These are my impressions after completing about half of the game. I divided them in three groups:
= neutral features, you decide if it's good or bad
+ pros
- cons
= Two Worlds is a blend of hack'n'slash and story-based, open world RPG. It reminds me of the Divinity series. Story is quite interesting (with few exceptions), and so are the side quests. But the action part of the game is more highlighted. You can tell it from the amount of dialogues. Usually you have only 2-3 options while talking with someone and all the non-important NPCs in a place have the same options and usually answer identically.
= The idea of an adult man, a mercenary, searching for his kidnapped sister above all, doesn't seem as a good base for the story, does it? One may begin to suspect sick relationship between the siblings :) And Kira's, the protagonists sister, dress doesn't help in dispelling this anxiety ;) Still, later in the game this becomes clear why they are siblings, not partners.
= Two Worlds gives you lots of casual gameplay. There are no complicated quests. The story is not so important. The devs have put most effort in making the gameplay fun and easy.
= The interface is well thought out. Several "hotkey bars" for assigning 1-0 keys to your favourite skills, items and spells. Collecting loot from multiple enemies is very convenient; it tells you which body you did or did not search yet. In the inventory when you check stats of a weapon you see a comparison to the one you hold in your hand. You can leave lots of stuff in your horse's saddlebags. Well done map with all the information about quests.
= Interesting skill system. You have 38 active and passive skills that you may freely develop throughout the course of the game. You don't have to stick to one class; in fact there are no classes in this game. Important thing is that there are so called soulpatchers - mages that can retrieve your already spent skill points, so that you could rearrange them. You can't choose which skill should be weakened - it happens randomly, so you may have to repeat the process over and over again till you succeed.
= When it comes to a close combat it's all about fast clicking. There are several combat skills you may use (if you have them), but it's still just rapid clicking.
= AI of enemies is soooo simple. Whenever they see you, they just run at you, unless they have a bow... Well, typical for hack'n'slash games.
= When an enemy reaches you he attacks you, and then he stands in one spot for a second. It's possible to move away from him just when he starts an attack. This way you don't get hurt and you have a moment for setting a trap, or shooting at him.
= There are combat skills such as sticking a torch into enemy's face (for blinding him and extra damage), breaking enemy's sword, pulling down enemy's shield or piercing shot, that can hurt multiple enemies if they line up in a cue :) You don't often find such skills in other games, do you? :)
= Shooting is characteristic. When you draw the cord of the bow, the view gradually becomes larger. This may take a while to get used to it. Also, when you shoot at an enemy, you always hit them. But when you aim at any dead object, the arrow will most probably miss. I don't quite understand why shooting works this way. It's just another point that makes the gameplay more convenient.
= I can't say much about magic, because I don't use it much. I know that the whole system is based on cards. You may get new spells as cards, that you put in your spell book. You can also find booster cards, that can improve certain spells - increase their effects or lower the mana cost.
= Monsters, animals and all the humanoids you kill for exp don't respawn. It means that you'll have to move to new hunting grounds once you sweep the forests out of all enemy creatures. Some say it sucks. I say it's real :)
= Most adversaries come in groups. There's always 3 or 4 wolves in a pack, 3 or more bandits in a band. Bandits are always found by camps. It may be boring for some people.
= You have three teleport stones that let you to travel instantly between them and the net of stationary teleporters.
= There are plenty of mana and health regenerating shrines across the country. These places make combat easy. If a fight is difficult for you you may draw your enemies to such a place and finish them off there; the shrine will replenish all your health, but not your enemies'! This tactics doesn't work with enemies that kill you with one hit or can poison you seriously.
= Unless you choose high level of difficulty, you'll respawn in a nearest shrine every time you die. You don't loose any of your skills or inventory. AFAIK there are no drawbacks of respawning.
= Beside a regular horse there's also a mutari and an undead horse. They mainly differ in appearances and the weight they can carry. It's hard to say if there are any other differences between them.
= Your horse can't teleport with you.
= There's an alchemy system. Simply put at least two ingredients to brew a potion or make a crystal for upgrading weapons. Each ingredient shows clearly what effects it will cause, but sometimes after brewing a potion they cause different effects. It may depend on the level of your alchemy skill.
= There are lots of merchants in this game. When you go to a town, around half of the population are merchants! It's cool; makes you feel like in a real market.
