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> Results: Two Worlds
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The ESRB Says
Blood and Gore: GamerDad saw blood spatter as he destroyed and occasionally dismembered enemies. Violence: The woods are just filled with wolves and other creatures waiting to attack you! Despite having some very mixed feelings about the game, I am not of two minds about Two Worlds. No, as I spent dozens of hours wandering the countryside of Antaloor I was very aware of the many shortcomings of the game; yet I kept on going, having a very good time playing this very flawed game. Will you enjoy it similarly? It depends on many things - and on your tolerance threshold for many things. I have discussed the game with many people and found that certain problems that stopped some people dead in their tracks didn't even register with others. Unfortunately, there is no possible way of describing Two Worlds as 'superb' ... unless you think of the towns of Dungeon Lords as simply 'understaffed'. There are many god and bad elements in this free-roaming and sprawling third-person RPG. So instead of detailing every aspect, I'm just going to list out the positive and negative features: Two Worlds is actually a very positive experience if you don't dig too deep - I know many people having a blast playing, and so did I. The worlds is huge and the areas are varied and dangerous - there are plenty of areas where wandering off the trail will get you quickly killed (yes I think that is a good thing). The advancement system does a wonderful job of making you feel more powerful with each point you invest, and the (albeit unexplained) ability to stack weapons of the same kind to get increased power and effects is loads of fun. The alchemy system is just wonderful - you can create tons of stat-building potions if you are diligent about collecting everything in sight. The combat and magic systems work pretty well and will carry you through much of the game. Battles are a click-to-hit system, with left click triggering a main attack and right-click triggering a skill or spell. Perhaps the best part is the amazing amount and variety of side-quests: while you have the usual 'fetch' and 'kill' quests, there are many multi-part quests that unfold stories right before your eyes. It is these small glimpses inside of the lives of the people of the land - combined with the combat, weapon-stacking and alchemy - that will keep you engaed. Of course, if you choose to look behind the curtain you will find that the great and powerful Oz has a whole lot of issues. While I loved the sidequests, the main quest is not all that great. That wouldn't be too much of a problem except that the game assumes you will do what you are told, and you can expect to see more than a couple broken quests and broken dialogues if you play using what I call 'the tangential method'. By that I mean that one interesting side quest leads to another and another and pretty soon you've eliminated a whole faction - but returning to the main quest-giver has them asking you to speak to that person, and rather than saying 'um ... I killed him and all of his friends' you ask where he is and some other details. Speaking of ... well, speaking ... the written dialogue is stilted and stiff, even excusing the middle-English usage. None of it flows all that well, but listening to the actors speak the lines gives them a whole new dimension of bad. I generally muted the sound or removed my headphones as simply reading it was much less painful than the combination of sound and text. In terms of combat balance I would characterize my progression through the game as follows: early on I died in pitched battles with slugs and kittens; mid-game I defeated small clusters of monsters and lived to die when ganged up on by a dozen or more; late in the game I could defeat top-level dragons with a single time-effect spell without breaking my stride. In other words, even with the latest patch, the balance is crappy. Yet in spite of these, Two Worlds is a game that was a joy to play and that I have gone back to repeatedly - it is just plain fun. There are plenty more negative things I could list out - especially if you are playing this on the XBOX360, which suffers through poor framerates and laggy multiplayer. In fact, the less said about the multiplayer in general, the better. Ultimately this game has plenty of positive and negative elements, and whether or not you like it depends on how much you buy in to the positives - and how well you can ignore the negatives. It holds up poorly to critical scrutiny due to the many elements that compare badly with those from games that obviously influenced Two Worlds. Yet once you figure out how to ride a horse, how to control spells and how to manage combat this becomes a fun game that holds many hours of interesting encounters. As of the 1.5 patch - the release version for the XBOX360 and much of the English-speaking world - the game is stable and relatively bug-free. It is not an easy recommendation - unless you were able to enjoy Dungeon Lords despite the flaws I would recommend caution and waiting for a bargain price.  
In our reviews of Oblivion, Dave Long and I each called for an Adult GamerDad Age Seal. This was due to the intense blood and gore and realistic imagery rather than the whole 'hot coffee redux' thing that gets the attention (undeservedly) for the ESRB ratings change. Two Worlds lacks inappropriate language, nudity or sexuality of any sort that would raise the game above E-10, but it has gore, blood and intense imagery all around. Step into a dungeon and you are sure to see some horrible creatures. Wander into the into the wastelands and even more unnatural beasts await. This is not the most brutal game you will play, and if you have a teen who is comfortable with most war-based shooters and has seen R-rated horror movies the images will not be a problem. But in general this game is intended for older teens and adults.
Other Platforms: PC: Reviewed version - by far the superior version. XBOX360: Virtually identical in structure, but the XBOX360 version has worse looking graphics, lag and framerate issues and a generally worse feel with the controller. Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us | Buy This Game Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: Two Worlds |
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