Two Worlds

Two Worlds is a technical fart.  I think I would have enjoyed it much more if it wasn't for the ugly graphics, bland world, terrible controls, bad art, and just overall technical screw ups and glitches.  I DID enjoy the quests.  I loved exploring, even though the world was bland, I just thought it was a great world map.  That's really the only compliments I can give it.

Besides the technical mess of this game, my next biggest beef with this game is the crap controls, and the lack of information.  All the tutorial in this game provides you is to learn how to swing your weapon and jump, that's it.  Everything else you have to figure out for yourself.  This is a major annoyance because there is so much I learned at the end of the game, but by then, it was too late.  I didn't know you could combine same-items until 17 hours into the game.  I didn't know all NPCs had different markers on them that tells me if they're merchants or quest givers.  It's just little things like this that puts me off.  It doesn't help that the controls are kinda complicated in the first place.  


----------Battle System----------
Two worlds is an Action-RPG.  You can play it in third person or first-person, but I'm not sure why anyone would want to play it as first-person, it's terrible that way.  You can pick and choose your fighting style depending on what weapons you enjoy using.  You can also build your character differently by building up what skills you want him to learn as well.   


You gain experience for each thing you kill, but you gain the majority of your experience from completing quests.  When you gain enough experience, you'll gain a level.  With each level, you'll get 5 points that you can distribute among your stats, like Max Health, Magic Power, Defense and Strength.  You also gain 1 Skill point, that you can hand out to your assorted abilities.

I hate the battle controls.  You attack using the R trigger, which is stupid.  Enclave for the original Xbox was like this and that game was awful.  You can set shortcut magics with your D-pad, but to use that magic you have to pull the L Trigger.  It's as simple as that, but still clunky because you can't change the button mapping.

There aren't special dungeons or even real boss fights until the end of the game.  Most monsters you encounter use nearly the same tactics, so you won't have to change your tactics to much either.  

The game has a standard D&D style weight system, which wasn't much of a problem earlier in the game, but became a hassle later in the game.  This is mostly because they only give you a little bit of space to hold items, even if you are hold 100lbs of items, and you can hold 300lbs of items, if those items take up all the space in your inventory, then you can't hold anymore items.  This is alot like Resident Evil in a way.  If there was an easy way to warp to town, like in Champions of Norrath, then it wouldn't be such a problem, but finding a merchant to sell your junk can be a quest on it's own.  Some towns might have 50 merchants, while others don't even have any.

Most of the quests are fetch missions.  There isn't a straight "dark" or "light" side you can take.  However, the game features a bunch of rival armies, and you can side with them by accepted their quests.  Some territories are completely neutral, while others are at war.  So it isn't possible to do EVERY quest in the game.  

----------Characters / Story----------
Um.. The story isn't exactly Two World's strong point.  I cared so little about the story I don't even know the main characters name, or if he was even given one.  Basically, the story starts off with you (hero) and your sister riding on horse back.  She looks ill, so you stop at a village for shelter.  She gets kidnapped, and its your job to find her.  

That's it really.  


----------Graphics----------
Oh man, the graphics are junk.  Aesthetically they're crap, and technically they're crap.  For one, there is nothing original or stylistic about this game.  Everything seems ripped right out of Tolkien and Dungeons & Dragons.  Another big problem is their habit of reusing the same character models over and over again.  You'll even see the same 15 characters walk around in a town.  It's lazy and cheap.  

The technical problems are countless and the main reason why I would never recommend this game to anyone.  For one, the game crashes far to often.  I think it froze up on me 5 times, and 1 time my character got stuck in the ground, so I had to reset.  That is alot of lost time if you ask me, probably 3 hours worth.  Then there's the choppy framerate issues.  The game chugs along at a snail pace most of the time.  It even gets worse if there's a ton of enemies on screen.  The game pauses during combat, sometimes for a full second.  

One time my character just completely disappeared.  Another time, all my items just turned to white.  You can see the complete skeleton of some mountains.  I even saw a bear climb up a wall.  Another time a giant Tower just split into half.  There are countless pop ins, texture mess ups, and other atrocities.  

One problem everyone seems to mention about Two Worlds is the text size.  While this is true for the white text that pops up after you complete a quest, that text is really unimportant.  The rest of the text is a perfect and readable size, however, they screw u p the text another way.  During dialog scenes, they show the dialog on the bottom.  They color the text white, and behind the text is a grey, transparent boarder.  If there is ANYTHING bright, including grass, sand, snow, water (basically anything), then the text is near impossible to read.

----------Sound----------
I actually enjoyed the music.  The main theme, which appears on the select screen is a really good song.  At first it appears to be a spacey Metroid Prime clone, but then full vocals jump in.  While you're playing the game, you'll hear basic synth or heavy violin tracks, but they're often buried in an almost ambiance way.  It's good music, but you'll barely notice it's there sometimes.  

The voice acting is a different story though.  Some characters sound ok (the hero), but most others just sound like a joke.  It's also really inconsistent.  For example, your main hero sounds perfect, but there was a couple NPCs that sounded like they recorded their lines through a tin-can.  It also does help that the actors are freaking awful too.  The voice work is terrible all around.



----------World Map----------
The world map is a very open world experience, much like the Elder Scrolls games.  Once you're set into the world, you can basically do and go anywhere you want, and tackle any sidequests you want.  The main quest is actually a few hours long, but the main chuck of this game is the huge amounts of exploring and sidequesting.  


On your menu, you get a basic overview of the world.  It will show you all the basic landmarks, like major villages, rivers, mountains, castles, and such.  Everything else is unmarked.  That includes, Teleporters, Magic and Health regenerators, caves, and so on.  Everything is also slightly shadowed over, but as you crawl through the world, you slowly map out your trail.  


The map menu also shows your current quests.  Some quests show up on your map and tell you directly where to go, others just show you where the quest was given.  

With all of this crap on the map, it can get kinda confusing, especially on the mini-map on your battle screen.  However, the best thing about this game is exploring, despite the rather lame locations.


----------Time to Complete Game---------
21:49:28

You get the choice between two possible endings, I believe.  The ending was really short, and there wasn't even credits, which I found to be weird.  After the final cutscene, it just takes you back to the select screen.  You can go back to your previous save and finish up any sidequests if you want.