Two Worlds

List Price: $49.99 Discount Price: $8.34

Features:

• The world literally comes to life - your environment reacts immediately to the player's actions and changes, creating new and exciting challenges
• Strong, non-linear storyline - Shape your own story by choosing the path your character takes
• Experiment with different careers and even reverse former choices with the help of career changers
• For the first time, players are allowed to assemble their own magic spells
• Travel and fight on various animals, from horses to tamed lizards

Accessories:
PC Gamer (1-year)	Games for Windows: The Official Magazine

Customer Reviews:

False Advertisement [Posted on 2008-06-20]
I don't much like making negative reviews but this game hyped up a lot more than it actually dished out.

Horrendous graphics even with a nice machine, frames would drop around more than three simultaneous enemies. Broken gameplay and even more broken quests and combat is plain awful. The claim was "Most Epic RPG of all time!" however after seventeen hours of this garbage it has nothing to show for it.

I apologize to the developer who probably had positive intentions, but the only thing this game can claim to be epic, is failure. If you are looking at this game after coming from The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion you will not find a good game in Two Worlds.

Try Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, Age of Conan:Hyborian Adventures, Oblivion, or Fable: The Lost Chapters before you waste your game time with this rush-released trash.

An underrated tour de force [Posted on 2008-06-27]
As one of the reviewers recommended, I tried out the demo version. Based on the demo, I purchased the game and have not regretted it. Incidentally, the game is better than the demo. Although reviews for Two Worlds tend to reflect two extremes, it seems that most of those people who don't like the game have either played the game on a console or not read the game manual. If the reader can avoid falling into either of those categories, this game is definitely worth considering. This review is based on the PC version, release 1.6. I've played it about 10 hours at this point.

Environment: The game environment is very realistic. Clothing, weapons, buildings, roads, and plant life all show that someone put a lot of time into the design. This is one of those games that you enjoy just walking around and looking at the scenery.

Unfortunately, you will not do much looking at scenery in the beginning, since you are almost constantly being attacked by something or someone. Although the towns appear to be populated at realistic levels, the wilderness is filled with wolves, boars, bears, bandits, and a variety of other hostiles. There always seems to be something nipping at your heels. As you travel further from the game's starting point, this seems to become less of a problem.

The game provides regular day/night cycles along with frequent weather changes. Some of the weather, such as thunderstorms, is very realistic. The only minor issue here is that the weather tends to change too fast. In Two Worlds you may have several different types of weather each day.

The game world is large--not Morrowind large, but it will take you a long time to travel from one end to the other on foot. Fortunately, there are portals that allow you to teleport between places you have already been.

There are a lot of items in this game world. The plethora of minerals, plants, objects, weapons, and other items will have you making constant decisions regarding what to do with them. This adds a lot of depth to the game, so if you like experimenting with alchemy, magic, or weapon power-ups Two Worlds is a great sandbox to play in.

Control: Character control is excellent. If you do not have a weapon readied, you can play in a first or third person perspective. When you ready a weapon, the game will switch you to third person perspective. You can zoom the camera in third person mode to select a view you prefer. In this respect the game is nearly perfect. I cannot recall an instance where I could not see and control the character exactly as I wanted to.

I rode several horses and fought from them as well. I have read that the horse control is bad, but it does not seem to be the case with the 1.6 version. I would be more critical if this was a horse racing game or something, but as an interesting diversion in a fantasy-based RPG, the horses are OK.

The game controls character stats, inventory, magic, maps and quest logs, etc. in its own way. As I mentioned before, this is one game where you really should take the time to read the manual. Although the manual is large (130 pages), it is easy reading and the information it contains will clear up a lot of potential confusion.

Game mechanics: Unlike some RPGs, this one is not a click fest. Your character needs to move and deliver combinations of blows and magic spells to survive. In this sense, Two Worlds is a "fighting game." There are a lot of possible combination moves and fighting techniques, but the player does not have many of them at the beginning. You have to meet "trainers" to unlock these skills. Those who find themselves getting killed a lot in the beginning are probably trying to "mouse click" their way to victory and only use ¼ of their character's fighting capabilities. I had some practice by playing the demo, so by the time I started playing the full game, I had little difficulty keeping my character alive. I would guess it will take most people anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours of game play to get proficient with the combat system.

The magic system is excellent and flexible. The player starts out having basic training in two of the five schools of magic. The player can then level up in a school of magic rather than leveling up a particular spell so whole groups of spells can be enhanced. Incidentally, there is a lot of "overlap" in the spells used by the different schools, so in practical terms the 5 schools are more like 2 schools. Using a card system, the spells in the same school can be combined in various ways to form different spells. Further, "booster" spells, which can apply to spells of all schools, can be added to gain enhanced effects.

Storyline: I have spent very little time playing the main quest as yet, but most of the side quests seem to tie into events that spin off of the main quest.

