When Two Worlds was announced, I had high hopes for it and with this being only the second fantasy RPG to grace the Xbox 360 after the amazing Oblivion I was hoping my excitement would be justified, however hope and reality are two very different things.
It may seem unfair to compare any game to Oblivion with its miles of terrain and it’s highly polished presentation, but to be fair Two Worlds does have some of the attributes that Oblivion brought to the console, such as a free roaming environment with plenty of side quests to complete, it’s just that it’s full of obvious flaws.
Once you start the game you start to realize that it has problems, these come in the form of glitches in the graphics, unnecessary pauses in the action while the disc catches up, bad collision detection meaning that characters walk through walls or each other and then there is the voice acting, which to put it bluntly is plain awful.
While all of the above may have put you off the game before you finish reading the review, it does have some fine points also, the skills system is very well thought out for a start and lets you build up your character in a way that feels more personal, you will also find that some of the monsters you will come across are too powerful for you at the beginning meaning that once you have build up your character you can go back and teach them a lesson that you couldn’t have at the lower experience levels, this at least injects a sense of achievement into the proceedings.
To do well in the main quest you must complete side missions which you learn of on the way, these in turn will help you build a reputation and therefore let you gain access to the contacts you need to get further in the game, this seems like a good idea to me as it means you can’t just rush through the game without learning a bit about the story and this is way RPG’s should play.
Of course games live or die by their combat system and unfortunately this is probably where Two Worlds is at it’s worse, the combat just seems repetitive and dull, as well as being too easy thanks to the dodge button, it also just doesn’t look very realistic so is a big let down in my eyes.
At the beginning of the game you are advised that you are able to fight enemies from horseback, unfortunately the combat actually gets worse when you take to the back of a horse to fight your enemies, this is due to the horse being glued to the paths, should you stray somewhere the horse doesn’t think he can go you will soon find him wandering in a different direction than you are commanding him to go in, this obviously results in many problems and makes getting a blow on an enemy very difficult.
Thankfully there are easier ways to get around rather than a horse, this is due to the numerous teleports which you will pass as you wander the land, and this is a nice touch as there is nothing more annoying than spending another few hours trying to get back to the village on the other end of the map.
Something Two Worlds offers which Oblivion doesn’t is a Xbox Live mode, this enables you and your friends to explore the land together, while it is quite difficult to find a match, should you have some friends who like RPG’s as much as you do, then this is probably the most fun you will have with this game. One thing to note with the multiplayer game though is that you will need to set up a new character because you will not be able to use the one you have spent time building up in the game.
Two Worlds offers a lot of adventuring, so for RPG fans who are willing to spend the time and ignore the obvious flaws this could be a good purchase, for everyone else however it is probably best that you go and buy Oblivion if you don’t have it already.
