Posted May 18, 2010
We live in a gaming world today when a game like Borderlands or Jade Empire can be called RPG's, despite having little in the way of character stats and attributes. On top of this you have the Mass Effect and Alpha Protocol type games that have stats and attributes, but only in the weapons and armour, not in the avatar.
North American RPG's are going more action and less stat based, with RPG's going the Bioshock route. This leaves us with European publishers and that leads us onto Two Worlds.
It was never the case that Two Worlds was 'worse', but rather that it was 'different'. Did it have bugs on release? Yes. But name an open world non-linear RPG that didn't get released with bugs? Oblivion is known as being pretty bug-free, and yet an unofficial patch fixes over 5,000 bugs!
Two Worlds was lambasted for not having the multi-million dollar budget of the larger publishers, and of course it had to deal with a biased media. For example, while Bioshock's 'life chambers' were seen as helping 'move the story forward', the very same life chambers in TW were seen as story breaking! This bias always works against smaller, non-American developers.
Two Worlds actually straddles two worlds, it has the great gameplay of a 90's RPG, but had graphics and animations that were a couple years older than when the game was released.
For those of us that don't care about graphics as long as the gameplay is there, Two Worlds is exactly the RPG we want. It has a huge open and non-linear world. It doesn't hold your hand and forces you to respect the other NPC's and creatures, who can hand your butt to you very easily, especially early on. The horse riding is actually very realistic, with horse AI that means you cannot ride him off the edge of a cliff (like you can the Oblivion horse!) and thereby makes it 'separate' from you, as it should be, rather than 'part of you', like in Oblivion.
While the graphics are not up to a Crysis or Oblivion level technically, they are more realistic in many ways. The depth of field is probably the best in any game I have played, and while the NPC animation and voice work is only of a medium standard, I would rather have multiple average voice artists used than just the half dozen or so voices used over and over in Oblivion (and used again in Fallout 3!). There is a charm to the characters and voices that makes the world seem much more 'middle ages' than a pure fantasy world! With a fantastic draw distance and an interesting group of creatures to battle, I think the graphics are certainly good enough. They are up to the level of Gothic 3/Risen, two of my favourite RPG's!
While the sound effects are pretty generic, they do the job adequately. the music on the other hand is a tour-de-force, with an excellent main theme that is up there with the best.
Most of what TW does with regard UI and inventory is quite excellent, with the combining of weapons and alchemy/spells done very well indeed, certainly up there with The Witcher, for example.
Overall then, this is the equivalent of an independent foreign film rather than a Hollywood blockbuster. It doesn't have huge stars in it, it doesn't have multi-million dollar special effects and it never had a huge advertising budget, but it is a great little game that you will love, that will draw you in, occasionally hand your butt to you and generally make you feel it's 'your game' rather than 'a game' that you play.
If you love true 'real' RPG's, like Fallout 1 and 2; if you preferred Morrowind to Oblivion and if you find retro gaming almost more interesting than modern gaming, then this game is for you. It has everything you want in a good 90's RPG - great gameplay, a large world to travel across, and enemies that are challenging! Take a chance with this old fashioned RPG that is a follow on from the Wizardry and Gold Box RPGs rather than the Oblivion/Mass Effect style or RPG - surely a good thing!
North American RPG's are going more action and less stat based, with RPG's going the Bioshock route. This leaves us with European publishers and that leads us onto Two Worlds.
It was never the case that Two Worlds was 'worse', but rather that it was 'different'. Did it have bugs on release? Yes. But name an open world non-linear RPG that didn't get released with bugs? Oblivion is known as being pretty bug-free, and yet an unofficial patch fixes over 5,000 bugs!
Two Worlds was lambasted for not having the multi-million dollar budget of the larger publishers, and of course it had to deal with a biased media. For example, while Bioshock's 'life chambers' were seen as helping 'move the story forward', the very same life chambers in TW were seen as story breaking! This bias always works against smaller, non-American developers.
Two Worlds actually straddles two worlds, it has the great gameplay of a 90's RPG, but had graphics and animations that were a couple years older than when the game was released.
For those of us that don't care about graphics as long as the gameplay is there, Two Worlds is exactly the RPG we want. It has a huge open and non-linear world. It doesn't hold your hand and forces you to respect the other NPC's and creatures, who can hand your butt to you very easily, especially early on. The horse riding is actually very realistic, with horse AI that means you cannot ride him off the edge of a cliff (like you can the Oblivion horse!) and thereby makes it 'separate' from you, as it should be, rather than 'part of you', like in Oblivion.
While the graphics are not up to a Crysis or Oblivion level technically, they are more realistic in many ways. The depth of field is probably the best in any game I have played, and while the NPC animation and voice work is only of a medium standard, I would rather have multiple average voice artists used than just the half dozen or so voices used over and over in Oblivion (and used again in Fallout 3!). There is a charm to the characters and voices that makes the world seem much more 'middle ages' than a pure fantasy world! With a fantastic draw distance and an interesting group of creatures to battle, I think the graphics are certainly good enough. They are up to the level of Gothic 3/Risen, two of my favourite RPG's!
While the sound effects are pretty generic, they do the job adequately. the music on the other hand is a tour-de-force, with an excellent main theme that is up there with the best.
Most of what TW does with regard UI and inventory is quite excellent, with the combining of weapons and alchemy/spells done very well indeed, certainly up there with The Witcher, for example.
Overall then, this is the equivalent of an independent foreign film rather than a Hollywood blockbuster. It doesn't have huge stars in it, it doesn't have multi-million dollar special effects and it never had a huge advertising budget, but it is a great little game that you will love, that will draw you in, occasionally hand your butt to you and generally make you feel it's 'your game' rather than 'a game' that you play.
If you love true 'real' RPG's, like Fallout 1 and 2; if you preferred Morrowind to Oblivion and if you find retro gaming almost more interesting than modern gaming, then this game is for you. It has everything you want in a good 90's RPG - great gameplay, a large world to travel across, and enemies that are challenging! Take a chance with this old fashioned RPG that is a follow on from the Wizardry and Gold Box RPGs rather than the Oblivion/Mass Effect style or RPG - surely a good thing!