Two Worlds 2 starts right away in a rather confusing situation; when a company knows they’ve made a bad game, it’s not wise to start your new game immediately where your previous one left off if no one played your old game through to the end.
The ultimate premise of the first story was that your sister’s body was the vessel of an ancient elemental God, and there was a war going on for her with the winner, upon successfully confining her, gaining the powers of a God at their disposal. Yeah it sounds like a cool story idea, but believe me they buggered it up.
So I guess at the end of the first game you get captured or something, because right away you’re escaping from the dungeons of the villain that holds your sister, and the raging God inside of her, hostage.
Ultimately your mission in this game is the same as the previous: rescue your sister with the help of an unlikely ally who was your enemy in the previous narrative. The plot elements have potential to be one of the best this generation of gaming has held, but poor execution and contrived loopholes and holes in the plot leave this feeling more like a story arc from a Uwe Boll film than what could have been a wonderful tale in a fantastic and magical realm.
Gameplay The game controls much smoother than Two Worlds, again that isn’t saying much and the movements do feel clunky at times; it feels like it’s trying to handle like Fable, but it’s just coming up short.
Despite the improvements to the general control, the combat is still horrendous. Two Worlds was plagued by honestly some of the worst melee combat elements I have ever witnessed in a any RPG, including titles from 20 years ago. As I played the opening segments of the game and got hopeful from the improved core mechanics, as I entered my first combat scenario I groaned and said to myself “really? they didn’t fix this?”. The combat is still just a mashing of the R trigger to ineffectively bludgeon your enemy and the L trigger for even more ineffective defence; other buttons do trigger other combat tactics, but at the end of the day you’ll be grudgingly just mashing the R trigger until it’s over.
There is some promise on the horizon as the archery and magic aspects have received a very necessary improvement. I’m going to play through this game as an archer, I think, as the functionality performs far better than melee combat and has potential to actually be fun.
Graphics K so credit where credit is due: the visuals have received the most noticeable improvement from the previous title. Two World was bland, ugly and had design presentation I would expect more on the Gamecube than I would a current generation console. Two Worlds 2 has received a facelift and the environments look much more lush and alive and the character models look almost like something one would expect of the current consoles. Texture loading and model movements are still jumpy and suffers from pauses and pops, especially when leading into a cinematic moment.
The game looks better and the visual overhaul is probably the best improvement of the game, but I’ve said it before: pretty games doesn’t mean good games.
Sound Two Worlds suffered from some of the worst voice acting I’ve ever been exposed to; seriously there were times it rivalled the original Resident Evil in regards to awful script-reading and emoting. Two Worlds 2 doesn’t fare that much better as the characters sound stiff and lifeless for the most part. The main character has dropped the cheesie thespian voice and has gone the route of a more gruff tone to sound more like a tough guy than the previous hero; I call it the Prince of Persia: Warrior Within Effect. This character tries to deliver his lines well, but he’s so pre-occupied with sounding tough that the impact of his lines is lost.
Speaking of the lines in the script, there is way too much of it. Most games I don’t start skipping dialogue moments until my third or fourth play through. I found myself already skipping dialogue that no doubt somehow would be important for me to hear, but it just goes on and on and on to the point that it becomes almost painful to continue to listen to these drawn out conversations that are, in all honesty, 90% filler; long discussions in games are fine as long as the characters are actually saying something, but what little substance there is in the dialogue gets lost in the mountains of filler.
The music is uninspired and doesn’t stand out to me in any way. I seriously can not recollect any music from this game and I just turned it off a half hour ago.
What I liked This is a noble effort to save this franchise and try to climb its way out of the bottom lister division of games, but the damage was done with the first title and I can’t see any way back from that. The premise of the game and the story have potential to be incredible, compelling narratives, but the filler and convolution sucks any and all intrigue out of the story. I did like that this game wasn’t quite as painful to play as long as you kept out of the drawn out dialogue, a few glasses of wine doesn’t hurt either.
