After many delays Two Worlds 2 is finally almost with us here in the UK. The original Two Worlds launched in 2007 on the Xbox 360 and PC, and was met with a generally negative response critically. Many gamers however, including myself, found it to be a true diamond in the rough. Developed by Reality Pump and published by Topware Interactive and Zuxxez Entertainment Two Worlds 2 aims to improve on almost every aspect of its predecessor. Featuring a huge 30-40 hour singleplayer campaign, competitive and cooperative multiplayer modes, an interesting village mode and a robust magic system, it really does sound like the complete RPG package. But does it live up to expectations?
The game kicks off with the ability to create your own hero. Although in singleplayer you cannot alter your gender or race, the creation tools are a definite step up from the first game and allow you to tweak your character to a reasonable degree. The player will find themselves locked away in Gandohar's castle, only to be set free shortly after by a group of Orcs. The prison break-out tutorial area of the game does a pretty decent job of familiarising the player the basics - you'll be hacking and slashing your way through enemies in no time.
The games combat system is fairly simple. By pressing down on the d-pad you'll equip your weapons. You then press the right trigger to attack and string together combos, and the left trigger to block. You'll also be able to set and switch between 3 different equipment sets using the up, left and right buttons on the d-pad. Although this system feels cumbersome at first having to equip not only weapons but every piece of armour and jewelry for every set, you'll soon fall in love with it - the system allows you to switch equipment on the fly even when in combat; find yourself firing at an enemy from afar with your bow only for him to close in, no problem, just switch to your melee set and slash away. What's brilliant about this system is it allows for a ton of variety in the combat, letting the player have completely different equipment sets for different situations. Rather than having to tailor your characters equipment for the class you're trying to achieve, such as a mage or archer, this system lets you effectively take on multiple roles. Combined this with the game's skill system allowing you to upgrade your character's abilities precisely as you see fit, and you'll be crafting your perfect hero in no time.
The singleplayer's main questline won't win any awards for its storytelling but keeps things flowing pretty well through the hours and hours you'll put into the game. That said the game has an absolute ton of brilliant sidequests. You'll find yourself distracted for hours on end just completing one side quest line. These will send you all over Antaloor and often task you with some pretty entertaining objectives and outcomes. Something I found to be rather amusing is the game's questlog - rather than supply a basic bullet pointed list of goals the developers have created a sort of personal diary for the hero. After quests have been completed the hero often sounds-off in his questlog explaining what happened, sometimes with a little personal touch; your guaranteed to chuckle when you read your hero insult a character as a "one-handed prick". It's unique, amusing and one of many fantastic small touches found in the game.
Two Worlds 2 is absolutely gigantic. You're guaranteed to get your moneys worth here, there's simply no doubt about it. To put things in perspective it took me 14 hours to complete Chapter 1 of 4. The world of Antaloor is huge, and absolutely riddled with interesting side quests and characters. You'll travel around it on horseback, through a vast teleport network, and you'll even get your own boat! That said this huge world isn't without it's faults. The user interface design is clunky and pretty ugly at times. I found myself trying to scroll left and right through my inventory only for it to scroll vertically upwards instead. Also the enemies are fairly dumb, often being confused at the thought of their attacker being on a higher level, and as a result simply stand there taking damage from afar. That said the game isn't easy by a long shot (I played on normal difficulty) - you'll find yourself facing a ton of genuinely tough enemies, and considering every death means you have to load back to your last save game, it's something you want to try and avoid as much as possible. Often I found myself exploiting these enemy glitches and patterns to win over enemies which could potentially kill me in 1 or 2 hits - without these some battles would have been almost impossible.
The game also offers a fairly simple but rewarding crafting system. With the press of a button any weapon or piece of armour can be broken down into its core parts, such as wood, iron, steel, cloth etc. Using these core components you can also simply upgrade another piece of armour or weapon to boost its stats. Additionally you can slot in various skill crystals which offer stat boosts, and even place dyes to change the colour of said item. I'm usually not a crafter in RPG's but the simplicity of this completely sucked me in. It's extremely easy to use but surprisingly robust. This same mentality is applied to the magic system in the game - here casters have almost infinite possibilities to create the spell of their dreams using a simple card based system. Carrier cards determine the spells core functionality such as missile or enchantment. Effect cards determine the elemental magic from which the spell draws its power from such as Air, Earth, Fire and Water. Modifier cards alter the spells effects such as giving a lightning bolt the ability to bounce from one enemy to the next. The result of all these along with the ability to have multiple layers of cards means the combinations of spells is almost endless! It's also worth mentioning that throughout the game you can gather herbs which you may mix and match using alchemy to create unique potions.