There are many factions in the game. As a generalization, everyone claims that their group is the good guys. The game employs a "political intrigue" sub-plot, so it is difficult to know who you should trust.

Sound: The music is great, although there is not enough of it to keep from repeating quite a bit. If you get tired of it, the solution is easy: turn down the music volume.

Some critics have complained about the dialog, but it is no worse than many dubbed movies. If anything is lacking, it is the character animation during the dialog, and it was good enough to advance the plot.

So how good is the game overall? I rate it 5 out of 5 even though the game has a mildly steep learning curve and some unconventional ways of doing things. If you have a reasonably strong PC and read the game manual, you should enjoy the experience.

Great for Newbies [Posted on 2008-07-12]
I bought the Royal Edition (European collectors) when it first came out and I had a great time playing this game. It was my first successful venture into the RPG area of gaming. Yes, compared to Oblivion the character choice is limited, but the battles are great and unlike Oblivion when you die you are ressurected (unless you play on Hard).
I didn't like trying to direct the horses so gave up on that and simply ran around. Unlike Oblivion the world is not so large that this is a hardship. I never managed to get the portal teleport to work though which is a nuisance and in both this game and Oblivion they really need to work underground as in Titan Quest. Otherwise you spend a lot of time having get out of caves and travelling to the nearest teleport so you can sell your loot which is boring.
I liked the magic system in it, although it has been changed from the original 1.0 version so that more effects are temporary rather than permanent, a mistake in my opinion. Also I love being able to stack my favourite amour/equipment to make it stronger - this is a great idea.
This game got me interested in RPG playing and I think others who haven't tried this genre will enjoy giving this a trial.
There is one warning for the future however. In the Game of the Year Edition(European) the Tainted Blood add-on is only available for MULTIPLAYERS and my understanding, from reviews in the European press, is that The Temptation will be the same. What annoyed me when I bought the Game of the Year pack was that there is no warning whatsoever on the packaging to say this so I wasted about $50 buying it and I was really disappointed that I couldn't continue my adventures. So if, like me, you don't play online don't bother to buy either Tainted Blood or Temptation unless they change them so single players can play them, too.

I preordered, I was excited, and dissapointed [Posted on 2008-07-16]
This game had a lot of hype attached to it when I was first told about it in gamestop. The clerk there had asked if I liked Oblivion or any other RPGs. I had said yes. He told me it would be a little bit like Oblivion but 3rd person. I won't be discussing the similarities and differences based on Oblivion. I am just letting everyone know how I came to hear of this game.
My girlfriend had pre-ordered this for me as a gift. When I got it, I played it for hours until I beat it. Even if I do not enjoy a game, I still try my best to play it to the end, to have the full experience and full opinion. I have played a variety of games. Anything from Hitman, to Diablo, to STALKER, to Startopia, Warhammer, Fallout, all sorts of games and I enjoy every variety.
I wasn't too impressed with this. The official site had promised a change in the world of the game, based on whether you are good or evil. It talked about necromancy not being available until you discover it, along with no zombies until you "activate" the necromancy branch.
I was led on to believe many things about this game before I played it. And I would actually point out that the official site lied a LOT.
There were many pros and cons to this game.
Pros:
1. You start off weak, you really need to work on your character to fight the numerous creatures throughout the game.
2. Many different types of enemies, up to the end of the game.
3. You can kill anything. If a villager tells you about a reward and wants you to do a quest, you can actually just kill them and take it. Or anyone else for that matter.
4. You can stack weapons and armor to create stronger versions. This is great when you enjoy the look of an armor or if you want to keep a specific weapon style.
5. Very large map to play in
6. Beautiful HDR lighting to the point of realism to sun sensitivity

Cons:
1. You have a predefined character as a human male, warrior. To be anything else takes quite a few hours to actually be much of anything.
2. Bows were practically useless, as was most magic. The hack and slash way of fighting was most effective.
3. Misleading info on the actual SITE. When you end the game, whether you choose good or bad, only determines the end cutscene, after that, you are done playing.
4. Phone activation
5. So so voice acting
6. Not much to the fighting style, you swing, you swing, you swing. No combos, no variety to fighting moves.
7. Blood is horribly rendered, just a small red splotch on the screen.
8. Horse riding is very inefficent, not worth fighting on the horse itself. Hard to control while riding
9. At times the missions tended to be confusing.

Conclusion:
In the end, if I had not payed the $50 and payed around $10, I would had been happy with it. You get what you pay for. It isn't the best game out there, but it isn't the worse. I give it 4/10 overall. Not for me, even though I have played huge varieties of games, and have played many RPGs even.

umm havent i played this game before? [Posted on 2008-07-20]
when i played this game i went around and i was like is this like that one city then i went to a differnt city and o my gosh this game is copying off from oblivion look.. this game is boring a bad story and not fun all u do is kill countless badguys and get a sword then kill more and o my gosh a sword! its boring the city's are made just like oblivion's dont belive me? buy oblivion and find out the hard way..

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