This review is LONG, which is why at the beginning, there is an "Executive Summary".  The Final thoughts (Jerry’s moment), and rating are at the end.  Though I do encourage you to read it through, mainly because I spent the time writing it.  There should be no spoilers (or at least none that give anything away other than my thoughts on controls etc).

Executive Summary

Overall, Two Worlds is an ok game.  Not a great game by any standards.  The Graphics are good, the game is a fair size, there are more or less options for how you play the game, and difficulty settings to make the game a bit more challenging.

There are major problems, some which may be fixed by patching, such as poor performance, too much freezing, crashing, stuttering, etc, bugs that skip cut-scenes, etc.

My advice is to wait until a patch (or 3) has been released and then get it.  If you liked Oblivion, you will probably be ok/not pissed with a Two Worlds purchase/rental.  Just don’t compare them, they don’t compare.  Oblivion was better by far. (Yes, I’m an Oblivion Fan-boy… bite me).

Part 1: The Good

Two worlds was a good sized game, taking me about 22 hours to beat, including completion of just about every quest I could find (some quests are impossible to do if you do a competing quest).

Unlike Oblivion, I think you can kill anyone, for example, I took out the entire city of Ashos.  As long as you are powerful enough (which shouldn’t be hard to attain) you seem to be free to wipe out the entire world.  I didn’t try to kill a main quest line character, but I did kill other quest givers, the only side effect is that quest or quest line disappeared for me.

The game is pretty. There are fields of grass, forests of bamboo, butterflies, bunnies, grass snakes, etc.  The wilderness environments are in many respects "stunning".  Cities are comparable with Oblivion, maybe a bit prettier.  Characters are quite well done, even better than Oblivion IMO, until they talk, which is why I took out Ashos.  I reloaded after that though.

The customization is kind-of neat.  Your ability to create potions, increase the power of Armor & Weapons, etc is rather encouraging.

Many of the xbox 360 achievements are achievable, some are down right too easy.  This does matter (at least for the 360 port) as many games on the 360 have achievements that are downright next to impossible to attain.  That’s irritating, sure hold back a couple 50 point achievements for being a complete fan-boy and getting 4000 black pearls in Hexic, but make the majority of the achievements accessible.  Two worlds does that for the most part.  There are only a couple achievements that are nigh on impossible ("visit every location!": suicide is more appealing that crawling the country side for that last location… especially since there seems to be a bug where some locations don’t register unless you stand in the right spot!)

Part 2: The Bad

The game is too Easy.  Granted I was playing on easy, but that was because it was the default setting.  Take "Gears of War" as an example.  That on the easiest setting is still hard enough that you die from time to time, especially if you aren’t playing co-op.  I died once in Two Worlds, once, right at the beginning.  I thought "Sweet, this game is going to take actual thought and strategy".  Well, you can still die if you are a complete moron, but if you don’t let yourself get to overwhelmed by the enemy, there is zero chance of death.  Especially later on in the game (see below under Customization & Alchemy).

The dialog is abysmal.  I don’t mean that audio id badly done.  I mean the scripted writing is so bad you want to groan all the time.  Their attempt at old-English is laughable.  The voice acting isn’t the best either, but it is more or less on par with many other games.

Customization & Alchemy = Godhood.  I kid you not.  My character could kill anything in less than five hits, most with one (with one or two "boss" exceptions, though I did kill bosses in a two or three hits too).  The ability to make permanent stat adjustment potions was a mistake in my opinion.  My ending strength was about 220, with a vitality of 250. I had about 30000 hit points, 10000 mana (healing didn’t even touch my mana reserves… it regenerated too fast).  My defense, thanks to adjustment potions that affected my base defense, was such that I could literally stand there and take a beating and only heal every so often.  My weapons were the wrath of god.  My armor was way too powerful.

Mages don’t have a chance.  A tank can own anything, and even an archer can usually hold his own relatively well as compared to a mage.  If you think the games is too easy, like I did, then play a mage.  I tried, gave up it wasn’t necessarily that it is challenging, more just repetitive, when you are using weapons, yes, it is still very repetitive, but at least the battle doesn’t last 10 mimes longer than it needs to…  Fire off your best spells, run.  Fire off best spells, heal & run, drink potions, repeat.  Anyway, I quickly became bored.

There are lots of places where there is just wasted space.  Stuff could be there, more quests, dungeons, baddies, etc.  But there’s nothing, just empty barren land or city blocks, etc.

The game is NOT bigger than oblivion.  The "land area" may be bigger (thought it sure does not feel like it), but when you factor in content, it is barely a quarter of the size.

Part 3: The Ugly

The game freezes, a lot.  Granted, at the time of writing this review, the game had been out only a week or so.  One expects games, these days at least, to freeze once or twice, to have a bug here and there.  The studios seem to let a lot more through now that games can be patched, which is a rant of its own,   but Two Worlds froze on me about a dozen or so times in 22 hours of play.  That’s completely unacceptable.

The game chugs and stutters badly on the 360, I bet it never went over 15-20 frames per second the entire game, and more often than not it probably attained around 10 frames per second on average.  I’m sorry, I’d rather the game look a little less pretty, than have to feel noxious while playing.  The stuttering in some parts was so bad I just about turned it off and gave up.  On a PC I could have dialed down the graphic options, it irritates the crap out of me that the developers don’t include graphic options in the 360 version.

IT IS NOT OPEN ENDED.  Contrary to their propaganda, there is only one path through the game.  Sure, you can ignore the main story line completely (except that if you approach a main character you will trigger an encounter & main story quest.  But you can still ignore that quest.  There is no real good or bad, you can do some things that will make it a bit harder to get "in" with a certain guild.  But that really means wiping out a town or two.   You can be "thrown out" of a guild, but that only means you lose the perks that they award you for doing quests for them.  They still won’t really be aggressive towards you, in fact they will still converse, trade, etc. 

IMO, in order for the game to be considered "open ended" it would have had to have enough content to give the user choices.  True, you can immediately go just about anywhere at any time right from the beginning, but that’s not good enough.  You have to have options for how to complete the game,  joining factions should have consequences (you can join all the factions and nobody cares until the last quest or two).  It just wasn’t good enough IMO to use the words "open ended".

FYI: Your only really test of "good vs. evil" is at the very end. And then it doesn’t matter. When you beat the game you don’t continue playing.  it ends.  In oblivion, you just kept on going, with most people liking you a whole lot more.  Left room for expansion opportunities.

Final Thoughts & Rating

I don’t regret buying Two worlds, and I did enjoy playing it for the most part if I put aside the freezing, the stuttering, the bad dialog, etc.  I’m not sure it was worth $60 though. 

Thank goodness I didn’t get the collectors edition.

I kind-of wish I got Blue dragon.  Luckily, however, I did buy Guitar Hero II for 360, so I had something new to play when Two Worlds froze for the umpteenth time.

Anyway, here’s my ratings for it…

Leave a comment if you have any questions, or insights.  Did you have a different experience?  If you are going to complain that I should have played through on Normal or Hard, then go away.  I played on the default setting.

PS: There are no screen shots because I refuse to hook my 360 through my HTPC to capture them.  I could steal the screen shots, but why bother that are lots of screens out there if you want to see them.

PPS: This was a review of the xbox 360 version, the PC version might have been "Better".

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