled well. You can dodge attacks and even ride a mount. Ranged attacks do great damage and you will find that, especially early on, it is better to attack and move than to go toe-to-toe with mobs. Why? Because the game places a mob (monster) at a certain level; it does not create a level playing field by matching the mob level to your avatar’s level.

With such a huge world, one would think that travel might be an issue, but it really is not. Not only can you get a mount, but there are teleportation waypoints throughout the world. It makes getting about easy.

Unfortunately, the manual is not a great deal of help, though it is a good size. It would have been nice to have a list of hot-key commands on one sheet, instead you are left to try to rationalize what needs to be done. It took several minutes to realize that the use command, which opened the gates on the beginning quest, was the space bar and that is what was needed to lockpick or loot bodies. But trial and error can be a good thing as well. It was purely by chance, when trying to clean up an inventory to store more found objects, that a couple of shields were combined. It was merely a case of dragging and dropping one shield on the other. These were low-level shields and the action took a 14 defense rating to a 19 rating. A sword that was 6-12 attack damage was combined with another sword that was 7-13 and the result was a weapon with a damage rating of 8-14. As you journey, you will also find other objects, like gems, that can be dropped onto inventory items to improve them. A fire gem, dropped onto a bow, gave the bow and additional point of fire damage to all attacks.

The game offers up multiplayer and comes loaded with Voxware for voice transmission/communication. Cooperative mode, though, plays separately from the single-player campaign and you will have to create a character for multiplayer gaming.   

Two Worlds presents a mixture of good ideas and some that fall flat. Look past the problems and you have a deep game that does many things right. It is unfortunate that what it does wrong is so prominent. Still, for RPG fans, with the ability to turn down the sound, will find this a fine ride.

Gameplay: 7.0
The game seems to lag at times, indicating a bit of a problem with the framerate, but generally it controls well. Combat is nicely handled, with the ability to dodge attacks. There is a lot of world to explore and an enormous amount of game play options. You can craft easily enough, and the game not only allows players to pursue a storyline, but also to depart from that structure and indulge in exploring the open world.  

Graphics: 7.2
The game is a mixed bag of poor cut-scene graphics and decent game graphics. Dynamic shadows and lighting effects. Ignore the cut scenes and this game looks fine.

Sound: 6.0
The voice acting mirrors the bad dialogue writing, and unfortunately that overshadows the terrific musical score..

Difficulty: Medium
Three settings – easy, medium and hard.  

Concept: 8.0
The execution may be slightly flawed in areas, but give the dev team a lot of credit for they way they attacked this game, and the options they offer up.

Multiplayer: 7.0
Create a character for multiplayer co-op mode and then hang out in the lobby looking for someone to venture with.

Overall: 7.1
Two Worlds is a game that has the right intentions and was headed in the right direction – it just had a few stumbling blocks en route. If you can get past some of those obstacles, you will find a very solid and entertaining RPG that will eat up a lot of hours.