An ambitious RPG that ends up inconsistent at best. Players coming off an Elder Scrolls game might give it a look.
You begin the game by customizing your (male only) avatar. You're given plenty of options past the simple face and hairstyle mix and match of some RPGs. Once you have your character settled, the game opens with a shot of you and your twin sister, Kyra, bound to a throne, prisoners of the Emperor, Gandohar. As he paces about, you learn that Kyra's body is a vessel for the God of Fire. Because of this, Gandohar partially uses your energy to sustain Kyra, as her death would release the Fire God and bring about mass destruction- as fire gods are prone to doing, I guess. However, Gandohar himself is also mad with power, and by no means a force for good. As you're led back to your prison cell, your captors are ambushed by a group of Orcs, who surprisingly enough, are there to free you. You make your escape, albeit reluctantly without Kyra.
You arrive at the island of Alsorna, the Orcs' base of operations. Here you spend most of your time catching up on the story so far, and for any strong RPG, a story that keeps you going even when the game starts to feel like a grind is essential. Unfortunately, TW2 is chock full of cliches, and the ending you can probably guess at long before you've reached the final chapter. In this regard I was extremely disappointed. The main characters are horribly one dimensional, especially yours. While you're given the option to role-play a bit in dialogue, it never has any real impact on the story. A few side plots that you undertake during the main quest introduce you to some genuinely inspired characters who actually keep the game interesting. They might even have you guessing as to what their true intentions are; but as much as you'd like, once their plots are resolved they typically don't stick around. Then there are characters who the game plays up as being very relevant in the beginning see no development at all (poor Dar Pha). Still, there is enough going on to give you a sense you're actually fighting for something, but this is one of those things that's a major strike for me as a player personally.
From the beginning of the game, up until you leave Alsorna, you'll run through some of the finer points of the game's mechanics. You never really choose a class in TW2, but rather as you progress in levels you're given points to distribute between stats and different sets of skills. You can spend points specializing in Warrior, Ranged or Mage fighting styles, or invest in defense, crafting, or utility skills, such as sneaking, pickpocketing, setting traps, etc. If you end up changing your mind about certain point investments, you can pay for 'regressions' at certain places in the world. Each time you regress you're refunded a random amount of points from random stats/skills. While not full resets, any chance to give character building another go as you learn the game is welcome, especially when you've already spent dozens of hours on a character.
There are a few ways to approach combat in TW2. Melee is pretty straight forward. You string attacks together into combos, or use special moves like a swift kick that has a chance to knock down enemies, which then allows you to finish them off in a single hit. Ranged combat revolves around the usage of bows and is supported by use of snares and mines. Special attacks include multi-target arrows, or arrows that add fire, ice, poison damage, etc. Magic is a little more complicated. The spell crafting system allows you to customize spells via spell cards, so what starts off as an ordinary fireball ends up being a more close ranged AoE spell for example. You're given 3 slots for equipment sets that you can swap instantly at the press of a single button.
Despite the variation in combat I did feel like the game favored melee users, especially considering how cramped some dungeons and caves are, and how easily projectiles can miss. Outside of a handful of boss fights, there isn't much strategy required in combat, but the fair number of skills available to you keep the game from feeling like a button masher. Since TW2 leans more towards an action game than an actual RPG, you'd expect combat to be one of the stronger points. Unfortunately, combat doesn't flow as smoothly as you might like, partially because of the animations. Combo strings don't feel as fluid as they should and sometimes when you score a 'critical hit' the camera moves off to a side view in an attempt at making appear combat stylish. It doesn't happen too often but I did hate it. It's jarring, doesn't take into account whether you're being swarmed by enemies, and to top it all off, you can still miss. You're also given the option to block, which opens up a few defense oriented moves, like pushing enemies away if you're using a spear for instance. In my experience, once you've reached a decent level, blocking becomes practically obsolete. You'll run through fights much faster just spamming combos, special moves and drinking potions. Movement in the game also feels clumsy in general. Jumping is very stiff; clearing waist high fences is more of a challenge than it should be, and running in general just doesn't feel right. Fighting quick enemies like Panthers that are prone to running away can get annoying, as you'll skid right past them as they come to sudden stops.