What needs improvement Like I said, this is better than the previous, but unfortunately that’s not really saying its an accomplishment. The voice acting is awful enough but when its a never ending exchange of words between wooden characters it loses all enjoyment. The choppiness between cinematics also detracts from the fun, especially when, like the dialogue segments, there are so many cinematics so frequently; it just kills any momentum the player builds up and blocks the gamer from ever feeling fired up about playing.
Final Thoughts There’s no saving this franchise. I’m going to try and force my way through this game; the previous Two Worlds I could only handle for about six hours of gameplay before I finally had enough and traded it in the day after I bought it so my goal is to get through at least eight hours for fairness. This franchise is almost tragic, as it has so much that could have made it great, but lazy writing, broken mechanics and awful scripting holds it back.
Take this story idea and apply it to better game mechanics, just start over, it’s not like anyone will know where the original story came from.
Long story short, I can’t suggest this title unless you’re one of those dozen people who actually said “you know what this world needs? another Two Worlds game!” This is an underdog game that you so badly want to root for and see succeed, but it feels like trying to cheer for an aspiring hockey player who can’t skate.
written by Lee Clifford
Role Playing Games have had a rough go for a while now. I remember in the early 90s on my Super Nintendo playing RPG after RPG and almost all of them being exciting adventures that had a depth and fullness to them that made them stand above other games of that era.
Since then, there have been few well-rounded RPGs. Mass Effect, Oblivion and Dragon Age are some of the defining current day RPGs that just hit a homerun in every aspect. Then you have those other games that have a lot to offer, but fall short somewhere. Lost Odyssey had wonderful gameplay mechanics, but a contrived story with characters who inconsistently flip-flopped from emo to chipper to goofy and back to emo. Fallout offers a great narrative in an immersive world, but travelling was always a chore. Fable offers a fun play through, but the replay value lacks. Final Fantasy 13 brought back a lot of the subtle aesthetics that made the classic Final Fantasy games great, but it was, at the end of the day, a corridor run.
Then there was Two Worlds. Two Worlds was hyped to be “The Oblivion Killer” and had so much fanfare for its release that many older gamers thought this was the second coming of Christ for RPGs and return them to the forefront of the gaming world.
What we got was possibly the worst RPG many of us have ever played. Plagued by awful controls, horrendous voice acting, a convoluted story and some of the worst mechanics an RPG has seen in years… I’ve played worse game this generation I’m sure, but when I think of bad games on the Xbox 360, Two Worlds always creeps back into my mind. Honestly when I heard there would be a sequel, I asked aloud “was there really a demand for this??”
So, going in to Two Worlds 2, I had a few mixed expectations. I was expecting it to be better than the first, simply because there’s no way it could be worse. I was expecting some of the awful mechanics to be fixed, but even so I was expecting a terrible experience because honestly the first game just had too much wrong with it to salvage.
So, how does this sequel that no one wanted fare?
written by Lee Clifford
Role Playing Games have had a rough go for a while now. I remember in the early 90s on my Super Nintendo playing RPG after RPG and almost all of them being exciting adventures that had a depth and fullness to them that made them stand above other games of that era.
Since then, there have been few well-rounded RPGs. Mass Effect, Oblivion and Dragon Age are some of the defining current day RPGs that just hit a homerun in every aspect. Then you have those other games that have a lot to offer, but fall short somewhere. Lost Odyssey had wonderful gameplay mechanics, but a contrived story with characters who inconsistently flip-flopped from emo to chipper to goofy and back to emo. Fallout offers a great narrative in an immersive world, but travelling was always a chore. Fable offers a fun play through, but the replay value lacks. Final Fantasy 13 brought back a lot of the subtle aesthetics that made the classic Final Fantasy games great, but it was, at the end of the day, a corridor run.
Then there was Two Worlds. Two Worlds was hyped to be “The Oblivion Killer” and had so much fanfare for its release that many older gamers thought this was the second coming of Christ for RPGs and return them to the forefront of the gaming world.
