Two Worlds 2

[Quanrian]

After hearing Duke hate the hell out of the game I cannot say it changed my opinion much, especially since he never played the original. That said I could not find a fricken copy anywhere and when I did... it was the super expensive version for 100$. To give you all an idea of what I got in my crazy box of stuff I have embedded a video below.



Do not worry I shall provide a proper review once I get some game time in. I will try and play the game for more than a couple hours before I go on any rants or raves.

[Jaymeister]

I look forward to your second opinion Quanrian. I was one of the few people that actually liked the first one as quirky as it was

[Quanrian]

I am going to have to do this in bits because the game doles out accessibility at a very slow pace. So first off, if you want everything right away or at least very early then pass on Two Worlds 2 because it is absolutely a time investment.

Graphics & Animation

In my humble opinion this is probably the game's strongest point. This game looks quite good, especially in HD. Shadows are well drawn and the contrasts between shades offers some very dramatic and awe inspiring moments that even similar titles often failed to deliver on. Onto animation, while there is the occassional hiccup the animation is typically silky smooth and I am pretty impressed on how attacks will transition into one another.

Sound & Music

A lot of people will and probably should complain about the voice acting and dialog but it is passable and it is ironic that is how it is because people could not tolerate the old english... So now we have some highly questionable choices like a guy that sounds like he's from the deep south living in a fantasy setting. Music is light, forgettable without being intrusive. Animals make... unsual noises that I cannot say are authentic and do lend a bit of comic appeal to the game where it should not be.

Horses

This is something I have heard far too much about and to put it frankly... You would have to be a bit challenged to not be able to control the horses. It isn't very complicated at all. To break it down, A is used to mount a horse when not moving while left trigger is used to speed up but you cannot speed up too much or the horse will kick you ala RDR. Additionally, you use the right trigger to halt the horse and A to dismount. You have to press the left trigger once before you can really move horse but beyond that you steer the horse by guiding the head and it will go where you want it... unless perhaps your controller is set way too high on sensativity. Sorry Duke I had none of the problems you had and I found it all too easy to control and deal with. You do however have to worry about getting dismounted by ranged attack, which can occassionally hit their mark if you are not moving.

Difficulty

If there is any reason to stop, turn around and bring this game back it is absolutely the difficulty. This game will break you and it will continue to challenge you in sometimes unreasonable ways. This game does not do a good job of softly introducing you to enemies that can and will kill you in one hit. Gone is the indicator from the first game that color coded enemies so you could see from a distance if you should avoid. So... now you are forced to test your meddle and see if you can survive and very often... you will die... over and over again.

Fun Factor

This kills me to say this (not really) but Two Worlds 2 is not what I would call fun. It can be amusing and has ways to engage you but it will not be because it is action packed or that any particular activity is exciting. In this way, it is a bit like GTA 4 and you may find yourself wasting hours of time even though nothing you do is fun. Put plainly, you either find your own fun in this game or it will bore you stupid. However, if you get your jollies off of Diabloesque collectionfests than this game can keep you 'very' busy.

Final Words (for now...)

It will be a while and many questions later that I can properly describe the Two Worlds 2 without rave or rant involved. If you have any specific questions I will do my best to answer them in as unbiased a manner as possible. I like this game, I do not love it. I will however play the heck out of it and am more than willing to provide feedback on my experiences.

Thank you for letting me waste your time with this assortment of carefully arranged letters!

[DukeSkath]

This kills me to say this (not really) but Two Worlds 2 is not what I would call fun.

Hey, we agree!

I can't believe you're not having trouble with the horses.. Maybe you're just gifted or something. To be clear: My problem had nothing to do with mounting or dismounting, speeding up or slowing down. But the horses were way too sensitive for my taste. Very hard to control in terms of left/right.

[Surface_Lizard]

Mine is preordered, and already paid for. The damnable UK release date keeps getting put back.

It's gold, FFS; what is the major malfunction, numbnuts!?

