Another Two Worlds?

I will admit I wasn’t looking forwards to this particular game after the terrible nature of the first. I was wondering if the developers had learned anything post Two Worlds and had they made the same mistakes again? Thankfully after a lot of time spent in the game, both in single player and the significant multiplayer, I can report that it’s not the case. Two Worlds 2 is actually a lot better than the first game, by miles.

Story

It’s a clichéd tale but it works well enough, kidnapped sister, main character escapes evil Overlord Bad-Guy Emperor with the help of some rebellious element. Main character embarks on prophetic quest to save the whole world yadda-yadda-yadda. You’re likely not going to be bothered much by the story, since the core game offers almost too much to do and a huge Oblivion-like map to explore and get much-o-loot from.

Two Worlds 2 is a third person action-adventure with Oblivion overtones. It has a massive map and numerous continents, with a tonne of adventure potential around every corner from random encounters with wildlife and indigenous species, to pitched battles with overwhelming numbers of foes hidden away in camps scattered across the many miles of terrain. There are numerous locations, cities, villages, settlements and more just waiting to be discovered and thanks to a pretty intelligent map system, with various teleports, you’re not going to be doing much in the way of slogging from one continent to another. You’re also doing this with a customised character; since the game lets you make a custom hero with quite a few sliders and so on to tweak.

There are also horses, which are much better than Two Worlds and handle significantly easier too. You kill things, do quests and rack up the XP (Experience Points) to level your character up how you want. Your 4 main attributes gain 4 points to be split between Endurance, Strength, Accuracy and Magic. Endurance gives you more Hit Points and allows you to carry more loot, Strength boosts melee damage, Accuracy boosts ranged damage and Magic well...Magic lets you do more with the magic system and bolsters your spell damage.

Then you get Skill Points, these can be put into an array of various skills, warrior based skills that give you special abilities, ranger based ones that help with shooting your bow...firing arrows that cause distractions, or multi-arrows for instance. Magic based that lets you do all kinds of cool things when spell casting. There are skills for assassination, lock-picking, metallurgy (crafting weapons) and more ... the list is quite large and you’ll struggle at first to decide where you want to put your points. You also get points for doing things in the game, making potions using alchemy and crafting weapons can earn you a free point or two.

Even killing a certain number of beasts rewards you with a free point eventually.

The main game is basically a single player quest with your character rising in power as you play, typical of this genre of game. There are lots of optional side quests to undertake and many hidden caverns to explore. You can find loot all over the place and either sell it or break it down.

This segues nicely into the crafting system, where you can break down a weapon/armour and so on into its core materials. With a higher enough metallurgy skill you can then craft better quality weapons by upgrading the ones you buy or loot using bits of the broken down gear. The cost in bits rises as you upgrade each weapon and the benefits are quite impressive when you reach the top tier of the skill. Once you learn the Fusion skill you can use magic crystals to upgrade your weapons even more, giving them new effects...you can even fuse several crystals together to make a more powerful one. Crystals can also go into armour and into rings/amulets.

Alchemy lets you use ingredients looted from animals, or from the herbs around you. You can brew specific potions and experiment by adding ingredients in any order, to see what you can come up with. A new potion is created and the recipe goes into your inventory, allowing you to use it again with a click of a button as long as you have enough in your store.

The Magic System is insane, there are spell amulets and those are broken into spell cards, which have varying effects and bonuses attached. It’s possible with some knowledge of the system to make a spell that lets you walk on water, one that causes objects to fall out of thin air and another that then creates a tornado that catches all of these objects and spins them around you as a crazy shield. The limit here is your knowledge of the system and your imagination when you have enough power in Magic and the cards to play with.

My one gripe about the game so far has been the inventory management, yes; you can set up 3 particular weapon sets with your favourite options. What rings you’re wearing, what weapons and armour you’re using and so on, that’s great. What isn’t great is that it’s possible unless you’re being very careful, to break down a beloved weapon unless you have it equipped or sell it by accident. Since the inventory has a habit of jumping around as you’re breaking down loot or selling it, so if you’re a bit fast on the button...gone is your superb two handed sword you saved up for and crafted into insanity.

If they’d have implemented a way to preserve favourite items, with a button click, which sets them as locked...that would have saved a lot of trouble. So be warned, keep a close eye on what it is you’re about to break down or sell...

It is a minor gripe though, nothing that careful management can’t prevent.