The first thing most players will notice is just how much of an improvement visually the game is over its predecessor. Although not groundbreaking the visuals are often superb. Gone are the days from the original Two Worlds where 360 players were met with terrible framerates, low quality visuals and overall poor performance. The developers have written an entirely new engine for Two Worlds 2, and it shows. The dynamic lighting system looks absolutely fantastic; with sun shafts forming through the trees and lanterns swaying from side to side with the light being perfectly represented on the ground below. When the game is installed on the 360's hard drive the load times are surprisingly short, moving from the main menu to the singleplayer world only takes around 10-15 seconds! The framerate only chugged on rare occasions, and some screentearing is only occasionally present (notably on the lockpicking minigame oddly). Although I'm sure the PC version looks and runs the best, the 360 version's overall performance is a huge welcome step up from the original game. The world of Antaloor simply looks gorgeous.
Something that many players will remember from the first game is the voice acting; it was so bad it ended up being good. This time the developers have done away with the comedic voice overs and replaced them with a much better cast. Your hero sounds reminiscent of Christian Bale in The Dark Knight with his gruff tones, and many other characters are reasonably well voiced. Don't expect any stand out acts though; it's not terrible but definitely acceptable. It's worth mentioning however that the music in Two Worlds 2 does indeed stand out. You'll find yourself humming along to the game's theme tune after only a few hours, and the other various pieces of music are brilliantly fitting to the setting. The game even features a guitar-hero lite clone, letting you play pieces of music using various instruments such as a harp, flute or guitar.
Surprisingly enough that's not all the game has to offer. The developers have thrown in a fully blown multiplayer suite. After hitting Xbox Live on the Main Menu you'll be asked to create a persistent multiplayer specific character. Here you can alter your hero's race (Human, Elf, Dark Elf, Dwarf and Half-Orc), and gender. You'll also be required to pick a character class from a ranger to various warriors and mages. It's worth noting this class selection does not lock you into that class for the duration of multiplayer but instead just gives you a head start in that area of focus; you can still purchase skill books to gain access to skills found in the other classes. The competitive multiplayer modes (Duel, Deathmatch and Crystal Capture) seem largely pointless, the game's mechanics don't really lend themselves well to a PvP environment and I'm unsure as to why the developers even bothered implementing them. However 'Adventure' mode is where the bulk of your multiplayer time will be spent. Here you and up to 7 of your buddies can jump into 8 different cooperative quest lines/areas which are of a generous size. To put it simply - it just works. The original Two Worlds' multiplayer mode was practically broken on the 360, yet in TW2 I've played online with a bunch of randoms and a friend and encountered no hiccups whatsoever. What's mind blowing is how the developers have managed to implement almost the entire list of singleplayer features into the multiplayer. You'll still be able to visit vendors, break down and craft weapons, gather herbs and create potions with alchemy.
It doesn't end there. Reality Pump have thrown in 'Village Mode'. Here players can expect a sort of Farmville meets RPG experience. Using your multiplayer character, after earning 10,000 auras (currency), you can start managing your own village. This mode features a totally separate map, offering various build points where you can place new buildings. These buildings are upgradeable, and all require upkeep, but many also generate revenue. The key is to ensure the money coming in is greater than the money going out. Your village will operate in real time, leave it a couple of days and you'll have a welcome amount of cash waiting for you. You'll also have to manage your citizen's happiness, which can be affected by various mini-quests triggered at random. One day you may come back to your village to find the village guide informing you that a supply line has been blocked off by a group of skeletons; killing these will improve the happiness of your citizens. The money earned here can be transferred easily too and from your multiplayer hero. Seen a sparkling new weapon in a store on an adventure level you just need to buy - just transfer all your cash from the village over to your hero and go grab it. Need to upgrade your Windmill - just transfer all your cash earned in adventure mode from your hero to your village. It's a brilliant system, and something truly innovative to the genre which adds a ton of replay value to the game.
Overall Two Worlds 2 is simply a fantastic European RPG. Sure it has bugs, presentation flaws and various other niggles, but if you can look past these you'll be met with a wonderful RPG experience which will suck you in for days on end. Reality Pump have managed to improve in leaps and bounds on almost every aspect of the original Two Worlds. I simply cannot wait to see what these guys can do with another iteration of the series.
Two Worlds II Gets An Official Game-Pad: 8.8/10
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