[DavidTheAlien]

I share some of the same views but i never played the first one. To me there are minor very minor framerate issues, the voice and dialogue is crap imo. I am not very far in at all and am getting frustrated i keep coming across enemies that just butcher me very quickly, i also keep forgetting to manually save and just rely on autosave which is highly frustrating too especially if you have grabbed some loot and upgraded weapons and armor because yes when you die it reverts back to the last save point of course before i did all these upgrades which is frustrating to me. It should autosave imo once you have changed things in inventory or upgraded weapons potions whatever it may be.

i do regret buying the game and would put it down to a rental for those on the fence. Of course i do know plenty of people that are loving it.

[Surface_Lizard]

Feel free to sell me your copy

[Quanrian]

I share some of the same views but i never played the first one. To me there are minor very minor framerate issues, the voice and dialogue is crap imo. I am not very far in at all and am getting frustrated i keep coming across enemies that just butcher me very quickly, i also keep forgetting to manually save and just rely on autosave which is highly frustrating too especially if you have grabbed some loot and upgraded weapons and armor because yes when you die it reverts back to the last save point of course before i did all these upgrades which is frustrating to me. It should autosave imo once you have changed things in inventory or upgraded weapons potions whatever it may be.

i do regret buying the game and would put it down to a rental for those on the fence. Of course i do know plenty of people that are loving it.

David my hint of the day for you is to just teleport anywhere. Whenever you teleport the game will create a new autosave! Also, anytime you enter a dungeon or leave one the game will autosave. I also like to clean my autosaves out because it saves at the stupidest times. One time it autosaved right before an enemy killed me... Just so you know or may have not noticed, the timer for autosaving does reset if you manually save so you 'can' cut it off if you save before the time you allot for autosaving.

As for the dialog, it is hit and miss but yeah a lot of it they drone on but at least you can cancel through it. I still dont get the guy with the deep southern accent as I will be screaming blasphemy on that forever. For christ sake, no one in all of Europe speaks like that...

Later today I should get more time on my friend's 360 and write up some information on the combat, which does have some interesting quirks. It 'will' be chock full of useful and sometimes cheap tactics!

[Jaymeister]

Thanks for the early second opinion Quanrian. Think I'll wait till it hits the bargain bins

[Quanrian]

Thanks for the early second opinion Quanrian. Think I'll wait till it hits the bargain bins

I am actually not even close to done. I am actually going to do a sort of mini-guide once you compile all my posts. There is a massive amount to this game. You literally cannot judge this game fully until you've put in... at least 20 hours. At nearly 10 hours I am barely scraping the icing off the cake. At this point I will say even at 100$ I can get my money's worth out of the game because it only keeps getting better. The armor, spells, just about everything improves, heck even the voice acting improves to some degree once you have a broader scope of the full cast.

I would not say this is bargain bin bad, it's just marimite and if you never touched the first one because you were either scared off or thought that made you clever (only buying mainstream crap) than dont bother with the second. Games like this will never score more than a 7.5 because not enough people will enjoy them but it does not mean they are not worth investigating on your own. Also, keep in mind people tend to exaggerate to great lengths about things they personally dislike, especially after they feel they 'wasted' money. Overall, I will do my best to offer a even handed review that can easily ignore the antiquated scoring system and let you decide based on the facts, not some arbitrary number I accumulate from a swayed bias.

I am not saying Duke is wrong either (just premature), though I know it comes off like that. In all seriousness though I have been playing these types of Action RPGs for years and have a wealth to compare it against, while Duke has only recently gotten into non-turn based RPG (credibility issues...) so his expectations are going to be slanted and unrealistic in a lot of ways. I mean for christ sake he compared it to Mass Effect on multiple occassions, which is a massively funded title... It's like going into a FPS after playing a 3rd person shooter and complaining that you cannot see behind you all the time...

Anywho, I do thank Duke for at least getting people to look at the game, even if it was through a kneejerk response. I do hope the time I put into the game and the experiences I share will add up to more than just people thinking it's just s*** and they should avoid the title because everyone else tells them so. Think for yourself people, you might just surprise yourself and like something other people do not.