What we got was possibly the worst RPG many of us have ever played. Plagued by awful controls, horrendous voice acting, a convoluted story and some of the worst mechanics an RPG has seen in years… I’ve played worse game this generation I’m sure, but when I think of bad games on the Xbox 360, Two Worlds always creeps back into my mind. Honestly when I heard there would be a sequel, I asked aloud “was there really a demand for this??”
So, going in to Two Worlds 2, I had a few mixed expectations. I was expecting it to be better than the first, simply because there’s no way it could be worse. I was expecting some of the awful mechanics to be fixed, but even so I was expecting a terrible experience because honestly the first game just had too much wrong with it to salvage.
So, how does this sequel that no one wanted fare?
written by Lee Clifford
Role Playing Games have had a rough go for a while now. I remember in the early 90s on my Super Nintendo playing RPG after RPG and almost all of them being exciting adventures that had a depth and fullness to them that made them stand above other games of that era.
Since then, there have been few well-rounded RPGs. Mass Effect, Oblivion and Dragon Age are some of the defining current day RPGs that just hit a homerun in every aspect. Then you have those other games that have a lot to offer, but fall short somewhere. Lost Odyssey had wonderful gameplay mechanics, but a contrived story with characters who inconsistently flip-flopped from emo to chipper to goofy and back to emo. Fallout offers a great narrative in an immersive world, but travelling was always a chore. Fable offers a fun play through, but the replay value lacks. Final Fantasy 13 brought back a lot of the subtle aesthetics that made the classic Final Fantasy games great, but it was, at the end of the day, a corridor run.
Then there was Two Worlds. Two Worlds was hyped to be “The Oblivion Killer” and had so much fanfare for its release that many older gamers thought this was the second coming of Christ for RPGs and return them to the forefront of the gaming world.
What we got was possibly the worst RPG many of us have ever played. Plagued by awful controls, horrendous voice acting, a convoluted story and some of the worst mechanics an RPG has seen in years… I’ve played worse game this generation I’m sure, but when I think of bad games on the Xbox 360, Two Worlds always creeps back into my mind. Honestly when I heard there would be a sequel, I asked aloud “was there really a demand for this??”
So, going in to Two Worlds 2, I had a few mixed expectations. I was expecting it to be better than the first, simply because there’s no way it could be worse. I was expecting some of the awful mechanics to be fixed, but even so I was expecting a terrible experience because honestly the first game just had too much wrong with it to salvage.
So, how does this sequel that no one wanted fare?
written by Lee Clifford
Role Playing Games have had a rough go for a while now. I remember in the early 90s on my Super Nintendo playing RPG after RPG and almost all of them being exciting adventures that had a depth and fullness to them that made them stand above other games of that era.
Since then, there have been few well-rounded RPGs. Mass Effect, Oblivion and Dragon Age are some of the defining current day RPGs that just hit a homerun in every aspect. Then you have those other games that have a lot to offer, but fall short somewhere. Lost Odyssey had wonderful gameplay mechanics, but a contrived story with characters who inconsistently flip-flopped from emo to chipper to goofy and back to emo. Fallout offers a great narrative in an immersive world, but travelling was always a chore. Fable offers a fun play through, but the replay value lacks. Final Fantasy 13 brought back a lot of the subtle aesthetics that made the classic Final Fantasy games great, but it was, at the end of the day, a corridor run.
Then there was Two Worlds. Two Worlds was hyped to be “The Oblivion Killer” and had so much fanfare for its release that many older gamers thought this was the second coming of Christ for RPGs and return them to the forefront of the gaming world.
What we got was possibly the worst RPG many of us have ever played. Plagued by awful controls, horrendous voice acting, a convoluted story and some of the worst mechanics an RPG has seen in years… I’ve played worse game this generation I’m sure, but when I think of bad games on the Xbox 360, Two Worlds always creeps back into my mind. Honestly when I heard there would be a sequel, I asked aloud “was there really a demand for this??”
So, going in to Two Worlds 2, I had a few mixed expectations. I was expecting it to be better than the first, simply because there’s no way it could be worse. I was expecting some of the awful mechanics to be fixed, but even so I was expecting a terrible experience because honestly the first game just had too much wrong with it to salvage.