One thing TW2 approaches differently is the crafting system. Almost all the items that you can equip, you can also dismantle giving you raw ingredients such as Iron, Steel, Fabric, Leather, etc, which you can then use to upgrade the stuff you actually want to keep. Scrapping things tends to be the way to go over simply selling them, as merchant prices fluctuate, especially if you're trying to buy/sell copies of similar items. You really should be looting everything you can, which means you'll be spending a fair amount of time in the inventory screens as well. Of course, this brings us to what I think is the game's biggest problem- the inventory system is awful. As much as I hate to play this card, it's a pretty clear case of consolitis. The equipment, alchemy ingredients and miscellaneous items have their own tabs, but there's no way to sort, filter or even move items around. You're always in danger of accidentally dismantling an item you actually use despite the confirmation pop-ups, which you'll probably opt to disable as they slow down the dismantling/upgrade process. By the way, do yourself a favor and disable the loot animation and you might shave up to half an hour off your total game time. No, really.
The visual design in TW2, while not perfect is one of the game's stronger points. You'll explore wide open savannahs, thick jungles and of course plenty of decrepit dungeons. Some areas like The Swallows, a piece of land that's been left decaying and sealed off to outsiders due to a magic experiment gone wrong manage to be dark and eerie, yet still relatively colorful. I often catch myself stopping to admire the view, especially wandering along coastlines. But do yourself a favor and scale down the depth of field, or "DOF Scale", as a high value just creates a gimmicky effect that causes everything at a distance to appear hazy. Another minor problem was that foliage rendered in shadows would look pixelated if they were more than several meters away. This was more pronounced as I reduced the DOF Scale, so it was probably intentional, and a way of upping performance on consoles. Aesthetically, instead of going along with the typical European inspired fantasy setting, TW2 instead takes cues from Middle-Eastern and Asian aesthetics. This is seen most prominently in the major cities and is a refreshing change from most games of this type. Character models are nicely detailed, but the animation leaves a lot to be desired. My main complaint is how it affects combat, as many actions feel unresponsive and certain finishing moves just look awkward, such as the slow-motion 'Spartan' spear leap. In contrast, the in-game rendered cut-scenes are much more well done.
Moving on to sound design, we see the same trend of unevenness continue. First, the music in TW2 was probably the biggest surprise for me and at it's best actually ranks up there with some of the best Western RPG music I've heard in my time. It has a very Fantasy feel to it, but again incorporates Asian instruments to separate it from what you might have heard in say, Oblivion. On the other hand, the sound effects are nothing to write home about. They work and are otherwise not something you'd notice. A sword being drawn sounds like a sword. A hammer being drawn sounds like...a sword. In all seriousness when sounds work as they should, you probably won't notice them anyway way, but take something that's more front and center like voice acting and it becomes harder to ignore. While the majority of the cast gives an average, if not fairly good performance, the main character had me wishing Reality Pump went with the 'silent protagonist' approach. His voice is perpetually dialed into this very dry attempt at being brooding and mysterious. Perhaps they wanted to model him after Geralt from The Witcher? While it's suitable for scenes with a serious tone and even adds to the awkwardness of comedic ones (in a good way), most of the time it's just corny. The one liners he mutters after he kills an enemy, "bet you're glad you met me," and "nyahaha, good..." get old. Eventually, you'll probably find a way to tune it out and accept the dialogue and one liners as something akin to what you'd expect out of a cheesy movie. Maybe you'll get a cheap laugh out of one of the many typos in the subtitles too.
Despite all the flaws and despite the very average aspects of many parts of the game, Two Worlds II still does some things right. It still gets the fundamentals of this style of game right and even makes them enjoyable. Character building is forgiving and upgrading equipment is easy and rewarding. The large world is beautiful and the music is some of the nicest I've heard out of a non-Asian RPG in awhile. Some quests, both related to the main story and side quests are intriguing and amusing, such as attempting to uncover a sex scandal at a university, or finding a way to dye a Necromancer's robe red because black is too depressing a color to be wearing all the time. Unfortunately, parts of the main storyline that seemed like they would be huge plot points seemed to just disappear from the story entirely. I also couldn't help but feel like the name 'Two Worlds' was supposed to be more meaningful, but I chalked everything down to time constraints and deadlines. The game is fairly lengthy if you decide to commit to a good chunk of the non-essential side quests, in which case you're looking at about 40 hours game time.
Two Worlds II is not a game I would urge everyone to buy, but if you're done with all of the obvious choices for RPGs and you want something along the lines of Oblivion or The Witcher that doesn't take itself too seriously, you might give it a chance. Reality Pump nearly had something really solid, but a lack of polish just keeps this one from shining.