Two Worlds

Two Worlds, developed by Reality Pump, was released in 2007 by publisher SouthPeak Interactive for Xbox 360 and PC. It is a open world fantasy RPG set in the world of Antaloor. It is very often compared to Oblivion which was released around the same time.

I’m going to start with the good stuff as it will be quicker to cover. The world is both large and detailed with many different zones, all of which are very distinctive. From the glaciers and highlands in the north ranging all the way down to the swamps, deserts, volcanoes and bamboo forests in the south it is likely that you will find yourself spending hours just exploring the landscape. Many settlements have their own quirks and problems which you can help solve or just ignore and move on. Quests are varied and interesting and there are plenty to partake in with almost every settlement having an abundance of quests to try varying from the basic “go here and kill this” quests to having to the more intricate quests such as finding someone’s sister who has been lost in a mysterious temple at the centre of the town.

Sadly that is the extent of the good so let’s move onto the bad and the ugly and speaking of ugly this brings us seamlessly to the graphics. Being nice the graphics are not good. This isn’t ‘not good’ by today’s standards, this is not good by the standards of when it was released. Colours are bland and uninteresting even when the sun comes out and when it is overcast or foggy they just seem dull. When in shadow outside the player character seems to have a strange outline around them of normal light before the correct shadow appears. Depth of field seems overly powerful and load distances seem flawed. The list goes on…

One good thing about this game though is that it did give me an appreciation for good voice acting. Not because the voice acting is good but because it is appalling. Every so often you may find an npc with a decent voice actor but even then it is ruined by a bad script and unnatural animations which in the end stop you from caring about what happens to any of the characters and just doing the quest so you can get to the next level.

The levelling system is bad however. It isn’t controlled by classes so you can chose which skills to learn and rank them up as you see fit. Most of the basic skills are available at the beginning however more advanced skills and manoeuvres are learned from trainers spread around the world; however these are few and far between and often difficult to find. There’s a nice system with which you can pay some gold and remove skill points from areas to be used somewhere more useful, the only problem with this is you have no control over how many skill points and where they come from. It usually takes them from skills you haven’t used much but this isn’t very helpful sometimes.

There are multiple factions in the game of which you can chose which you do quests for although it doesn’t take many quests to max out your reputation with them and there don’t seem to be many clear advantages to getting factions to like you other than a slight discount at their traders.

Enemy types are also varied although they too suffer from bad animation and are often hard to judge how hard they are to kill. Many are also immune to certain types of damage so you find yourself armed to the teeth with piercing and slashing weapons surrounded by skeletons who can only be harmed by bludgeoning weapons.

Closing comments:
Two Worlds is a game that was full of potential but every good thing is ruined by the bad. A huge open world is ruined by bad graphics and dodgy level ranges on areas. A slew of interesting and varied quests are ruined by bad voice acting and an unintuitive quest log. Varied enemies are ruined by bad animation and samey combat. However, I did enjoy this game and that was a problem for me. It is certainly a flawed game but if you can find a real cheap copy and can see past some of the flaws you may be rewarded by hours of adventuring.

6/10 – Get it if it’s cheap but don’t spend a lot on it.