= There are several guilds that you may work for and earn reputation. Usually higher reputation gives you lower prices in shops, more wares to choose from and permits you enter several locations.
+ Beautiful, diverse world.
+ Outstanding graphics (I mean it!).
+ Two Worlds IS NO MORE BUGGED. I play on a PC with Win7 and the game crashed once - too many mine detonations in a single moment caused it. I haven't noticed any other problems.
+ Game loads rapidly. It takes less than 10 secs from starting the game to loading a save game file. Besides this you have to wait a few secs on entering dungeons and caves.
+ There are some good ideas for combat developed in the game. Probably the best one are traps and mines. Traps come in two kinds: damaging and holding ones. The latter stop a creature in a place for 10 or more seconds. This is extremely useful (especially against one enemy). Enemies usually run straight to you when they see you, so if you set a holding trap on that route, you'll be able to finish them off before they get to you. In fact fighting without traps is quite difficult. And fighting with mines may be pure pleasure if you use them properly. I like to make mini mine fields (5 or more mines) and draw my enemies to it. Or I run into an orc camp/village, I make sure that all of them go after me in one group, then I set a mine just in front of me and I run straight ahead. Watching a group of enemies fly in all directions - priceless :) In the middle of the game I encountered demons, that were not that easy to kill with mines, though I don't understand why.
+ Great number of weapons and armors available. There are hundreds of armor sets (each one has a number from 1 to around 550). You can upgrade them by combining two same items or by adding special damage crystals to your weapon. This way you can significantly increase their damage/protection rates (there is no limit for how many times you can do it). Armors look very nice. There are many different shapes and colours, so you may want to find one that matches your style :)
- The intro movie is terrible. The very idea of the protagonist's sister disappearing in such circumstances seems simply stupid. I hope it's like it just because they lacked time to make a better one.
- As far as I noticed only NPCs in the main quest line move their lips while talking. Other NPCs lack the lips synch.
- Though the protagonist and armors (thus people wearing them) look great, other NPCs doesn't. They are decent at most. There are only several kinds of body shapes and clothing that come in different colours.
- There is one annoying thing about the graphics. All the trees that are further than 100-200 m from you are lower quality than closer ones. Now, while you move, the game loads new images for the trees that come in this range. This loading is rather imperfect and makes the trees seem flickering. Some of them disappear. It's not a bug; it's just the way for smooth loading of surroundings. It's especially annoying while riding a horse; you move fast and the trees around you disappear or appear rapidly. IMHO it's a major drawback of the engine that takes some of the joy from exploring the game world.
- Riding a horse. Though I like the idea of realistic horse AI, the delay between my command and my horse's response to it often drives me mad. Riding should be easier.
- People complain about English localisation of the game. As for me, a Polish guy, it's hard to find any mistakes in translation. As for the voice acting, it's characteristic for high fantasy. I like it, though there are many people who don't.
- Not too many types of enemies in the game. There are several kinds of wolves and bears, bandits, boars, orcs, orc-like groms, skeletons, zombies, ghouls, demons, giant spiders, reapers and dark knights. And that's what I found after completing about 50% of the game. I doubt there's much more ahead. Also I must mention that there are LOTS of wolves, bears and bandits. The rest of the list is less than 50% of my kills :(
- This game's is not assassin-friendly :( Though the game mechanics lets you to kill enemies instantly while in sneak mode, it's almost useless because enemies almost always come in groups. You may be able to kill one, but the rest of them will notice you and you may say goodbye to your dreams of silent killing through the game.
Two Worlds is meant to be more hack'n'slash than the Divinity series. All would be great if only they made two things better. Firstly, there should be much more different kinds of enemies. And they should differ not only by name, colour and stats (in TW there are wolves, gray wolves, silver wolves, white wolves... I wonder what kind of wolves I'll find in the south :)). Secondly, the game world shouldn't be evenly populated with enemies like it is now. Every 200 meters there's a group of wolves/boars/bandits and sometimes other creatures. There should be places crawling with them and places deserted. They should come in groups of different size. Apply these changes to the game, and it's one of the top 10 games I've played (and I've played quite a lot).
Reality Pump Studios claims they had not enough time to finish this game, they wanted to make too many things in the time they had. I take it as a reason for the drawbacks I mentioned. While working on Two Worlds 2 they employed 3 times more people and have been working 3 times longer than on the first game. I can't wait to see the outcome :)